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The pro-nuclear drive and Zionism are inter-twined.

https://theaimn.net/the-pro-nuclear-drive-and-zionism-are-inter-twined/ 10 May 25

For many years, I’ve been running websites devoted to the nuclear-free movement. People have asked me why, over the past two years, I’ve been including news about Israel and Gaza.

What on earth do Israel and Gaza have to do with the pro-nuclear cause?

Well, unfortunately, quite a lot.

Here’s a report from 2015 –

“While everyone believes that the Israelis possess a sizable nuclear arsenal, no one really knows how big that arsenal is.  In 2008, President Jimmy Carter estimated that Israel probably had a minimum of 150 weapons in stock ready to use if the most dire circumstances warrant.  Six years later, the former President revised that estimate and put the figure in the 300 range, which—based on Carter’s calculations—would mean that Israel doubled its arsenal from the 2008-2014 time-period. “

Of course the Israeli government “does not confirm or deny” that they’ve got nuclear weapons, and the cowardly governments that support Israel similarly do not officially confirm it. And of course Israel has not signed the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), or participated in any kind of weapons control negotiations.

In Sep 22, 2023 Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned Iran at the United Nations of a “nuclear threat” in what his office quickly walked back as a slip of the tongue. In July 2024  Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged in a scathing speech to Congress on Wednesday to achieve “total victory” against Hamas.

The Zionist philosophy means that the Jews are God’s chosen people. And the Islamics certainly are not. The attitude of Israel towards the Palestinians is that they are not the same kind of human being as the Jews are. Indeed, it’s OK to starve Gazan children to death – after all, they are some kind of untermenchen.

Well, the genocide of Gazans is being achieved without any need for nuclear weapons. But what about the other Islamics? There’s Yemen, and there’s Iran. Netanyahu believes that Iran poses an existential threat to the Zionist state, and could make a nuclear weapon in a short period of time, making Israel and even the US unable to defeat or contain it.

To what lengths might Netanyahu go, to prevent that? Bomb Iran’s nuclear sites?

And would Donald Trump, an enthusiastic fan of Israel, support that option.

Here’s Trump, seven months ago, urging Israel to make such a strike,

While I’ve been thinking about this for some time, I was prompted to write about it now, after reading an article by Lucy Hamilton in Australian Independent Media, about the close involvement of Australian pro-nuclear front groups with the Zionist movement.

It’s not only Israel that we must worry about, in Australia, and presumably world-wide. If we aim to be nuclear-free, we are up against a lobby determined to have nuclear-weapons superiority, and the Zionist movement is right up there in that determination.

May 10, 2025 Posted by | Christina's notes, Religion and ethics | Leave a comment

Why Is US Congress Silent on the Manmade Nightmare It Is Enabling in Gaza? -Bernie Sanders

With Israel having cut off all aid, what we are seeing now is a slow, brutal process of mass starvation and death by the denial of basic necessities. This is methodical, it is intentional, it is the stated policy of the Netanyahu government.

  Bernie Sanders, May 08, 2025 , https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/congress-silent-gaza

I want to say a few words about an issue that people all over the world are thinking about—are appalled by—but for some strange reason gets very little discussion here in the nation’s capital or in the halls of Congress. And that is the horrific humanitarian disaster that is unfolding in Gaza.

Thursday marks 68 days and counting since ANY humanitarian aid was allowed into Gaza. For more than nine weeks, Israel has blocked all supplies: no food, no water, no medicine, and no fuel.

Hundreds of truckloads of lifesaving supplies are waiting to enter Gaza, sitting just across the border, but are denied entry by Israeli authorities.

There is no ambiguity here: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s extremist government talks openly about using humanitarian aid as a weapon. Defense Minister Israel Katz said, “Israel’s policy is clear: No humanitarian aid will enter Gaza, and blocking this aid is one of the main pressure levers.”

Starving children to death as a weapon of war is a clear violation of the Geneva Convention, the Foreign Assistance Act, and basic human decency. Civilized people do not starve children to death.

What is going on in Gaza is a war crime, committed openly and in broad daylight, and continuing every single day.

There are 2.2 million people who live in Gaza. Today, these people are trapped. The borders are sealed. And Israel has pushed the population into an ever-smaller area.

With Israel having cut off all aid, what we are seeing now is a slow, brutal process of mass starvation and death by the denial of basic necessities. This is methodical, it is intentional, it is the stated policy of the Netanyahu government.

Without fuel, there is no ability to pump fresh water, leaving people increasingly desperate, unable to find clean water to drink, wash with, or cook properly. Disease is once again spreading in Gaza.

Most of the bakeries in Gaza have now shut down, having run out of fuel and flour. The few remaining community kitchens are also shutting down. Most people are now surviving on scarce canned goods, often a single can of beans or some lentils, shared between a family once a day.

The United Nations reports that more than 2 million people out of a population of 2.2 million face severe food shortages.

The starvation hits children hardest. At least 65,000 children now show symptoms of malnutrition, and dozens have already starved to death.

Malnutrition rates increased 80% in March, the last month for which data is available, after Netanyahu began the siege, but the situation has severely deteriorated since then.

UNICEF reported Wednesday that “the situation is getting worse every day,” and that they are treating about 10,000 children for severe malnutrition.

Without adequate nutrition or access to clean water, many children will die of easily preventable diseases, killed by something as simple as diarrhea.

For the tens of thousands of injured people in Gaza, particularly the countless burn victims from Israeli bombing, their wounds cannot heal without adequate food and clean water. Left to fester, infections will kill many who should have survived.

With no infant formula, and with malnourished mothers unable to breastfeed, many infants are also at severe risk of death. Those that survive will bear the scars of their suffering for the rest of their lives.

And with little medicine available, easily treatable illnesses and chronic diseases like diabetes or heart disease can be a death sentence in Gaza.

What is going on there is not some terrible earthquake, it is not a hurricane, it is not a storm. What is going on in Gaza today is a manmade nightmare. And nothing can justify this.

What is happening in Gaza will be a permanent stain on the world’s collective conscience. History will never forget that we allowed this to happen and, for us here in the United States, that we, in fact, enabled this atrocity.

There is no doubt that Hamas, a terrorist organization, began this terrible war with its barbaric October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, which killed 1,200 innocent people and took 250 hostages.

The International Criminal Court was right to indict Yahya Sinwar and other leaders of Hamas as war criminals for those atrocities.

Clearly, Israel had the right to defend itself against Hamas.

But Netanyahu’s extremist government has not just waged war against Hamas. Instead, they have waged an all-out barbaric war of annihilation against the Palestinian people.

They have intentionally made life unlivable in Gaza.

Israel, up to now, has killed more than 52,000 people and injured more than 118,000—60% of whom are women, children, and the elderly. More than 15,000 children have been killed.

Israel’s indiscriminate bombardment has damaged or destroyed two-thirds of all structures in Gaza, including 92% of the housing units. Most of the population now is living in tents or other makeshift structures.

The healthcare system in Gaza has been essentially destroyed. Most of the territory’s hospitals and primary healthcare facilities have been bombed.

Gaza’s civilian infrastructure has been totally devastated, including almost 90% of water and sanitation facilities. Most of the roads have been destroyed.

Gaza’s education system has been obliterated. Hundreds of schools have been bombed, as has every single one of Gaza’s 12 universities.

And there has been no electricity in Gaza for 18 months.

Given this reality, nobody should have any doubts that Netanyahu is a war criminal. Just like his counterparts in Hamas, he has a massive amount of innocent blood on his hands.

And now Netanyahu and his extremist ministers have a new plan: to indefinitely reoccupy all of Gaza, flatten the few buildings that are still standing, and force the entire population of 2.2 million people into a single tiny area, where hired U.S. security contractors will distribute rations to the survivors.

Israeli officials are quite open about the goal here: to force Palestinians to leave for other countries “in line with President [Donald] Trump’s vision for Gaza,” as one Israeli official said this week.

Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said this week that “Gaza will be entirely destroyed,” and that its population will “leave in great numbers.”

For many in Netanyahu’s extremist government, this has been the plan all along: It’s called ethnic cleansing.

This would be a terrible tragedy, no matter where or why it was happening. But what makes this tragedy so much worse for us in America is that it is our government, the United States government, that is absolutely complicit in creating and sustaining this humanitarian disaster.

Last year alone, the United States provided $18 billion in military aid to Israel. This year, the Trump administration has approved $12 billion more in bombs and weapons.

And for months, Trump has offered blanket support for Netanyahu. More than that, he has repeatedly said that the United States will actually take over Gaza after the war, that the Palestinians will be pushed out, and that the U.S. will redevelop it into what Trump calls “the Riviera of the Middle East,” a playground for billionaires.

This war has killed or injured more than 170,000 people in Gaza. It has cost American taxpayers well over $20 billion in the last year. And right now, as we speak, thousands of children are starving to death. And the U.S. president is actively encouraging the ethnic cleansing of over 2 million people.

Given that reality, one might think that there would be a vigorous discussion right here in the Senate: Do we really want to spend billions of taxpayer dollars starving children in Gaza? You tell me why spending billions of dollars to support Netanyahu’s war and starving children in Gaza is a good idea. I’d love to hear it.

But we are not having that debate. And let me suggest to you why I think we are not having that debate.

That is because we have a corrupt campaign finance system that allows the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) to set the agenda here in Washington.

In the last election cycle, AIPAC’s PAC and Super PAC spent nearly $127 million combined.

And the fact is that, if you are a member of Congress and you vote against Netanyahu’s war in Gaza, AIPAC is there to punish you with millions of dollars in advertisements to see that you’re defeated.

One might think that in a democracy there would be a vigorous debate on an issue of such consequence. But because of our corrupt campaign finance system, people are literally afraid to stand up. If they do, suddenly you will have all kinds of ads coming in to your district to defeat you.

Sadly, I must confess, that this political corruption works. Many of my colleagues will privately express their horror at Netanyahu’s war crimes, but will do or say very little publicly about it.

History will not forgive our complicity in this nightmare. The time is long overdue for us to end our support for Netanyahu’s destruction of the Palestinian people. We must not put another nickel into Netanyahu’s war machine. We must demand an immediate cease-fire, a surge in humanitarian aid, the release of the hostages, and the rebuilding of Gaza—not for billionaires to enjoy their Riviera there—but rebuilding Gaza for the Palestinian people.

May 10, 2025 Posted by | Atrocities, politics, USA | Leave a comment

The Deep State & the Death of Democracy

This is a must read – The Devil’s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America’s Secret Government

Bruce Gagnon, May 10, 2025, https://brucegagnon177089.substack.com/p/the-deep-state-and-the-death-of-democracy?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=3720343&post_id=163213827&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1vapg7&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

This is an important book – The Devil’s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America’s Secret Government. I would say without any hesitation that this is one of the top 3-4 most important books that I have ever read. I highly recommend that everyone read it.

There is so much I learned from the book and I’ve been studying the whole US-Nazi connection after WW II for many years – but author David Talbot really wrote a spell-binding book – it’s like reading a real life mystery story. You come away from the book with a very clear understanding how the US became the corporate fascist state that we have today.

“During the war [Maj. Gen.] Gehlen had served as Hitler’s intelligence chief on the eastern front. His Foreign Armies East (Fremde Heere Ost) apparatus relentlessly probed for weaknesses in the Soviet defenses as the Nazi juggernaut made its eastward thrust. Gehlen’s FHO also pinpointed the location of Jews, Communists, and other enemies of the Reich in the ‘bloodlands’ overrun by Hitler’s forces, so they could be rounded up and executed by the Einsatzgruppen death squads. Most of the intelligence gathered by Gehlen’s men was extracted from the enormous population of Soviet prisoners of war – which eventually totaled four million – that fell under Nazi control. Gehlen’s exalted reputation as an intelligence wizard, which won him the Fuhrer’s admiration and his major general’s rank, derived from his organization’s widespread use of torture.”

To make it quick and simple, Maj. Gen. Gehlen made a deal with Allen Dulles (then running the precursor of the CIA called the OSS) that if he and his team were spared trial at Nuremberg he’d turn over his ‘rat line’ of fascist operatives throughout Europe and would work for the US. Gehlen was brought to the US and put through loyalty tests and eventually sent back to the newly created West Germany where he was put in charge of intelligence in the post war ‘free’ Germany.

Gehlen’s post-war operatives across Europe where used to disrupt and destroy left-wing attempts to win electoral victories in European countries (Operation Gladio). His death squads were used to target the Algerian independence movement. Gehlen and Dulles worked overtime to destabilize the Soviet eastern bloc taking great pleasure in making Stalin hyper-paranoid thus getting him to overreact and launch brutal internal crackdowns on innocent Soviet citizens.

Talbot quotes JFK White House staffer Arthur Schlesinger Jr. saying he was offended by “the notion of American spooks” like Dulles and other leading post-war CIA operatives “cheerfully consorting with people like General Reinhard Gehlen….There was something aesthetically displeasing about Americans plotting with Nazis, who had recently been killing us, against Russians, whose sacrifices [27 million killed during the war] had made the allied victory possible.”

Talbot painstakingly reveals how Dulles used his CIA rat line to set up the JFK assassination in 1963. One of the key players in the killing of President Kennedy was the CIA agent William Harvey who worked closely with Gehlen’s notorious fascist organization, and Gehlen came to consider Harvey a “very esteemed [and] really reliable friend.”

In the spring of 1968, soon after the killing of Sen. Bobby Kennedy, Allen Dulles took the time to write to the last Kennedy brother Ted sending his “sympathy and regards”. Talbot reports that Dulles hated Bobby and had used his seat on the President Lyndon Johnson appointed Warren Commission to smash any hopes for a true investigation into the killing of JFK that Dulles had been a mastermind in executing. Bobby had been privately hoping to expose Dulles and the CIA as the killer of his big brother if he were to be elected president.


Talbot shares that in the fall of 1968 the main social event of the season for Dulles was “the Washington fete in honor of Reinhard Gehlen, the West German spy chief Dulles had resurrected from the poison ashes of the Third Reich. On September 12, Gehlen’s US sponsors threw a luncheon for him, and that night there was a dinner for Hitler’s old spy chief at the Maryland home of Heinz Herre – Gehlen’s former staff officer on the eastern front, who had become West Germany’s top intelligence liaison in Washington.”

One could easily say that the US and German fascists had all the bases covered.

Why then have the American people, and the people of the world, been largely ignorant about this ugly history of the resurrection of the Nazi war machine during the post WW II years? After viewing the video [ Operation Mockingbird, CIA Media Control Program https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDCfTIapds0&t=89s ]about the CIA’s clandestine infiltration of US and international media it is no surprise that the public has been spoon fed only what the propagandists, disguised as democratic patriots, wanted people to know. History has been rewritten to suit the needs of the deep state.

In 1977, Rolling Stone Magazine alleged that one of the most important journalists under the thumb of the CIA’s media control program called Operation Mockingbird was Joseph Alsop, whose articles appeared in over 300 different newspapers. Other journalists alleged by Rolling Stone to have been willing to promote the views of the CIA included Stewart Alsop (New York Herald Tribune), Ben Bradlee (Newsweek), James Reston (New York Times), Charles Douglas Jackson (Time Magazine), Walter Pincus (Washington Post), William C. Baggs (The Miami News), Herb Gold (The Miami News) and Charles Bartlett (Chattanooga Times). According to Nina Burleigh (A Very Private Woman), these journalists sometimes wrote articles that were commissioned by the CIA’s Frank Wisner (director of the Office of Special Projects). The CIA also provided them with classified information to help them with their work.

Operation Mockingbird had a major influence over 25 newspapers and wire agencies. These organizations were run by people with well-known right-wing views such as William Paley (CBS), Henry Luce (Time and Life Magazine), Arthur Hays Sulzberger (New York Times), Alfred Friendly (managing editor of the Washington Post), Jerry O’Leary (Washington Star), Hal Hendrix (Miami News), Barry Bingham, Sr., (Louisville Courier-Journal), James Copley (Copley News Services) and Joseph Harrison (Christian Science Monitor).

The American democracy story is illusion created by what author Bertram Gross called “three piece suit fascism” years ago in his book entitled Friendly Fascism: The New Face of Power in America. But to emerging democracy movements around the world, brutally suppressed by the CIA and its death squad agents, there was nothing friendly or democratic about these tactics. Because of the relative affluence of America during this period the public was docile and easily keep under control by the manipulations of the media and the political circles controlled by the deep state.

Now that the American imperial project is crashing and burning the story has begun to emerge and the blinders of deception are steadily falling from the public’s eyes. What comes next is unknown but until the American people learn the real story behind this ‘Hollywood democracy’ little can change for the good.

May 10, 2025 Posted by | secrets,lies and civil liberties | Leave a comment

Depleted Uranium by Lynda Williams 2025

May 10, 2025 Posted by | depleted uranium | Leave a comment

How Miliband can make renewables cheaper – but there is really no alternative to renewables

giving longer term contracts to renewable energy developers will make solar and wind schemes even cheaper

In a world where the costs of building all sorts of power plants are
increasing, the Government has a powerful card up its sleeve to keep down
the cost of new renewable energy projects. The Government is considering
extending the contract length under which new renewable energy projects
receive their fixed payments per MWh that is generated.

If contracts for
difference (CfDs) are issued to last for 20 years instead of 15 years, this
could reduce the price of power from the renewable projects by at least 10
per cent (according to my calculations). By offering lower annual returns
over a longer period, the projects can be delivered for a lower fixed price
per MWh that is generated. Such a cost reduction seems likely to offset any
temporary (Trump-induced) cost increases for renewables.

The ‘Trump
effect’ may have led Orsted to discontinue its massive 2.4 GW Hornsea 4
offshore wind project near East Anglia. However, some commentators such as
Jerome Guillet argue that Orsted should have planned better to avoid this
outcome. Other countries operating the CfD system for renewable energy
employ 20-year contracts, and it has always been a mystery to me why the UK
Treasury plumped for a 15 year period. This is an artificially short period
compared to the project lifetime of 25 or 30 years.

Hinkley C, by contrast,
was given a 35-year premium price contract. Meanwhile, the French
Government is pressing the UK Government to put more money into the
long-delayed construction of the Hinkley C power plant. This, it seems, is
part of the price for EDF agreeing to the construction of the successor
Sizewell C plant. This is even though Hinkley C was given a contract that
pays it over £130 per MWh in today’s prices.

That compares to the most
recent auctions of wind and solar PV, whose contracts are worth £71-£83
per MWh at 2025 prices. As I write this, there appears to be a standoff in
negotiations over the terms for Sizewell C between the British and French
governments.

Quite apart from the cost, the idea that nuclear power is
going to be delivered anytime soon is fanciful. The idea that so-called
small modular reactors are any sort of alternative to the big ones is
ridiculous. They are just more expensive still!

At the end of the day,
energy efficiency and renewables are the only real options. After all, over
90 per cent of the new generation being deployed in the world last year was
renewable, almost all of it being solar or wind. The reason this is
happening is that their costs are falling and they continue to fall.
Renewables are the present and future. We need more electricity to
electrify transport, heating, and much else. Sceptics may rail and sneer at
Miliband’s clean power programme. If it has any faults, it is because it
is too mainstream, wasting money and time on carbon capture and storage and
nuclear power.

 Dave Toke’s Blog 8th May 2025 https://davidtoke.substack.com/p/how-milband-can-make-renewables-cheaper

May 10, 2025 Posted by | renewable, UK | Leave a comment

Ontario signs up for a huge financial and security risk

Ontario Clean Air Alliance 9 May 25

1 Yesterday the Ford Government announced it is rolling the dice on building four untested, first-of-their-kind nuclear reactors at the Darlington Nuclear Station. 

It’s an expensive and risky roll. The government claims these four reactors will cost $20.9 billion and will take 10 years to build. A much more realistic cost estimate based on real-world experience says these reactors will cost at least $27 billion. 

Of course, these American-designed reactors will also depend on enriched uranium imports from the United States. So much for sending Donald Trump a message and protecting Canada’s national security.

Today we released a report which compares the costs of these never-before-built reactors with much lower cost, safer and more climate effective options such as solar and wind power.

It finds that power from these new nuclear reactors will cost up to 8 times more than power from onshore wind turbines; almost 6 times more than power from solar farms; and up to 2.7 times more than Great Lakes offshore wind power.

That’s according to the highly respected Energy Futures Group, not the nuclear insiders the government is depending on for its estimates. While they used data from Ontario’s Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO), the Energy Futures Group made realistic estimates about the capital costs of new reactors and their performance based on real-world data that the IESO chose to pass over in favour of assumptions with little grounding in reality.

Why would we spend many, many times more for power from risky reactors rather than doing what the rest of the world is doing and fully develop low-cost renewable power? Remember, Ontario has not contracted for a single kilowatt-hour of new wind and solar electricity during that last 7 years while use of solar, in particular, has skyrocketed in much of the rest of the world.

The Ford Government doesn’t want to talk about the real costs and alternatives to its nuclear fantasy plans. But we can’t afford to live in a fantasy world, especially now. We need to get real about the best way to control energy costs and to protect our province. Splashing out on unproven nuclear reactors is not a good choice when we can save billions with reliable, already available and proven renewable options.

See our report for all the fine print on the Energy Futures Group’s calculations. Then tell the Ford Government that it’s time to get real and invest in our lowest cost power options, not expensive nuclear pipe dreams.

May 10, 2025 Posted by | business and costs | Leave a comment

‘It’s deceitful’: Critics slam owners of TMI Unit 2 for not reporting fire at plant

Penn Live, By Charles Thompson | cthompson@pennlive.com,  May. 08, 2025

Accidents can happen.

But when they happen at a nuclear power plant, who gets told, and when?

That’s a question that some neighbors of the still-shuttered Three Mile Island nuclear power stations are asking after recent disclosures about a small fire at the Three Mile Island Unit 2 reactor building this winter.

The owners of Unit 2 – the scene of the notorious March 1979 partial meltdown – have received a “non-cited violation” from federal regulators for the fire that broke out at its reactor building on Feb. 11.

The fire got its first public disclosure through a May 2 posting on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s public library.

No one was hurt in the incident, in which a partition surrounding a worksite at the crippled plant’s ongoing deconstruction ignited.

And according to the NRC’s inspection report, there were no releases of radiation associated with it.

Overall, and importantly, the inspection report concludes, the incident itself was one of “very low safety significance.”

But the fact the fire was not publicly reported in real time is raising some alarm bells with some of the plant’s critics.

Neither plant owners TMI-2 Solutions nor federal or state regulators put out a real-time public notice about the incident.

It also wasn’t briefed at a March meeting of a community advisory panel established specifically “to enhance open communication, public involvement and education about the… decommissioning project,” according to two people who attended that session.

“It’s not only tone-deaf. It’s deceitful, because they know how the public feels about it,” said Joyce Corradi, a Lower Swatara Township resident who 45 years ago was a founding member of Concerned Mothers’ and Women, a grassroots group concerned about the accident.

To be clear, TMI-2 Solutions wasn’t exactly hiding the situation.

The company did make same-day courtesy calls to “appropriate stakeholders” including the NRC, the state Department of Environmental Protection …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

“Constellation Energy does not own Three Mile Island Unit 2, but anything that happens at Unit 1 can be influenced by accidents at Unit 2,” Stilp said.

“The best solution is not to restart Unit 1, so that there will never be a chance that a nuclear incident will occur there.”

And the lack of full public disclosure infuriated others.

“It undermines confidence in their ability to communicate during a (bigger) incident or accident,” said Eric Epstein, longtime leader of Three Mile Island Alert.

“This is how we had the (1979) accident in the first place,” said Corradi, who co-founded the women’s group after the partial meltdown. “A lack of checking out the details and doing things safely.”…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

https://www.pennlive.com/news/2025/05/its-deceitful-critics-slam-tmi-for-not-reporting-fire-at-plant.html?fbclid=IwY2xjawKKKKJleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBicmlkE

May 10, 2025 Posted by | secrets,lies and civil liberties, USA | Leave a comment

Two-thirds of global heating caused by richest 10%, study suggests

 Two-thirds of global heating caused by richest 10%, study suggests. Paper
in Nature Climate Change journal reveals major role wealthy emitters play
in driving climate extremes. The world’s wealthiest 10% are responsible
for two-thirds of global heating since 1990, driving droughts and heatwaves
in the poorest parts of the world, according to a study.

While researchers
have previously shown that higher income groups emit disproportionately
large amounts of greenhouse gases, the latest survey is the first to try to
pin down how that inequality translates into responsibility for climate
breakdown. It offers a powerful argument for climate finance and wealth
taxes by attempting to give an evidential basis for how many people in the
developed world – including more than 50% of full-time employees in the
UK – bear a heightened responsibility for the climate disasters affecting
people who can least afford it.

 Guardian 7th May 2025, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/may/07/two-thirds-of-global-heating-caused-by-richest-study-suggests

May 10, 2025 Posted by | climate change | Leave a comment

Atomic lobby seizes on Spanish blackout

Spain has rejected claims that
more nuclear power would have helped as recriminations erupt over last
week’s outage. Europe’s nuclear advocates are pushing their favorite
energy source as a deterrent against the type of blackout that seized Spain
and Portugal last week — even if the facts paint a muddied picture. The
EU’s atomic allies are claiming that having more nuclear energy coursing
through the grid can help ensure a stable power supply to back up renewable
sources like wind and solar. “If you want a lot of power and you want it
to be fossil-free, then nuclear is your pick,” 

Swedish Industry and
Energy Minister Ebba Busch said in an interview. Specialists and other
officials, including those in Spain, aren’t convinced. While they concede
that having more overall power can aid in certain circumstances, they
aren’t convinced nuclear energy would have prevented Monday’s outage,
which was caused by a sudden loss of power in the Iberian grid. Europe’s
grids, like those in Spain, need upgrades, better linkages and more storage
tech like batteries to keep power stable, they stress.

 Politico 8th May 2025 https://www.politico.eu/article/nuclear-power-push-europe-spain-portugal-outage-energy-security/

May 10, 2025 Posted by | Spain, spinbuster | Leave a comment

The Stakes of Donald Trump’s Negotiations with the Islamic Republic of Iran.

First, the United States, faithful to Trump’s Art of the Deal technique, threatened Iran while trying to placate it. International relations are not governed by the same rules as business. Giving in to threats is a sign of weakness that the Iranians could not accept in these negotiations.

by Thierry Meyssan, Voltaire Network | Paris (France) | 29 April 2025

The general public is completely unaware of the real stakes in the negotiations between Washington and Tehran. This article presents a situation in which lies have been piling up over three decades, making any progress particularly difficult. Contrary to popular belief, the nuclear issue in Iran is not whether Tehran will acquire an atomic bomb, but whether it will be able to help Palestine without resorting to weapons.

month and a half ago, I announced that even before concluding peace in Ukraine, President Donald Trump would open negotiations with Iran [1]. As usual, commentators steeped in Joe Biden’s ideology showered me with sarcasm, while my colleagues, specialists in international affairs, noted my observations [2].

The difference between the two lay in their understanding of the negotiations in Ukraine. For the former, it was Donald Trump’s revenge against Volodymyr Zelensky, or a genuflection before Vladimir Putin. For the latter, it was, on the contrary, a desire for peace with Russia in order to devote US resources to its economic recovery.

It follows that the two sides approach the Iranian issue differently. For the former, it is a matter of continuing the chaos that began during the first term with the withdrawal from the nuclear agreement (JCPOA). Conversely, for the latter, it is a desire for peace with Iran, given that it is the only regional power that supports the resistance to Israel.

In early March 2024, President Donald Trump sent a letter to the leader of the Revolution, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The existence of this document was mentioned by the author himself during his speech to Congress on March 4, and then debated in the press. According to Sky News Arabia, which read this document, Donald Trump called for negotiations, while specifying: “If you reject the outstretched hand and choose the path of escalation and support for terrorist organizations, I warn you of a swift and determined response […] I am writing this letter with the aim of opening new horizons for our relations, away from the years of conflict, misunderstandings and unnecessary confrontations that we have witnessed in recent decades […] The time has come to leave hostility behind and open a new page of cooperation and mutual respect.” A historic opportunity presents itself to us today […] We will not stand idly by in the face of your regime’s threats against our people or our allies […] If you are willing to negotiate, so are we. But if you continue to ignore the world’s demands, history will testify that you missed a great opportunity.”

Simultaneously, the United States and the United Kingdom launched several attacks against Ansar Allah in Yemen. Unlike previous attacks, these did not target hidden military targets, but rather political targets scattered among the civilian population. They therefore killed leaders of the movement and many other collateral victims, which constitutes war crimes.

It should be recalled that Ansar Allah, pejoratively referred to by Westerners as the “Houthi family gang” or “the Houthis,” attacks Israeli ships in the Red Sea in order to force Tel Aviv to agree to allow humanitarian aid to pass through to Gaza.

Washington and London, believing that this was hampering international trade, and having failed to obtain approval from the Security Council, resumed the war. They initially targeted military objectives and quickly realized that these, buried deep within the country, could not be significantly affected.

Donald Trump’s letter only arrived in Tehran on March 12, and the Iranian response was slow in coming. It is important to understand that while Tehran was flattered by Washington’s secret handwritten approach, it could not accept several aspects of its behavior.

• First, the United States, faithful to Trump’s Art of the Deal technique, threatened Iran while trying to placate it. International relations are not governed by the same rules as business. Giving in to threats is a sign of weakness that the Iranians could not accept in these negotiations. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei commented on March 28: “The enmity of the United States and Israel has always existed. They threaten to attack us, which we believe is not very likely, but if they commit a misdeed, they will certainly receive a strong blow in return.” If the enemies think they can instigate sedition in the country, the Iranian nation itself will respond to them.” President Donald Trump further emphasized this on March 30, telling NBC News: “If they don’t reach an agreement, there will be bombing. It will be bombing like they’ve never seen before.”

According to the United Nations Charter (Article 2, paragraph 4), “members of the Organization shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.”
The negotiations were therefore compromised before they even began.

• Moreover, massacring the leaders of Ansar Allah was a gratuitous war crime: General Qassem Soleimani, by reorganizing the “Axis of Resistance,” had given Iran’s former proxies their complete freedom. Tehran currently has no influence, other than ideological, over Ansar Allah. Ambassador Amir Saeid Iravani therefore raised these points at the United Nations [3].


• Finally, and most importantly, Donald Trump, by accumulating contradictory signals, did not allow the Iranians to assess his relations with Israel. Does he support the project of a binational state in Palestine (the one promoted by the United Nations)? Or of a Jewish state in Palestine (“Zionism”)? Or that of a “Greater Israel” (“Revisionist Zionism”)? No one knows for sure.

Ultimately, Iran sent a secret response to the secret letter from the United States, and negotiations were able to begin, but only indirectly. That is, the two delegations did not speak directly to each other, but only through a mediator. In this way, Tehran responded to the invitation, but expressed its disapproval of the manner in which it was convened.

ntervening directly, France and the United Kingdom convened a closed-door meeting of the Security Council. Paris and London wished to address several outstanding issues. As nothing has been leaked, it is unclear whether President Emmanuel Macron and Prime Minister Keir Starmer wanted to clarify what had caused all other attempts at negotiations to fail or, on the contrary, to obscure what could have been further obscured…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. https://www.voltairenet.org/article222165.html

May 10, 2025 Posted by | Iran, politics international, USA | Leave a comment