2025 December 02 « nuclear-news

UN Condemns ‘Brazen’ Israeli Killing of Surrendering Palestinians in West Bank

A UN official decried the incident as “yet another apparent summary execution” by Israeli forces.

Brad Reed, Nov 28, 2025, https://www.commondreams.org/news/israel-kills-surrendering-palestinians

The United Nations on Friday accused Israeli security forces of carrying out a “brazen” killing of two Palestinian men who were seen surrendering in video footage.

The footage, which was first aired by the Palestinian Broadcasting Corporation and reposted on X by Drop Site, shows two Palestinian men exiting with their hands raised from a building in the West Bank city of Jenin that had been surrounded by Israeli forces.

The two men then crawled out of the building entrance and knelt down with their hands still raised before apparently being instructed by Israeli forces to go back toward the entrance of the building. The two men did so, and were then shot dead by at least one Israeli officer.

According to France 24, United Nations rights office spokesman Jeremy Laurence told reporters on Friday that the incident was “yet another apparent summary execution” by Israeli forces.

“We are appalled at the brazen killing by Israeli border police yesterday of two Palestinian men in Jenin,” he emphasized.

Laurence added that UN rights chief Volker Turk was demanding “independent, prompt, and effective investigations into the killings of Palestinians,” and for those involved in the killings to “be held fully to account.”

The Palestinian Authority, which identified the two men killed by Israeli officers as 37-year-old Yussef Ali Asa’sa and 26-year-old Al-Muntasir Billah Mahmud Abdullah, accused Israeli forces of carrying out “brutal” executions that amounted to a “war crime.”

In a joint statement, Israeli police and the military said that the “incident is under review by the commanders on the ground, and will be transferred to the relevant professional bodies,” and they claimed that the two men killed were “wanted individuals who had carried out terror activities, including hurling explosives and firing at security forces.”

Despite pledges for a review of the incident, BBC reports that Israeli national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has already given a thumbs-up to officers’ actions and he responded to footage of the incident by saying, “Terrorists must die.”

December 2, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Atrocities, Israel | Leave a comment

How Zionism was sold to the world

Harriet Malinowitz’s new book, “Selling Israel: Zionism, Propaganda, and the Uses of Hasbara,” reveals how Israeli propaganda and public relations promoted Zionism while concealing Palestinian oppression and dispossession.

Mondoweiss, By Eleanor J. Bader November 29, 2025

There are a number of pressing questions at the heart of Harriet Malinowitz’s newly released book, Selling Israel: Zionism, Propaganda, and the Uses of Hasbara. “How could what was initially a small group of Eastern European Jewish thinkers and activists convince the Jews of the world to agree that they were all one ‘people’ undergoing one shared threat with one shared path to salvation – as well as a shared imperative to seek it?” she asks. “How could they convince the rest of the world to include them in the family of nations? And how could they convince all involved – including themselves – that their project of liberation was a benign and noble one to which they were entitled, producing no casualties or collateral damage?”

The answers to these queries are at the crux of Selling Israel, and the book not only systematically examines them, but dives into how hasbara – globally enacted but Israeli government-instigated propaganda and public relations efforts– has been used to boost Zionism, diminish the perception of Palestinian oppression, and promote the fallacy that the 78- year-old country began as a land without people.

The exhaustively researched work was touted by Publisher’s Weekly as “an impressive and meticulous challenge to established narratives.”

Malinowitz spoke to reporter Eleanor J. Bader about herself, her research, and her findings shortly after the book’s publication.

Malinowitz………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… During my own time on a kibbutz, there were Palestinian men working in the fields not far from the kibbutz members and international volunteers, but when we were all called in for a break in the “breakfast hut,” I saw that they simply kept working. I also met and drank tea with Palestinian merchants in the “shuk,” or Arab market, in Old Jerusalem, so I realized that what I’d been told about everyone in Israel being Jewish was untrue. I was told they were “Israeli Arabs” – without any coherent explanation. This left me completely baffled. Still, I was sure that I must be the one who wasn’t getting something…………………………

……………………….. I read Lenni Brenner’s 1983 book, Zionism in the Age of Dictators, which talked about Zionist complicity with Nazis. That provided another jolt.

I knew just enough to be excited by the first Intifada in 1987. But by the time of the second Intifada in 2002, people had cell phones and I could hear gunfire in Jenin via Democracy Now! on the radio. There were now blogs and listservs which carried information in new ways. But I was still naïve enough to be astounded that Israel refused to let a UN fact-finding team into the area.

This was a real turning point for me……………………………….

…………………………………… when I returned to the U.S., I plunged into research on the history of Palestine and of Zionism and eventually merged those interests with my research on propaganda, already well underway. I soon knew that I wanted to write a book on Zionism and propaganda, but it took me twenty years to complete the project!

Bader: The idea that God promised Israel to the Jews is largely unchallenged. Why is this?

Malinowitz: I think people are afraid to mess with other people’s religious beliefs, particularly where God is concerned. Plus, a lot of people believe the claim!

Bader: You write that Israelis rarely invoked the Nazi Holocaust before the 1960s because it was felt that the loss of six million Jews seemed like a sign of weakness, as if they’d gone to their deaths “like sheep to the slaughter.” Yet you also note that the genocide was seen by David Ben-Gurion to be a ‘beneficial disaster.’ Can you elaborate?

Malinowitz: I was shocked by how disparaged survivors of the Holocaust were in the country’s early years, as if they were a stain on Israeli masculinity that had to be expunged. Later, though, there was an ideological shift; the Israeli military reassured the world that they were strong, determined, and capable of fighting back if attacked, but at the same time the Holocaust could be invoked as a reminder of their perpetual victimhood, justifying all their exploits in the name of averting another genocide against the Jewish people. Similarly, the Holocaust has been used strategically when it serves international fundraising or is needed to garner empathy for Israel as an allegedly beleaguered nation.

Bader: Zionism was mostly promoted by Ashkenazi Jews who put forward the idea that there is one unified Jewish people. How did that idea spread?

Malinowitz: Zionism started out as an idea hatched by Eastern and Central European Jews, emerging in response to their own dire situation in the late nineteenth century. ………….For me, the claim that Israel represents all Jewish people is a fallacy. I, for one, was never consulted about this!

………………………………………………………………Malinowitz: Doubt can be a powerful weapon. There is a template that was developed by the tobacco industry that Zionists, climate and Holocaust deniers, Armenian genocide deniers, and others have used. The idea is there are competing narratives and both should be equally considered – rather than examining their credibility. This was why it took so long to convince the public that smoking caused cancer – because industry operatives challenged scientific expertise with their own “research,” leaving people thinking that the jury was still out and they might as well go on smoking until there was a clear and present danger. It’s been the same with Nakba denial. If the Zionists didn’t really force the Palestinians out in 1948, then they bear no responsibility for the refugees, right?

Bader: The idea that Israel is essential to Jewish survival has long been accepted as true. Why did alternatives to Zionism fail to gain traction?

…………………………………………………………………….., Zionists pushed the idea of Israel as the only solution t0 antisemitism, the only way Jews could be safe. …

…………………………………………………………………………..https://mondoweiss.net/2025/11/how-zionism-was-sold-to-the-world/

December 2, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Israel, media, resources - print | Leave a comment

Israel is violating all its ceasefire agreements and escalating on all fronts

Israel is using existing ceasefire agreements to establish new realities on the ground, projecting itself as the regional hegemon by launching attacks on Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, and the West Bank.

By Qassam Muaddi and Mondoweiss Palestine Bureau November 28, 2025, https://mondoweiss.net/2025/11/israel-is-violating-all-its-ceasefire-agreements-and-escalating-on-all-fronts/

The war that Israel allegedly fought on “seven fronts” a year ago is supposed to be over. But Israel is now escalating on all fronts to achieve what it could not during the war, launching strikes and military incursions across Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, and the West Bank.

In Gaza, Israeli airstrikes killed over 20 Palestinians in a single day last Sunday as home demolitions have continued throughout the week; in Lebanon, Israel assassinated Hezbollah’s chief of staff, Hassan Ali Tabtabai; in the West Bank, the Israeli army has launched a wide-ranging military operation concentrated around the towns and villages of the northern Tubas governorate; and in Syria just this morning, Israel launched missile and artillery strikes in the southern Damascus countryside, killing 13 Syrians.

All of this takes place as Israel is nominally party to two ceasefires, respectively with Hezbollah and Hamas. Israel’s violation of both has become routine and has escalated significantly in recent weeks.

In Gaza, local sources tell Mondoweiss that a new status quo has emerged in which Israel continues to seize the opportunity to assassinate Hamas leaders in Gaza while claiming its actions are in response to an alleged “violation” on the part of Hamas. Israeli forces have also conducted dozens of demolitions of Palestinian buildings over the week, accompanied by shelling in eastern Gaza City, Rafah, and Khan Younis. Last Sunday, Israeli airstrikes killed over 20 Palestinians in a single day, and on the Tuesday before that, the Israeli army killed 33 Palestinians in a single night.

In all cases, the military either claims that Palestinian fighters trapped in Rafah and surrounded by Israeli forces allegedly violated the ceasefire, or it claims that Palestinian fighters approached the yellow line demarcating the area from which Israeli forces had withdrawn since the ceasefire came into effect last October.

But Israeli forces have been shooting at Palestinians near the yellow line indiscriminately, many of them trying to return to their homes in the area. The line remains invisible to most Gaza residents and can only be identified by the yellow concrete blocks Israeli forces have placed across various points, supposedly demarcating the ceasefire withdrawal borders, which effectively cut Gaza in half. The Israeli army also dropped leaflets over Palestinian encampments west of the yellow line, warning them that anyone who approaches the virtual border will expose themselves to danger.

Through these policies, the Israeli army is entrenching Gaza’s de facto division into two areas, one controlled by Hamas and the other controlled by the Israeli army. Even though this state of affairs is supposed to be temporary and linked to the “first phase” of the ceasefire, the deliberate ambiguity of the deal’s terms and the lack of an implementation mechanism make it easy for Israel to declare that Hamas is in violation of the terms — and hence refuse to withdraw further from Gaza. The effect this has had is to force almost all of the Strip’s population into less than half of its already overcrowded territory.

Meanwhile, in the West Bank, Israeli forces have launched a wide-scale military operation in the northern West Bank concentrated around the so-called “pentagon of villages” — Tubas, Tammun, Aqaba, Tayasir, and Wadi al-Fara — which the Israeli intelligence establishment considers a “hotbed” of resistance activity. Ostensibly to root out resistance in the Tubas district, local residents told Mondoweiss that the real reason for the military invasion is to thin out the population in the area, laying the groundwork for land confiscation and settlement building.

In Lebanon, the international peacekeeping forces — UNIFIL — reported last week that Israeli forces had committed around 10,000 violations of the ceasefire deal with Lebanon, including 2,500 land incursions and 7,500 airspace violations, since entering into its ceasefire with Hezbollah a year ago in November 2024. The Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronot also reported that the Israeli army has conducted 1,200 land raids into 21 Lebanese villages over the past year.

These violations escalated significantly over recent weeks, culminating in the strike that killed Hezbollah chief of staff Tabtabai on Sunday, who is considered the highest-ranking Hezbollah member to be targeted since the ceasefire began. Following the assassination, Israel put its forces near Lebanon’s border on alert, as Hezbollah officials insinuated the possibility of a response. This series of escalations now threatens to blow up the Lebanon ceasefire.

Using ceasefires to establish realities on the ground

Both ceasefire deals in Lebanon and Gaza were only made possible after long months of mediation, in which Hezbollah and Hamas each eventually accepted terms that allowed Israel to maintain forces in their territories, without any practical guarantees that the ceasefires would be sustainable.

Yet Israel is using these truces to establish new realities on the ground, entrenching its occupation of parts of Gaza and southern Lebanon while asserting its military dominance on the regional stage. This projection of control aims to impose Israel’s vision for a “new Middle East” and a new status quo that recognizes Israel as the uncontested hegemon.

This can be gleaned in Israel’s active escalation in Syria, where Israel has tried to counter the expansion of Turkey’s influence in the country.

Israeli forces continue to position themselves in Syrian territory while conducting land raids in cities such as Quneitra and its surroundings. Last Monday, official Syrian TV reported that Israeli forces “bulldozed extensive farming areas” in the Syrian village of Breiqa in the southern part of the country. Meanwhile, on Thursday, Syrian media outlets reported that Israeli fighter jets flew over several Syrian governorates, and on the following day, an Israeli force invaded the Syrian town of Beit Jinn. When the force was reportedly uncovered, clashes between the Israeli force and Syrians reportedly led to the injury of two Israeli soldiers. According to Syrian state TV, Israeli shelling and strikes led to the killing of 13 Syrians, including at least two children.

Israeli strikes across Syrian territory have continued to become more flagrant over recent weeks, while previous strikes in Damascus in July aimed to strengthen Druze separatist elements in Suwayda. The reality on the ground Israel hopes to create is one of regional fragmentation.

In Gaza, this is manifesting in the recently declared plan to build “alternative safe communities” that would make up a “new Gaza” in the part of the Strip under Israeli control, which appears to have received U.S. backing. Earlier in July, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz had stated that Israel would create a “humanitarian city” built over the flattened remains of Rafah, which was supposedly meant to house 600,000 Palestinians and would be used as a pathway for Palestinians to “voluntarily migrate” out of Gaza, a plan that was characterized by UN officials and human rights experts as a “concentration camp.”

In that same month, a Reuters report revealed that the U.S.-run and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) — so-called “aid” sites meant to replace the UN’s aid distribution system, but where thousands of Palestinians were gunned down in what were described by Gazans as “death traps” — had drafted plans to create so-called “Humanitarian Transit Areas” meant to facilitate the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Gaza. The GHF was itself the “brainchild” of Israeli officials, the New York Times reported last May.

Now that plans for a “new Gaza” have surfaced as part of the Trump-backed ceasefire framework, new reports have begun to emerge that UG Solutions, the U.S. military subcontractor that provided security for the GHF, is now recruiting for a new deployment in Gaza to run ten to 15 more aid sites during the ceasefire.

All these developments take place as Israel attempts to continue to advance its goals. In Lebanon and Syria, it is to establish itself as a regional hegemon, and in Gaza, it is to achieve during the ceasefire what it could not achieve during the war — the ethnic cleansing of Gaza under the rubric of “voluntary migration.”

December 2, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Israel, weapons and war | Leave a comment

The Neocon-Realist Armageddon Over Ukraine

Rubio was in Geneva last Sunday with the Ukrainians and Europeans to undermine Trump’s 28-point plan, trying to replace it with one of just 19 points that unrealistically gives an advantage to Ukraine. Unrealistic because this war has already ended on the battlefield and Trump has virtually acknowledged it.

By Ray McGovern, Consortium News, https://consortiumnews.com/2025/11/28/ray-mcgovern-the-neocon-realist-armageddon-over-ukraine/

Donald Trump made some revealing remarks to the media as he flew to Florida for Thanksgiving on Wednesday. Asked if he thought Ukraine is being asked to give too much land to Russia in his proposal to end the war, Trump responded:

“It’s clearly up to the Russians. It’s moving in one direction. … That’s land that over the next couple of months might be gotten by Russia anyway. So, do you want to fight and loose another 50,000 or 60,000 people? Or do something now? They are negotiating; they are trying to get it done.”

That’s the same realistic approach Trump’s new special envoy to Ukraine, U.S. Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll, took with the Ukrainians and Europe’s so-called “coalition of the willing” during a visit to Kiev earlier this week.

Driscoll reportedly threw in yet one more reason for Ukraine to end the war – the fact that the Russians have ever-growing stockpiles of missiles they can deploy.

In other words, the undeniable Russian advances all along the contact line in Ukraine are no longer deniable to anyone tuned into reality.

But not everyone is tuned in. U.S. Gen. Keith Kellogg, who unrealistically claimed that Ukraine could still win, has been removed as special envoy to Ukraine, but there are other neocons lurking near the White House, for instance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio who also as national security adviser can control the flow of intelligence and policy proposals to the president.

What’s next is an official agreement, endorsed, ideally by the United Nations Security Council, where France or Britain, however, could veto it, as the Europeans continue their efforts to thwart such a peace agreement.

Britain, France and Germany, for example, are still pushing the fantasy that Russia is poised to attack Europe.

So we are at the threshold on Ukraine, at the beginning of a consequential battle between the neo-cons and Europeans on one side, and Donald Trump and the realists on the other. Will Trump show the fortitude to see this through and overcome his secretary of state?

For now you can dismiss the idea that the so-called “Peace Plan” is “dead on delivery.” It hasn’t even officially been delivered to Russia yet.

Russian President Vladimir Putin awaits hand delivery from U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff probably on Monday – Washington’s recent unorthodox conduct of diplomacy notwithstanding.

My sense is that Witkoff, like Driscoll, will dis the Europeans and go to Moscow with the 28-point draft plan for discussion and that it will adhere to one of the main provisions of Anchorage — namely that Trump will not let Zelinski sabotage movement toward an agreement. Putin told Hungarian President Viktor Orban today in Moscow that he remained open to meeting Trump in Budapest at a future date.

For his part, Putin seems ready to do business. An important backdrop is his priority objective of preventing relations with the U.S. from falling into a state of complete disrepair. As for Ukraine, Putin has reiterated that the 28-point Trump plan could form the basis for future agreements.

Taking questions from the press yesterday in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, Putin gave clarity to a number of key issues. He said there was “no ‘draft agreement’ per se,” but rather “a set of issues proposed for discussion and finalization.”

Putin went on:

“We discussed this with American negotiators, and subsequently, a list of 28 potential points for an agreement was formulated.

Thereafter, negotiations were held in Geneva between the American and Ukrainian delegations. They decided among themselves that all these 28 points should be divided into four separate components. All of this was passed on to us.

In general, we agree that this could form the basis for future agreements. However, it would be inappropriate for me to speak now of any final versions, as these do not exist.”

Putin noted that the U.S. — this would be Trump, not Rubio — is “taking our position into account – the position that was discussed before Anchorage and after Alaska. We are certainly prepared for this serious discussion.”

On the question of land, Putin made certain that Russia will not be denied. He said, “I think it will be clear at once what it is all about. When the Ukrainian troops leave the territories they occupy, then the hostilities will cease. If they do not leave, we will achieve it militarily. That’s that.”

Of course, in 2022 Russia entered the Ukrainian civil war that had begun after the 2014 U.S.-backed coup that lead to the U.S.-installed government attacking the ethnic Russian Donbass region, which had rejected the unconstitutional change of government and declared independence.

After eight years of indirectly aiding Donbass, Russia intervened directly after the Minsk agreements to end the civil war were sabotaged by Ukraine and the Europeans. Russia’s war demands have remained demilitarizing and denazifying a neutral Ukraine. In the course of its intervention it has absorbed four Ukrainian oblasts into the Russian Federation, which remains non-negotiable to Moscow.

“Those in the West who understand what [recent Ukrainian defeats on the battlefield] could lead to are pushing for an end to the fighting as soon as possible,” Putin said, referring to the realists in Washington.

“They understand that if the front lines are drawn back in certain areas, the Ukrainian armed forces will lose their combat effectiveness and their most combat-ready units,” he said. “‘Enough is enough, preserve the core of your armed forces and your statehood, that’s what you need to focus on,’ say those who hold this view.”

But he said “others,” referring to the Europeans and neocons, “insist on continuing the hostilities until the last Ukrainian. That’s the difference in approaches.”

Putin tried to put to rest the fear-mongering in Europe about a planned Russian attack on the continent. “Russia does not intend to attack Europe. To us, that sounds ridiculous, does it not?” he said. “We never had any such intentions. But if they want to have it formalised, let’s do it, no problem.”

Putin also reiterated that Russia could only sign a peace agreement with a legitimate government in Ukraine after a new election, another obstacle to overcome.

“I believe that the Ukrainian leadership made a fundamental, strategic mistake when it was afraid to hold presidential elections, and as a result, the president lost his legitimate status,” Putin said. “As soon as any kind of peace agreement is reached, the fighting will stop, and the state of emergency will be lifted, elections will be announced.”

Which is another incentive for Zelensky and those who back him inside and outside of Ukraine to keep on fighting.

“So, basically, we want to reach an agreement with Ukraine in the end, but it’s almost impossible right now, legally impossible. We need our decisions to be internationally recognized by the major international players. That’s it,” said Putin.

He added:

“And so, of course, we need recognition, but not from Ukraine today. I hope that in the future we will be able to come to an agreement with Ukraine: there are many healthy people there who want to build relations with Russia for a long-term historical perspective.”

Peace then will require the complete negation of the neocons and the Europeans and a new government in Kiev — a tall order indeed.

It comes down to whether Trump can finally stand up to them — people whom he appointed, like Rubio, and whom he golfs with, like Sen. Lindsey Graham. He seems to have less respect for the Europeans, who practically sat at his feet around the Oval Office desk earlier this year pleading their case on Ukraine.

Trump may be motivated in part by the vain desire to end the war to win the Nobel Peace Prize. But he can get it done. Trump can ignore the Europeans and be serious this time about cutting off military aid and intelligence to Ukraine as he threatened to do if Zelensky did not accept his 28 points by Thanksgiving.

When it comes to Ukraine, Trump really does hold the cards. Will he play them?

December 2, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics international, UK, Ukraine | Leave a comment

UK Nuclear Projects Set to Add $1.3 Billion a Year to Power Bills

By Tsvetana Paraskova – Nov 28, 2025,
https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/UK-Nuclear-Projects-Set-to-Add-13-Billion-a-Year-to-Power-Bills.html

Subsidies and Contracts for Difference (CfD) that the UK government has promised to the two projects for new nuclear power stations are expected to add $1.32 billion (£1 billion) annually to the UK power bills from around 2030, The Telegraph reports, citing documents by the Treasury and the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR).

The Hinkley Point C nuclear power station, developed by EDF, is expected to begin generating electricity in 2030-31, after years of delays and cost overruns.

That year, CfD is expected to generate $6.1 billion (£4.6 billion) in receipts, including £1.0 billion to fund subsidy payments to the Hinkley Point C nuclear power plant for its first year of expected generation, OBR said in its economic and fiscal outlook released after the UK’s latest budget announcement.

The UK government earlier this year also took the final investment decision to build the $51-billion Sizewell C nuclear power plant on the Suffolk Coast in eastern England, which was the first British-owned nuclear power station to be announced in over three decades.

Sizewell C will be the first nuclear power station in the UK financed using a regulated asset base (RAB) model that levies an additional charge on consumer energy bills, which contributes to the financing costs of the plant, OBR noted. This levy is also expected to increase energy bills as early as January.

UK households will pay slightly higher energy bills in the first quarter of 2026 after energy market regulator Ofgem last week raised the Energy Price Cap by 0.2%, against expectations of a 1% drop.

The slight increase in the price cap is driven by government policy costs and operating costs. This includes funding the government’s Sizewell C nuclear project, which will bring more [?] clean power, Ofgem noted.

Opponents of new conventional nuclear plants in Britain argue that consumers will be burdened with a “nuclear tax” for the expensive projects in their energy bills.

“The Government has a misguided belief that nuclear will be a cheap, ‘green’ solution to our energy needs, but the evidence shows the opposite – that costs of delivery and of dealing with nuclear waste – will continue to rise,” Alison Downes, of Stop Sizewell C, told The Telegraph.

“We remain opposed to the imposition of a nuclear tax on households, given the acknowledged uncertainty about the projected costs of constructing Sizewell C.”

December 2, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | business and costs, UK | Leave a comment

Marco Rubio: From ‘Perfect Little Puppet’ to Most Dangerous Man Alive

December 2nd, 2024, Alan McLeod, https://www.mintpressnews.com/marco-rubio-perfect-little-puppet-most-dangerous-man-alive/288757/

With the appointment of Marco Rubio to the post of Secretary of State, the Trump administration has elevated one of the most pro-war extremists ever to serve in the cabinet of the United States of America.In this article, MintPress highlights Rubio’s history as one of the most reliable warmongering voices in Washington, an individual who has led or supported many of America’s most aggressive foreign policy decisions, including military interventions, coups, and sanctions.

Sanctioning China, The World

Of all the situations to trigger a global nuclear war, a confrontation with Beijing appears among the most likely. The U.S. has constructed a network of over 300 military bases encircling China – another nuclear-armed state. Rubio is doing more than almost anyone to make that doomsday scenario an eventuality. He has made clear that he supports Taiwanese independence, breaking more than a half-century of official U.S. policy in the process. His “Taiwan Peace Through Strength Act” promotes direct military collaboration between the U.S. and Taiwan and calls for increased arms spending on the island.

Rubio was also one of the faces of the 2014 Hong Kong protest movement, a U.S.-backed attempt to wrest the island city from Chinese influence. He invited the movement’s leaders to Washington, D.C., and attempted to introduce legislation to force the United States into supporting Hong Kong’s independence.

At home, he has led the clampdown on Chinese businesses such as Huawei and has spearheaded a movement to uncover and stamp out China’s supposed undue influence over American media and educational institutions.

Unsurprisingly, then, the former Florida senator also supports a trade war and sanctions against China and, indeed, much of the world, including Russia, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, and Iran.

Unilateral sanctions, of course, are illegal under international law. However, Rubio believes the United States can and should use its economic might to crush countries resisting Washington’s dictates. The waning power of the dollar as the global reserve currency, though, makes this increasingly difficult. As Rubio lamented on Fox News last year, Brazil, the largest country in Latin America, signed a comprehensive trade agreement with China whereby goods and services would be paid for in local currencies rather than the dollar:

They’re creating a secondary economy in the world, totally independent of the United States. We won’t have to talk sanctions in five years, because there will be so many countries transacting in currencies other than the dollar, that we won’t have the ability to sanction them.”

Genocide Denier

Rubio has strongly supported Israel in its campaign against its neighbors. “Israel takes extraordinary steps to avoid civilian losses,” he said during a solidarity visit to Tel Aviv earlier this year, adding that the problem is that its enemies “don’t value human life.”

“Israel has consistently sought peace with the Palestinians… Israelis rightfully living in their historic homeland are not the impediment to peace; the Palestinians are,” he wrote in a letter to his predecessor, Antony Blinken.

When asked by activists from peace group CODEPINK whether he supports an end to Israeli atrocities, he answered in the negative, stating, “On the contrary. I want them to destroy every element of Hamas they can get their hands on. These people are vicious animals.”

Narco Rubio

Hailing from the notoriously conservative Cuban-American community in Florida, Latin American policy has always been among Rubio’s chief interests. Described as the unofficial “Secretary of State for Latin America” during Trump’s term, he will undoubtedly hold enormous influence over U.S. policy in the region in the years to come. This is bad news for the people of Cuba, Nicaragua, Bolivia, and Venezuela, all of whom have watched as Rubio supported coup attempts against their countries. In 2019, for example, he went as far as directly tweeting images of the capture, death and bloody assassination of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi at Nicolás Maduro during an ongoing U.S.-backed coup against the Venezuelan president.

Rubio has always favored a more aggressive, punitive approach to Cuba. Last year, for example, he introduced legislation to ensure that Cuba would remain on the U.S. State Sponsor of Terrorism List, offering no evidence of the island’s supposed support for such groups.

A right-wing conservative Christian, Rubio has also made well known his contempt for much less radical Latin American leaders, such as Mexico’s Andrés Manuel López Obrador and Brazil’s Lula da Silva. On the other hand, he has openly embraced far-right presidents, like Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro (in power between 2019 and 2023) and Argentina’s Javier Milei.

Rubio has attempted to link Maduro with the organized drug trade, insisting, with little evidence, that the Venezuelan leader is a narcotics kingpin. On this issue, he appears to be living in a glasshouse; his own brother-in-law is a cocaine drug lord. Orlando Cicilia spent 12 years in a Florida prison for crimes related to the smuggling and distribution of cocaine. Rubio enjoys a very close relationship with Cicilia and, after the latter’s release from prison, used his political position to pressure a Florida regulator to grant him a real estate license. Across much of Latin America, the new Secretary of State is known as “Narco Rubio.”

Neocon Warmonger

A consummate Washington insider, Rubio cheerled the U.S. action in Libya that led to Gaddafi’s execution and the country being turned into a failed state replete with open-air slave markets. He also supported the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, condemning Biden for his pullout from Kabul in 2021. In addition, he helped Saudi Arabia in its genocide against Yemen while expressing outrage over alleged Houthi human rights abuses, minuscule in comparison with the Saudi-led, U.S.-backed genocide.

Studies by Brown University have shown that America’s post-9/11 wars have killed at least 4.5 million people and displaced at least 37 million more. One of the most shocking stories arising from the Global War on Terror is the torture camp at Guantánamo Bay. By the mid-2010s, the facility was causing such negative publicity for the U.S. that the Obama administration was reportedly considering shutting it down. Rubio, however, was enthusiastic in his support for the center, promising to reopen it if elected president.

He also supported the dramatic expansion of the surveillance state into American life, voting to continue the practice of collecting vast amounts of data on ordinary American citizens, and has effectively argued that First Amendment protections should not be applied to anti-Israel campus protestors.

Sheldon Adelson’s “Perfect Little Puppet”

Few in 2016 would have predicted Rubio’s rise to become arguably the most powerful man in Trump’s cabinet. The Floridian was once one of Trump’s fiercest critics, describing him as a fraud when the two were battling for the Republican Presidential nomination. “I think it is time to unmask [Trump] for what he is,” he said during a campaign speech in Oklahoma City, adding:

He’s trying to take over the conservative movement even though he’s not a conservative, but more importantly, he’s a con. I mean, he’s a conman who is taking advantage of people’s fears and anxieties about the future, portraying himself as some sort of strong guy. He’s not a strong guy.”

Trump was, if anything, even more scathing towards Rubio, stating that “[Pro-Israel billioniare] Sheldon Adelson is looking to give big dollars to Rubio because he feels he can mold him into his perfect little puppet. I agree!”

One of Adelson’s key issues is stopping the rise of clean, renewable energy, and in that, he found an ally in Rubio, who consistently denied the reality of man-made climate change, stating that there was “no scientific evidence” to back up the theory. Funded by big money donations from the oil and gas industries, he even voted against legislation protecting low-lying cities such as Miami from severe weather events.

Since their public spat, Trump has clearly buried the hatchet with both Rubio and Adelson. The latter’s widow, Miriam, contributed a gigantic $100 million to Trump’s recent presidential run, becoming his biggest donor in the process. Clearly, then, both Trump and Rubio are willing to make major concessions in the pursuit of power. However, given Rubio’s track record, his appointment as Secretary of State does not bode well for either America or the rest of the world.

Alan MacLeod is Senior Staff Writer for MintPress News. After completing his PhD in 2017 he published two books: Bad News From Venezuela: Twenty Years of Fake News and Misreporting and Propaganda in the Information Age: Still Manufacturing Consent, as well as a number of academic articles. He has also contributed to FAIR.org, The Guardian, Salon, The Grayzone, Jacobin Magazine, and Common Dreams

December 2, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | PERSONAL STORIES, politics, USA | Leave a comment

Educators Worry Palestine Censorship Could Reshape Public Education Entirely.

lawmakers who sponsored House Bill (HB) 937 seemed more committed to preventing teachers and pupils from criticizing Israel than preventing discrimination against Jewish students

New efforts to shut down honest discussion of Palestine could restrict everything from literature to science classes.

By Marianne Dhenin , Truthout, November 29, 2025

A wave of bills introduced this year in state legislatures across the country sought to censor Palestine-related education in public schools. Several passed with the support of pro-Israel Democratic lawmakers, a trend that educators and First Amendment advocates told Truthout reflects the alignment of pro-Israel groups with MAGA forces. As these efforts continue, many said they fear public education could be reshaped far beyond social studies classrooms and the topics of Israel and Palestine.

“The censorship of Palestinians is the same as the ‘Don’t Say Gay,’ and the anti-critical race theory attacks on Black history,” Nora Lester-Murad, an organizer with the #DropTheADLfromSchools effort, told Truthout. The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) is one of a number of pro-Israel groups supporting regressive public education legislation across the country. “Yes, it’s Zionist, and yes, it’s promoting Israel, but it’s also part of this right-wing effort to take public education in a direction that’s away from critical thinking and that’s anti-liberatory.”

This year, legislators in at least eight states — including Arizona, Arkansas, Kansas, Kentucky, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Tennessee — introduced bills that would directly adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism in public schools. That definition equates criticism of Israel with antisemitism. Dozens of civil society and rights groups, as well as unions of educators, have warned against its adoption because of its power to chill or suppress speech critical of Israel or Zionism.

Michael Berg, an organizer with Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) in Missouri, said lawmakers who sponsored House Bill (HB) 937 seemed more committed to preventing teachers and pupils from criticizing Israel than preventing discrimination against Jewish students. “They were attached to the IHRA definition, so it shows that it’s very specifically about speech about Israel,” he said. Organizers succeeded in stopping HB 937 in Missouri this year, but Berg told Truthout they are already preparing to fight a new iteration of the bill in the upcoming legislative session.

Other states have made similar efforts, including California, where Democrats hold a supermajority in the state assembly. There, this year’s Assembly Bill (AB) 715 was the latest in a series introduced under the guise of curbing antisemitism, but whose critics argue are censorship bills that undermine the implementation of earlier legislation mandating ethnic studies courses in public schools. AB 715 does not define antisemitism, but calls for using the Biden-era United States National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism as “a basis to inform schools on how to identify, respond to, prevent, and counter antisemitism.” That white paper claims that “the United States has embraced” IHRA’s definition as a “valuable tool” in countering antisemitism. Gov. Gavin Newsom signed AB 715 into law in October; the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) filed a suit challenging the law in federal court in November.

Meanwhile, this August in Massachusetts, another Democratic stronghold, the state’s Special Commission on Combating Antisemitism approved recommendations meant to curb antisemitism in schools. The recommendations call on districts to teach IHRA’s definition of antisemitism in anti-bias trainings for teachers and school administrators. A statewide coalition of labor unions, civil rights groups, and progressive Jewish organizations warned that rather than countering antisemitism, the recommendations “pit some Jewish students against other marginalized populations” and will likely “undermine safe learning and working environments for students and teachers.”

These moves dovetail with a federal agenda to remake the nation’s public schools and historical programming at other public institutions, such as museums and national parks. Since his return to office, President Donald Trump has signed executive orders demanding an end to “radical indoctrination in K-12 schooling” and “restoring truth and sanity to American history.” The administration advocates teaching a whitewashed and aggrandizing version of the nation’s past that Trump, in one executive order, called “patriotic education.”…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

The recent wave of bills limiting Palestine-related speech in public schools also harms students. “We believe that antisemitism is being used to censor education on Palestine, and we believe that our students have a right to understand both sides of an issue,” Seth Morrison, spokesperson for JVP’s Bay Area chapter and an organizer with CCDPE, told Truthout. “We’re not saying don’t talk about Israel or don’t talk about the Holocaust. What we’re saying is that there are many open issues here and that Arab and Muslim students especially are being intimidated and censored because of IHRA and related activities.”…………………………………………………………………………………….. https://truthout.org/articles/educators-worry-palestine-censorship-could-reshape-public-education-entirely/

December 2, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Education, USA | Leave a comment

The mysterious black fungus from Chernobyl that may eat radiation

Mould found at the site of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster appears to be
feeding off the radiation. Could we use it to shield space travellers from
cosmic rays? In May 1997, Nelli Zhdanova entered one of the most
radioactive places on Earth – the abandoned ruins of Chernobyl’s exploded
nuclear power plant – and saw that she wasn’t alone.

Across the ceiling,
walls and inside metal conduits that protect electrical cables, black mould
had taken up residence in a place that was once thought to be detrimental
to life. In the fields and forest outside, wolves and wild boar had
rebounded in the absence of humans. But even today there are hotspots where staggering levels of radiation can be found due to material thrown out from the reactor when it exploded.

BB 28th Nov 2025, https://www.bbc.co.uk/future/article/20251125-the-mysterious-black-fungus-from-chernobyl-that-appears-to-eat-radiation

December 2, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | radiation, Ukraine | Leave a comment