Confronting The Media’s Gaza Group-Think
None of this would be so significant, of course, if our celebrated “free press” was, in fact, as free it claims. If it really served as a watchdog on power. If it really held the feet of the political class to the fire. If it really served as a Fourth Estate. Then the politicians would have no place to hide.
But that is not what the corporate media do. Instead, they echo and amplify the political establishment’s priorities. They are, in fact, the media wing of the establishment.
The western media’s failure to report the reality of Gaza didn’t start on 7 October 2023. It’s always been like this. Here’s why journalists won’t tell you the truth about Palestine/
Breaking free of media group-think is a scary, lonely journey. I know. I was forced to do it
16 November 2025
An audio reading of this article can be found here.]
The past two years have seen a catastrophic failure by western journalists to report properly what amounts to an undoubted genocide in Gaza. This has been a low point even by the dismal standards set by our profession, and further reason why audiences continue to distrust us in ever greater numbers.
There is a comforting argument – comforting especially for those journalists who have failed so scandalously during this period – that seeks to explain, and excuse, this failure. Israel’s exclusion of western reporters, so the claim goes, has made it impossible to determine exactly what is occurring on the ground in Gaza.
There are several obvious rejoinders to this.
First, why would any journalist give Israel the benefit of the doubt in Gaza – as we have been doing – when it is the party keeping out reporters? The media’s working assumption must be that Israel has excluded us because it has plenty to hide. The obligation must be on Israel to demonstrate that it is acting out of military necessity and proportionately. That cannot be the starting point, as it has been, of western media coverage.
When one party, Israel, denies journalists the chance to report, our default responsibility is to adopt a posture of extreme scepticism towards its claims. It is to subject those claims to intense scrutiny – all the more so when the world’s highest court has ruled that that Israel’s very presence in Gaza is as an illegal occupier, one that should have left the Palestinian territories long ago.
Second, and just as self-evidently, this explanation arrogantly discounts the work of hundreds of Palestinian journalists who have risked their lives to show us precisely what is happening in Gaza. It is to view their contribution, even as they are being slaughtered by Israel in unprecedented numbers, as, at best, worthless and as, at worst, Hamas propaganda. It is to breathe life into Israel’s self-serving rationalisations for murdering our colleagues – and thereby sets a precedent that normalises the targeting of journalists in the future.
It is also to treat these Palestinian journalists with the same colonial contempt demonstrated by British aristocrats a century ago, when they promised away the Palestinians’ homeland to European Jews, as if Palestine was a possession Britain was entitled to dispose of as it saw fit.
And third – and this is the issue I want to grapple with tonight – the presence of western journalists in Gaza would not have made any dramatic difference to the way the slaughter of Palestinians was presented. Audiences would still have received a sanitised version of the genocide. Failure is baked into western media coverage of Israel and Palestine. I know this firsthand from 20 years of reporting from the region.
Career suicide
When it comes to the festering wound in what was once historic Palestine, the job of western journalists is to obfuscate, equivocate, distort and excuse. It always has been. I will get to the reasons why a little later. [If you prefer, you can skip direct to that section under the subhead “Why so craven?”]
Israel has been able to get away with genocide in Gaza precisely because, for the preceding decades, the western media refused to report on – or hold Israel accountable for – its well-documented ethnic cleansing operations against Palestinians, and its brutal apartheid rule over them.
A few of our most principled journalists tried to report these things in real time. But they publicly paid a high price for doing so. Any colleagues who might have thought of following in their footsteps learnt the necessary lesson: that emulating these journalists would be career suicide.
Let me briefly document a couple of distinguished foreign correspondents in Jerusalem who were made examples of, and then provide more recent illustrations of my own run-ins with western editors………………………………………………………………………………………………….
Becoming an outcast
I only learnt of these distinguished reporters’ troubles some time after I had similar experiences covering the region as a freelance – something I did for 20 years. In my early years, I repeatedly came up against the same editorial pressures and resistance faced by Adams and Neff more than quarter of a century earlier. I felt similarly isolated, besieged, outcast – and eventually abandoned any hope of continuing to report for major western media outlets.
I submitted stories to both the Guardian – where I had previously been a staff journalist for many years – and the International Herald Tribune, now refashioned as the International New York Times.
Let me quickly illustrate an example I had with each…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
Why so craven?
The big question is why. Here is an outline of the various pressures, some practical and others structural, that keep the western media so craven towards Israel.
Partisan reporters: Historically, most publications – especially US outlets – have put Jewish reporters in charge of their Jerusalem bureaux, based on the probably correct assumption that, given Israel’s tribal political ideology of Zionism, Jewish reporters will have better access to Israeli officials. Which, in turn, tells us that these papers are chiefly interested in what Israeli sources have to say, not what Palestinians say. In truth, western media aren’t watchdogs. They don’t challenge the existing power imbalance, they reproduce it.
Many of these Jewish reporters have not hidden their deep attachment and partisanship towards Israel.
Many years ago, a Jewish journalist friend based in Jerusalem wrote to me after I first made this point public, stating: “I can think of a dozen foreign bureau chiefs, responsible for covering both Israel and the Palestinians, who have served in the Israeli army, and another dozen who like [the New York Times’ then bureau chief Ethan] Bronner have kids in the Israeli army.”
Imagine if you can, the New York Times employing a Palestinian as their Jerusalem correspondent – I know, it’s inconceivable. But not just that: employing them while the correspondent had a child working for the Palestinian Authority, or, even more fittingly, one fighting in a Fatah military brigade.
Meanwhile, the BBC openly backs its Middle East online editor, Raffi Berg, even though its own whistleblowing staff have accused him of skewing the corporation’s coverage of Israel and Palestine. Berg has not been shy in admitting his own tribal affiliation to Israel. In an interview about his “insider” book on Israel’s spy agency Mossad, Berg states that “as a Jewish person and admirer of the state of Israel” he gets “goosebumps” of pride hearing about Mossad operations.
Berg has a framed letter from Benjamin Netanyahu and a photo of himself with the former Israeli ambassador to the UK hanging on his wall at home. He counts a former senior Mossad official as a close friend. And when the journalist Owen Jones wrote a piece revealing the near-revolt of BBC staff at Berg’s role, Berg’s first thought was to seek legal help from Mark Lewis, the former head of UK Lawyers for Israel, well-known for using lawfare as a way to bully and silence critics of Israel.
Can we imagine the BBC appointing a Palestinian or Arab to that same hyper-sensitive post and then supporting them when it emerged that they had a framed letter from the assassinated Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh and a photo with Yasser Arafat hanging on their wall at home?
Partisan bureau staff: It is considered entirely normal for western media to employ partisan Israeli Jews as support staff. As Neff noted, they exert subtle and sometimes not so subtle pressures on correspondents to be more sympathetic towards Israeli narratives.
An investigation by Alison Weir of If Americans Knew found, for example, that in 2004 Israeli staff at the AP news agency’s bureau in Jerusalem had refused either to use or return video footage sent in by a Palestinian cameraman that showed Israeli soldiers shooting an unarmed youth in the abdomen. Instead, they destroyed the tape.
Media lobby groups: Camera and Honest Reporting operate as a pair of media sheepdogs, aggressively herding journalists into line. As I found, they can make your life very hard indeed: they can mobilise large numbers of fanatical Israel supporters to bombard publications with complaints, they can damage your credibility with your own editors, and they can alert Israeli officials to put you on a media blacklist. Most reporters see them as very dangerous organisations to cross.
Access: A general flaw in journalism’s claim to be a watchdog on power – remember, we call ourselves the Fourth Estate – is that reporters invariably need access to high-level officials, whether for stories, steers or comments. A journalist with such a source is seen by editors as far more useful, and reliable, than one without. This is true whether one’s beat is crime, politics, sport or entertainment.
However, access inevitably comes at a price – of independence. ………………………………….
Pressures from head office: Notice too that media head offices in the US and Europe are subject to another layer of lobby pressure – this time through the lobby’s association of criticism of Israel with antisemitism. Groups like the Anti-Defamation League or the Board of British Deputies are there claiming to represent local Jewish communities, who they report to be “upset”, “frightened”, “bullied” or “anxious” every time Israel is criticised.
……………………………………..The result is that the bar set for publication, if a story is critical of Israel, is far higher than it is for other regions. Just think of how readily journalists attribute atrocities in Ukraine to Russia, compared to how reticent journalists – sometime the same ones – are to identify worse crimes in Gaza as atrocities and name Israel as the responsible party.
Israeli government censorship: It is often not understood that Israel operates a military censorship system that limits what journalists can say. This is especially important given that much of what is written by Jerusalem correspondents relates to Israel’s illegal military occupation.
In its severest form, that means Israel simply refuses journalists access to certain areas, as it has done for two years in Gaza. Or it can require them to embed with the Israeli military, as the BBC has done on several occasions during the Gaza genocide. Or it can demand that journalists don’t tell important facts about what is going on.
……………………………………….Israeli government control: Israel licenses foreign correspondents by issuing them a Government Press Office card. For the past 20 years, Israel has issued the cards only to journalists formally working for a news organisation it regards as “accredited”. ………
……………………………………..Rebuilding our worldview
These practical pressures gain much of their force because journalists and editors have historically been afraid of being accused of antisemitism by Israel. It is tempting to overestimate this pressure. I suspect it is better viewed as a cover story, rationalising the failure of journalists to do their job properly – as illustrated by their reluctance to identify the Gaza genocide as a genocide.
But beyond these practical pressures, there is a deeper reason for why the western media avoid serious criticism of Israel.
Israel is integral to a continuing western colonial system of power projection into the oil-rich Middle East. Israel is the West’s ultimate client state. Western establishments need Israel protected.
None of this would be so significant, of course, if our celebrated “free press” was, in fact, as free it claims. If it really served as a watchdog on power. If it really held the feet of the political class to the fire. If it really served as a Fourth Estate. Then the politicians would have no place to hide.
But that is not what the corporate media do. Instead, they echo and amplify the political establishment’s priorities. They are, in fact, the media wing of the establishment………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. https://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2025-11-16/media-group-scary-journey/
Sir Keir Starmer to create commission with power to overrule environmental regulators through environmental red tape.
Matt Oliver, Industry Editor, 24 November 2025
Environmental quangos that object to nuclear power stations could have
their concerns overruled under Sir Keir Starmer’s plans to unleash a golden
age of nuclear. Under new proposals submitted to the Prime Minister, a new
commission would be created with the power to reconsider “novel or
contentious decisions” – overruling individual regulators if necessary.
In the report, the nuclear regulatory taskforce accused Natural England and
the Environment Agency of adding “disproportionate” costs to projects
by demanding design changes aimed at protecting nature.
Instead of addressing individual environmental concerns, developers could also be allowed to pay a large sum of money into a nature restoration fund. It comes after Sir Keir pledged to usher in a “golden age” of nuclear power following a major agreement between Britain and the US during Donald Trump’s state visit in September.
Telegraph 24th Nov 2025, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/11/24/nuclear-power-boom-forced-through-environmental-red-tape/
Minnesota’s aging nukes pose national threat
In a review of published studies of 136 nuclear reactor sites in the European Journal of Cancer Care in 2007, elevated leukemia disease rates in children were documented in the US, UK, France, Germany, Spain, Japan, and Canada. This is not a new story.
by beyondnuclearinternational, https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2025/11/23/minnesotas-aging-nukes-pose-national-threat/
More than electricity, the reactors supply a steady dose of radioactive tritium in drinking water, writes Susu Jeffrey
“Sometimes before I give a speech, I ask the audience to stand up if they or someone in their family has had cancer,” says John LaForge of Nukewatch. “Eighty percent of the audience gets up.”
The Monticello nuclear power reactor is on the Mississippi River about 35-miles northwest of Minneapolis. Xcel’s twin Prairie Island reactors, plus about 50 giant dry casks storing waste reactor fuel, are all in the floodplain of the Mississippi. This waste is sited 44 to 51 miles southeast of Minneapolis and St. Paul.
There are no plans to move the waste off-island because there is no alternative destination. In fact, 34 more concrete encased steel casks are planned. There is no national hot radioactive waste repository. Think of these waste container sites as permanent radioactive waste dumps.
The greater Twin Cities’ 3.7 million people are in the nuclear “shadow” (within 50 miles) of all three nukes. The Mississippi River serves 20 million people with drinking water, way beyond the Minnesota state population of 5.7 million. Minnesota’s aging nukes are a national threat. For approximately the next six generations, radioactive tritium will be a part of the drinking water wherever those molecules wander.
The Monticello nuke was licensed in 1970 for 40 years, and went online in 1971, a year it had two radioactive cesium spills. In 2010, the license was renewed for another 20 years until 2030. Xcel Energy has even been granted an extension for another 20 years until 2050. It is a corporate financial security move not yet approved by the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission which holds the final consent. Paperwork is one thing, pipes are another.
In November 2022, a 50-year-old underground pipe leaked 829,000 gallons of tritium-contaminated wastewater that reached the Mississippi River, according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Xcel failed to make public the radioactive spill for four months. After a May 15, 2024 public hearing in Monticello where citizens testified “We don’t trust you. You lie,” an NRC executive “clarified” Xcel’s “miscommunication.”
Senior Environmental Project Manager, Stephen J. Koenick admitted some tritium had been measured in the Mississippi. Tritium bonds with water and cannot be separated out. Water obeys gravity running downhill, in the case of Monticello, from the reactor to the Mississippi. The runaway tritium will persist in the environment for ten half-lives or about 123 years.
No telling where Xcel’s radioactive molecules will land. Men have a one in two chance of being diagnosed with cancer during their lifetimes; for women the chance is one in three (National Cancer Institute, 2/9/2022). There is tremendous popular, fear-driven support for the oncology industry.
The good news is that while cancer numbers are up so is the cancer survival rate. However, at nuke weapons, nuke reactors, and the virtually forever waste sites, “accidents” happen along with on-going radioactive decay. Radioactivity cannot be contained. When I was a newspaper reporter in Brevard County, Florida, where Cape Canaveral is located, I learned that nuclear waste cannot be rocketed off into space because it’s too hot, too heavy, and the rockets too faulty.
Nuclear Safety Regulations Changing
Among President Trump’s cost-cutting moves is a weakening of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s exposure standards. Staff would be cut and regulations “revised” virtually cutting off the commission’s independent status. The Monticello nuke was licensed for 40 years and was rubber stamped to work for 80. Octogenarian nukes are considered “safe enough” now by the nuclear/government consortium.
Piecemeal fix-it parts for geriatric machinery or people are a lucrative business. Locating a leaking tritium pipe underground, between buildings, removing and replacing it is a non-negotiable emergency at nuclear reactors with miles and miles of piping. Upkeep expenses figure in utility rate hikes.
Joseph Mangano and Ernest Sternglass did a study of eight downwind US communities in the two years after a nuclear reactor closure. A remarkable 17.4 percent drop in infant mortality was found. “We finally have peer-reviewed accurate data attaching nuclear power reactors to death and injury in the host communities,” New York State Assemblyman Richard Brodsky said of the 2002 report in the Archives of Environmental Health.
Monopoly capitalism or public service?
Clearly the Monticello reactor was designed to make money. In November 2024, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison wrote that Xcel has “aggressively” pursued multi-year rate hikes while earning large profits. In 2024 Xcel reported $1.94-billion net earnings, a profit margin up 14% from 2023.
According to Xcel propaganda, the nuke is “the biggest employer and largest local taxpayer” in Monticello, MN, and generates an estimated $550 million in economic activity each year in the region. And like profits, cancer rates are up notably among people under 50 and rising faster among women than men the American Cancer Society reports.
Repeatedly, the Xcel corporation wins its rate hike and re-licensing “asks.” These asks get rewritten and resubmitted until a “compromise” is reached. In 2025, residential customers will pay $5.39 more per month, down from the original ask of $9.89, according to Minnesota Public Radio, which also noted that greater increases are on the horizon for EVs and data center capital improvements.
Cancer
St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital advertises heavily with videos of big-eyed, bald children cancer patients. In a review of published studies of 136 nuclear reactor sites in the European Journal of Cancer Care in 2007, elevated leukemia disease rates in children were documented in the US, UK, France, Germany, Spain, Japan, and Canada. This is not a new story.
The danger of mental retardation of fetuses exposed in the womb was reported in The New York Times (page A1 on 12/20/1989). Tritium crosses the placenta. In addition to the health costs of breathing and ingesting exhausts from nuclear power reactors, there is the problem of what to do with and how to contain its long-lived waste. The nuclear profit god is a once and future terrorist.
The Coalition for a Nuclear-Free Mississippi River is working for the immediate decommissioning of the Monticello nuclear reactor by educating the public on dangers of the nuclear power reactors and safe alternatives. To learn more, visit our website. See our Monticello report “Serial Killers on the Loose: Cancer Death Rates Rising in Reactor Host Communities”.
Does ‘fish disco’ show we’re dancing to the wrong tune on regulations?
“confected outrage about a fish disco”.
Hinkley Point C’s fish protections have been criticised as a
waste of money but environmental charities said the outrage was
manufactured.
For the twaite shad of the Bristol Channel, it has been a
strange few months. Ordinarily, few people bother with shad. Smallish,
silverish, a little like a less charismatic herring, generally they are
left alone. Not this year. Starting in May they have been tracked. They
have been chipped. They have been played some really odd sounds. And now, as they somewhat bemusedly navigate what has become known as the Hinkley Point C fish disco, they have been presented to the prime minister as an exemplar of all that is wrong with our nuclear regulations.
The Fingleton report on nuclear regulation is long and considered. Its 162 pages take in capital financing, nuclear risks and decommissioning obligations. But it was just a few paragraphs about fish that ended up catching the headlines.
“Hinkley Point C will have more fish protection measures than any other
power station in the world,” wrote John Fingleton, commissioned by the
government to find ways to make nuclear cheaper. “It has spent £700
million on their design and implementation,” he said. The outcome on
protected fish? “These measures would save 0.083 salmon per year, along
with 0.028 sea trout, 6 river lamprey, 18 allis shad, and 528 twaite
shad.”
“The government’s propaganda machine is working overtime to
perpetuate the false narrative that nature blocks development,” Joan
Edwards, from the Wildlife Trusts, said. It is, she said, “confected
outrage about a fish disco”. Every second it is running, Hinkley Point C,
which is still under construction, will suck in 134 cubic metres of
seawater. From three kilometres out, in the murky estuary, the water will
rush along pipes towards the reactor. There, the cold waters of the Bristol
Channel will meet the superheated waters of a steam turbine………………………………………………………………………………………….
Times 25th Nov 2025, https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/does-fish-disco-show-were-dancing-to-the-wrong-tune-on-regulations-99v2tsnvs
Millions of fish killed this winter at Bruce Power nuclear plant
By Scott Miller, March 21, 2025,
https://www.ctvnews.ca/london/article/millions-of-fish-killed-this-winter-at-bruce-power-nuclear-plant/
Millions of fish have been killed after getting trapped in Bruce Power’s water intake system.
The Saugeen Ojibway Nation (SON) estimates between 3.5 and 4.5 million ‘gizzard shad’ were trapped and died after being attracted to the warm water from the nuclear plant’s discharge channels.
In a statement, the Saugeen Ojibway Nation’s Environment Office said, “this event raises concerns about the artificial environment for aquatic life at the Bruce site.”
Bruce Power acknowledges that a ‘large number’ of fish have died after getting trapped in their intake system since mid-January. It was so concerning the company shut down one of their nuclear reactors for a week and half last month. Bruce Power said the fish have been removed and Unit 2 is back in service.
The company said they’re still trying to determine exactly what led to the fish die-off but say they’re not alone.
“Gizzard Shad have been reported along the shoreline as far north as the Sauble River and as far south as Goderich indicating this could be a population level event. Large numbers of Gizzard Shad have been observed in Lake Huron including around Bruce Power; this is likely due to their high rate of reproduction and warmer lake water temperatures in the last couple of years,” said a Bruce Power news release.
Gizzard Shad are naturally sensitive to cold water temperatures and can experience mass die-off in the wild.
Both Bruce Power and the Saugeen Ojibway Nation say they are working with federal authorities to try and get to the root of the fishkill – and prevent it from happening again.
Both Bruce Power and SON also report a number of dead birds just north of the nuclear plant in Baie-du-Dor. The company said the birds have been sent away for testing, “to check for conditions including botulism or avian flu.”
Bruce Power said the Ministry of Environment Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission and Ministry of Natural Resources are aware and are part of the investigation into what led to the dead fish and waterfowl.
New Mexico Environment Department Requires Los Alamos National Laboratory to Stop All Injection Operations into Regional Drinking Water Aquifer.
Concerned Citizens for Nuclear Safety, 26 Nov 25
In a protective move, on Friday, November 18th, the New Mexico Environment Department required the Department of Energy (DOE) to cease all injection operations of treated waters back into the sole source regional drinking water aquifer shared by Pueblo de San Ildefonso, Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) and others. 2025-11-18-WPD-GWQB-NMED-Withdrawal-of-Temporary-Authorization-for-DP-1835-Final and EMID-704003_EMLA-26-BF028-2-1_Resp_DP-1835_Temp_Auth_WD_112125
In October, hexavalent chromium contamination was found beneath Pueblo de San Ildefonso while LANL was drilling a new well on the Pueblo, called San Ildefonso Regional Monitoring Well 3, or SIMR-3, in Mortandad Canyon. The Pueblo and LANL share borders in the area of Mortandad Canyon.
In Friday’s letter, the Environment Department wrote to LANL that “[S]ince 2021, DOE has neither complied with [the Environment Department’s] regulatory directives nor made substantial progress towards ensuring the protection of the regional aquifer. The latest sampling results from SIMR-3 prove that DOE’s refusal to take appropriate steps to ensure that contamiantion does not migrate further in the regional aquifer or offsite has created the harm to the environment that [the Environment Department] sought to prevent.”
“Ukraine Agrees on ‘Essence’ of Peace Deal; Trump Meeting Expected Soon”
By: Joshua S, November 25, 2025, https://scheerpost.com/2025/11/25/ukraine-agrees-on-essence-of-peace-deal-trump-meeting-expected-soon/
More updates will obviously follow, as context is everything. Ukraine has reportedly agreed to the “essence” of a peace deal with Russia, though President Zelensky has said more work remains to be done.
According to reporting from the UK Independent, Ukraine’s national security adviser Rustem Umerov said the country had reached a “common understanding” with the White House over a deal to end the war.
“Umerov also noted that Zelensky is likely to visit the U.S. in the coming days to finalize a deal with President Donald Trump aimed at ending Ukraine’s war with Russia.”
Needless to say more to come.
I found this to be an excellent summary of the current situation, highlighting that the United States cannot be considered blameless after a lifetime of empire-building. This analysis comes from Thomas I. Palley in Janata Weekly, India’s oldest socialist weekly, published on June 15, 2025.
“The external and internal factors come into play at different moments and take time to work their full effect, which is why history is so important to understanding the conflict. The two sets of factors play out over a timeline involving three key events. The first is Ukraine’s declaration of independence from the Soviet Union in August 1991. The second is the Maidan coup in February 2014 that overthrew democratically elected Ukrainian President Victor Yanukovych, who advocated Ukrainian autonomy and a nonaligned defense policy. The third is Russia’s military intervention in Ukraine, launched on February 24, 2022.”
For that article by Thomas Palley get it here
Britain will have to obey US orders on nuclear jets, CND conference hears.
23 November 2025, https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/britain-will-have-obey-us-orders-nuclear-jets-cnd-conference-hears
BRITAIN would need permission from the United States in order to use its nuclear deterrent, experts say, as the government goes forward with a £71 billion purchase of nuke-carrying US jets.
And increasing Britain’s nuclear arms stock will tie the country to President Donald Trump’s foreign policy goals, which disarmament campaigners say could bring us closer to the brink of disaster.
Speaking at an event organised by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in London on Saturday, experts, campaigners, and politicians condemned Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer’s pledge to buy at least 12 F15-A jets.
The planes, capable of carrying so-called tactical nuclear bombs, were not “properly costed” when the government first laid out the deal, only later revealing that their price was some £71 billion, CND general secretary Sophie Bolt said.
Describing Sir Keir’s “mad scramble” to increase spending after Mr Trump requested Nato members increase arms expenditure to 5 per cent of their GDP, Ms Bolt said: “There is a blank-cheque approach to nuclear weapons.
“There was no real proper costing for how much this would be. The health sector is constantly having to save here, save there. Whereas the [Ministry of Defence] will later just say: ‘Oh sorry, we’ve overspent.’
“This will not make us safer. They are US fighter jets. All the money is going to the US. And the planes launch US nuclear bombs, so that means they are basically under Nato command, meaning they are under the US nuclear umbrella of Nato.
“It’s the US that decides when and where these bombs will be dropped. And we are concerned that Trump is going to be gung-ho for these bombs.”
Discussing the planes’ so-called tactical nuclear bombs, she said: “They make the threat of nuclear war being made much more likely and the British government is totally at the heart of this.”
Okopi Ajonye, a researcher at Nuclear Information Service (NIS), agreed that there were many issues with the F35-A deal, saying the government “rushed into the decision” to buy the jets.
He said: “Acquiring these aircrafts was to show that the UK is contributing to NATO. That’s actually what drove this decision.”
Outlining the link between the genocide in Gaza and the campaign against nukes, Palestine Solidarity Campaign director Ben Jamal said the British public should “resist the process to renormalise Israel” after the October ceasefire.
And Your Party co-leader Jeremy Corbyn said: “The new nuclear weapons being promoted and proposed by the UK are intrinsically dangerous: the more weapons there are, the more danger there is that they will be used.
“Instead we should invest the funds into housing, health and education — and increasing, not cutting overseas spending.”
Navy’s legal threats in bid to keep nuclear pollution secret.
THE Royal Navy threatened legal action as part of a fierce, high-level,
behind-the-scenes battle to block publication of information about
radioactive pollution at the Coulport nuclear bomb base on the Clyde.
Files released to The Ferret reveal that over nine days in July and August, the navy sent 130 emails, held five meetings and made numerous phone calls urging the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Sepa) to keep details of the pollution secret. Naval officials repeatedly warned of legal action, spoke of the need to “calm some nerves” and said they were “deeply uncomfortable” with information proposed for release.
The National 23rd Nov 2025, https://www.thenational.scot/news/25642969.navys-legal-threats-bid-keep-nuclear-pollution-secret/
The EU counter-proposal to Trump’s peace plan keeps the door ajar for Ukraine to join NATO.
One of several reasons why Russia will likely refuse to commit to peace
Ian Proud, Nov 25, 2025, https://thepeacemonger.substack.com/p/the-eu-counter-proposal-to-trumps?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=3221990&post_id=179824409&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
After my last video, I decided to do a clause by clause review of the so-called US peace plan for Ukraine with the European counter-proposal that has appeared in western newspapers. This was apparently drafted by the German, French and British National Security Advisers who joined the talks in Geneva.
If you look at both documents side by side, they appear remarkably similar. However, some big gaps exist, the largest being NATO membership for Ukraine. The European wording will be seen in Moscow as keeping the door open to future NATO membership for Ukraine while also allowing for the deployment of NATO troops to Ukraine. This, I’m afraid, will be a massive red line for the Kremlin, and I can’t see that they will agree.
Other controversial pieces of text from the Europeans:
- water down the commitment to Ukrine joinoing the EU;
- hold the line of keeping Russia’s sovereign assets immobilised after the war has ended;
- increases the cap on Ukraine’s military to 800,000 personnel, from 600,000 (althogh I frankly don’t thnk Ukraine can afford either number without massive inflows of financial aid from European States, which they can ill afford);
- removes the specific commitment by Ukraine to elections after 100 days;
- defers the issue of territory – which Zelensky has described as the most difficult issue – until after a peace deal is agreed;
removes the clause on amnesties. The amnesty issue appears as important to Russia and Ukraine for different reasons For Russia to avoid the much-called-for international war crimes tribunal, and for Ukraine, to enable corrupt figures around Zelensky to avoid imprisonment for massive embezzlement. However, I wasn’t sure reading the online version that I saw, whether the amnesty clause had been removed by accident.
While looking at the amnesty clause, I seem to have terminated my video recording early!
But to conclude, the European counter-proposal is helpful in that it engages with the US text as a starting point. Any final peace deal will look different to the versions we see today.
Yet, the European counter-proposal makes it almost impossible to Russia to get on board with peace, with NATO still very much on the table, and with the Europeans wanting to hold on to Russian afters after the fighting stops.
All that being said, US talks with Ukraine appear to have been positive so far. Right now, the emphasis is on Trump maintaining the focus and pressure on European leaders to get on board with compromises that will enable Putin to sue for peace, so that the fighting can end.
As of today, we still seem some way from that point.
I hope you find the video [on original] interesting.
Rise in nuclear incidents that could leak radioactivity
Rob Edwards, May 25 2025, https://www.theferret.scot/nuclear-incidents-radioactivity-faslane/#:~:text=The%20last%20category%20A%20incident,dropped%20from%20101%20to%2039
There have been 12 nuclear incidents that could have leaked radioactivity at the Faslane naval base since 2023, The Ferret can reveal.
According to the Ministry of Defence (MoD), the incidents at the Clyde nuclear submarine base had “actual or high potential for radioactive release to the environment”.
But the MoD has refused to say what actually happened in any of the incidents, or exactly when they occurred. There were five in 2023, four in 2024 and three in the first four months of 2025 – the highest for 17 years.
Campaigners warned that a “catastrophic” accident at Faslane could put lives at risk. The Trident submarines based there were a “chronic national security threat to Scotland” because they were “decrepit” and over-worked, they claimed.
New figures also revealed that the total number of nuclear incidents categorised by the MoD at Faslane, and the neighbouring nuclear bomb store at Coulport, more than doubled from 57 in 2019 to 136 in 2024. That includes incidents deemed less serious by the MoD.
The Scottish National Party (SNP) described the rising number of incidents as “deeply concerning”. It branded the secrecy surrounding the incidents as “unacceptable”.
The MoD, however, insisted that it took safety incidents “very seriously”. The incidents could include “equipment failures, human error, procedural failings, documentation shortcomings or near-misses”, it said.
The latest figures on “nuclear site event reports” at Faslane and Coulport were disclosed in a parliamentary answer to the SNP’s defence spokesperson, Dave Doogan MP. They show that a rising trend of more serious events – first reported by The Ferret in April 2024 – is continuing.
There was one incident at Faslane between 1 January and 22 April 2025 given the MoD’s worst risk rating of “category A”. There was another category A incident at Faslane in 2023.
The MoD has defined category A incidents as having an “actual or high potential for radioactive release to the environment” in breach of safety limits.
The last category A incident reported by the MoD was in 2008, when radioactive waste leaked from a barge at Faslane into the Clyde. There were spillages from nuclear submarines at the base in 2007 and 2006.
There were also four “category B” incidents at Faslane in 2023, another four in 2024 and two in the first four months of 2025. The last time that many category B incidents were reported in a year was 2006, when there were five.
According to the MoD, category B meant “actual or high potential for a contained release within building or submarine”, or “actual or high potential for radioactive release to the environment” below safety limits.
The MoD also categorised nuclear site events as “C” and “D”. C meant there was “moderate potential for future release to the environment”, or an “actual radioactive release to the environment” too low to detect. D meant there was “low potential for release but may contribute towards an adverse trend”.
The number of reported C incidents at Faslane and Coulport increased from six in 2019 to 38 in 2024, while the number of D incidents rose from 50 to 94.
At the same time the number of incidents described by the MoD as “below scale” and “of safety interest or concern” dropped from 101 to 39.
The SNP’s Dave Doogan MP, criticised the MoD in the House of Commons for the “veil of secrecy” which covered nuclear incidents. Previous governments had outlined what happened where there were “severe safety breaches”, he told The Ferret.
“The increased number of safety incidents at Coulport and Faslane is deeply concerning, especially so in an era of increased secrecy around nuclear weapons and skyrocketing costs,” Doogan added.
“As a bare minimum the Labour Government should be transparent about the nature of safety incidents at nuclear weapons facilities in Scotland, and the status of their nuclear weapons projects. That the Scottish Government, and the Scottish people, are kept in the dark about these events is unacceptable.”
Doogan highlighted that the government’s Infrastructure and Projects Authority had judged many of the MoD’s nuclear projects to have “significant issues”, as reported in February by The Ferret. The MoD nuclear programmes would cost an “eye-watering” £117.8bn over the next ten years, he claimed.
He said: “If the UK cannot afford to store nuclear weapons safely, then it cannot afford nuclear weapons.”
Anti-nuclear campaigners argued that the four Trident-armed Vanguard submarines based at Faslane were ageing and increasingly unreliable. They required more maintenance and their patrols were getting longer to ensure that there was always one at sea.
“The Vanguard-class submarines are already years past their shelf-life and undergoing record-length assignments in the Atlantic due to increased problems with the maintenance of replacement vessels,” said Samuel Rafanell-Williams, from the Scottish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.
“There is a crisis-level urgency to decommission the nuclear-capable submarines lurking in the Clyde. They constitute a chronic national security threat to Scotland, especially now given their worsening state of disrepair.”
He added: “The UK government is placing the people of Scotland at risk by continuing to operate these decrepit nuclear vessels until their replacements are built, which will likely take a decade or more.
“The Vanguards must be scrapped and the Trident replacement programme abandoned in favour of a proper industrial policy that could genuinely revitalise the Scottish economy and underpin our future security and prosperity.”
Nuclear accident could ‘kill our own’
Dr David Lowry, a veteran nuclear consultant and adviser, said: “Ministers tell us the purpose of Britain’s nuclear weapons is to keep us safe.
“But with this series of accidents involving nuclear weapons-carrying submarines, we are in danger of actually killing our own, if one of these accidents proves to be catastrophic.”
According to Janet Fenton from the campaign group, Secure Scotland, successive governments had hidden information about behaviour that “puts us in harm’s way” while preventing spending on health and welfare.
She said: “Doubling the number of incidents while not telling us the nature of them is making us all hostages to warmongers and the arms trade, while we pay for it.
The secretary of state for defence, John Healey, told the House of Commons that he rejected “any accusation of a veil of secrecy”. He promised the SNP MP, Dave Doogan, that he would look into the allegations and write to him.
When pressed by The Ferret, the MoD declined to outline what had happened in the three category A and B incidents at Faslane in 2025. It has also refused to give details of earlier incidents in response to a freedom of information request.
An MoD spokesperson said: “We have robust safety measures in place at all MoD nuclear sites and we take safety incidents very seriously. Our nuclear programmes are subject to regular independent scrutiny and reviews.
“In line with industry good practice and in common with other defence and civil nuclear sites, His Majesty’s Naval Base Clyde has a well-established system for raising nuclear site event reports.
“They are raised to foster a robust safety culture that learns from experience, whether that is of equipment failures, human error, procedural failings, documentation shortcomings or near-misses.”
In 2024 The Ferret revealed earlier MoD figures showing that the number of safety incidents that could have leaked radiation at Faslane had risen to the highest in 15 years. We have also reported on the risks of Trident-armed submarines being on patrol at sea for increasingly long periods.
Leavitt Says “All” Military Orders by Trump Must Be “Presumed to Be Legal”
the use of military force to detain and deport immigrants could be considered illegal, as well as Trump’s boat strikes.
The dubious claim comes despite officials within the administration saying that the boat strike operation is unlawful.
By Sharon Zhang , Truthout, November 25, 2025, https://truthout.org/articles/leavitt-says-all-military-orders-by-trump-must-be-presumed-to-be-legal/?utm_source=Truthout&utm_campaign=bd2e9875e3-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2025_11_25_09_37&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_bbb541a1db-bd2e9875e3-650192793
hite House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt claimed on Monday that “all orders” by President Donald Trump should be “presumed” legal by the military, as she defended comments he made last week threatening Democratic lawmakers with “DEATH.”
Speaking to reporters outside of the White House on Monday, Leavitt claimed that Democrats were trying to create “chaos” within the military by reminding service members of their right to refuse to carry out illegal orders.
“All orders, lawful orders are presumed to be legal by our service members. You can’t have a functioning military if there is disorder and chaos within the ranks,” Leavitt said.
“And that’s what these Democrat members were encouraging. It’s very clear,” she went on, saying that none of them “can point to a single illegal order that this administration has given down, because it does not exist.”
Leavitt said that the White House backs the Department of Defense’s probe into Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Arizona) over a video he put out with fellow lawmakers reminding military members of their oath to “defend this Constitution.” A former Naval aviator, Sen. Kelly remains subject to military law despite retiring from the Navy in 2011.
“You can refuse illegal orders,” Kelly said in the video, alongside other ex-military and intelligence Democrats. “We need you to stand up for our laws. Our Constitution. And who we are as Americans.”
The lawmakers were referencing rights afforded to service members under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which says that individuals in the military are not obligated to carry out orders that are illegal under U.S. law and known to be so by the service member. This summer, Truthout reported that a GI Rights Hotline saw an uptick in calls from members of the military seeking support for defying potentially illegal orders by Trump, like orders to carry out his immigration raids.
Leavitt’s assertion that all orders must be presumed to be legal is absurd on its face, regardless of who is handing down the orders. However, it echoes the twisted logic of a secretive Justice Department legal memo on the administration’s Latin American boat strike campaign, which reportedly suggests that Trump and his administration’s word alone is enough to establish legality for strikes. It also follows with the Trump administration’s relentless attempts to concentrate power within the executive branch, without oversight from Congress or other bodies.
The press secretary’s claim that there isn’t a “single illegal order” that has been passed down by the Trump administration is also patently false, experts have repeatedly said; as legal scholar Marjorie Cohn has noted for Truthout, the use of military force to detain and deport immigrants could be considered illegal, as well as Trump’s boat strikes.
Meanwhile, even officials within the military reportedly disagree. Last week, NBC reported that a senior judge advocate general, known as a JAG, raised concerns in August that the operations were unlawful. The man, a top military lawyer for the command that oversees the strikes, said that they could expose service members to legal action due to the illegality of the strikes, but his concerns were dismissed by more senior officials, sources said.
Hiroshima Declaration and Declaration on the Rights of Nuclear Victims 2025
October 2025, https://mp-nuclear-free.com/Nuclear/2025_WNVF_01.html
In 2025, Hiroshima and Nagasaki mark the 80th anniversary of the atomic bombings by the United States. The nuclear age began when the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and human beings gained the power to wipe humanity from the earth. The atomic bombings instantly slaughtered countless innocent people, bringing unprecedented inhuman misery to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Those who survived the horrors of this hell are still suffering from the effects of radiation. Reparation for victims of indiscriminate genocide as a result of state-provoked wars is yet to be fulfilled.
For more than 80 years, the nuclear industry and countries that have promoted the use of the nuclear cycle have trivialized or concealed the health effects of radiation and have created nuclear victims all over the world, regardless of whether it is used for military purposes or “peaceful” uses. Much of the nuclear impacts have been inflicted on Indigenous and colonized peoples. Even after the devastating nuclear disasters in Chernobyl and Fukushima, these countries and the nuclear industry are trying to further expand their negative impact by parading nuclear energy as a climate solution.
We would like to create a place of international solidarity in Hiroshima for nuclear victims and their allies, aiming for the elimination of the nuclear cycle and a world in which no more hibakusha (nuclear victims) are created.
Full text of the declaration at https://mp-nuclear-free.com/Nuclear/WNVF2025_image/HiroshimaDeclaration-Declaration-Rights-WNV2025_EN.pdf
The 50-Year Wind Farm That Ended a Nuclear Myth
A Danish offshore project’s lifespan extension to half a century dismantles one of nuclear energy’s last standing arguments.
Michael Barnard, Medium Oct 21, 2025
One of the persistent claims made by nuclear energy advocates is that nuclear power plants hold a critical advantage over wind and solar facilities due to their significantly longer operational lifespans. This argument frequently serves as justification for continued investment in nuclear, often at the expense of renewable options. News of a 25 year extension to a Danish offshore wind farm, bringing its total life to 50 years, defangs yet another nuclear talking point.
It’s not the only example. Renewables, particularly wind energy, now routinely demonstrate operational lifetimes matching those of nuclear plants. The conventional wisdom that nuclear has a built-in longevity advantage is no longer supported by real-world evidence.
The nuclear industry’s standard operating lifespan is widely cited as between 40 and 60 years, with many reactors initially licensed for 40-year terms. These facilities routinely secure extensions from regulatory bodies, typically for an additional 20 years, bringing total projected lifetimes up to 60 years. In some cases, operators are now pursuing even longer extensions……………………………(Subscribers only0 https://medium.com/the-future-is-electric/the-50-year-wind-farm-that-ended-a-nuclear-myth-9da06d3b528c
Over 92 Percent of Homes in Gaza Are Rubble. How Do We Even Start Rebuilding?
To resurrect Gaza, the world must reckon with the genocide. Despite the ceasefire, Israel is blocking access to cement.
By Hend Salama Abo Helow , Truthout, November 22, 2025
n the wake of the United Nations Security Council rubber-stamping Donald Trump’s plans for Gaza — including the creation of a so-called “board of peace” and a militarized “international stabilization force” — the very notion of rebuilding is slipping through the cracks, overshadowed by what is framed as the more urgent need to keep the peace in place. But peace manufactured this way is nothing but an expansion and deepening of the humanitarian crisis already unfolding.
Gaza City was already in a perpetual state of destruction and rebuilding long before the current genocide erupted. It has endured relentless aggression that reduced residential homes to rubble, wiped out entire neighborhoods, and massacred civilians. Five wars — 2008, 2012, 2014, 2021, and May 2023 — brutally dismantled Gaza’s infrastructure, economy, agriculture, education, and culture, leaving behind a consumed cycle of devastation.
Yet each time, once the bombardment stopped, reconstruction began, even if it was in a slow rhythm. Gaza would rise again — recovering, thriving even, in forms more vibrantly echoing and picturesque than before. But this genocide has unleashed an unprecedented scale of destruction, so vast and unrelenting that stumbling upon an intact home today feels like witnessing one of life’s seven miracles………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. https://truthout.org/articles/over-92-percent-of-homes-in-gaza-are-rubble-how-do-we-even-start-rebuilding/
1 This Month.
Let’s keep radioactive waste away from our river!
Nuclear Power? -Never again
(Switzerland –https://www.greenpeace.ch/de/handeln/atomkraft-nie-wieder/+)
PETITION – Close Down the Monticello Nuclear Reactor on the Mississippi River!
Now until to February 10, 2026 Radioactive waste storage in France: the debate is finally open! How to participate?
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