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The News That Matters about the Nuclear Industry Fukushima Chernobyl Mayak Three Mile Island Atomic Testing Radiation Isotope

Another miserable year for nuclear power as renewables surge.

All renewables (including hydro) accounted for 47.7 percent while nuclear (which fell by nearly two percent last year) now accounts for less than half that amount (23.4 percent)

Jim Green, Jan 27, 2026, https://reneweconomy.com.au/another-miserable-year-for-nuclear-power-as-renewables-surge/

The latest World Nuclear Industry Status Report has crunched the numbers to show that 2025 was another underwhelming year for nuclear power.

Here are the key 2025 global figures:

  • * power reactor startups (grid connections): 4 reactors, 4.4 gigawatts (GW) capacity
  • * permanent shutdowns: 7 reactors, 2.8 GW
  • * net growth of nuclear capacity: 1.6 GW
  • * power reactor construction starts: 11 reactors, 12.0 GW

The four reactor startups were in China (2), Russia and India. That is the lower number of startups since 2017.

The seven permanent reactor shutdowns were in Belgium (3), Russia (3) and Taiwan.

The net decline of three operating reactors makes 2025 the worst year on that criterion since 2012, when many reactors were permanently closed due to the Fukushima disaster in March 2011.

The 11 construction starts in 2025 — the highest number since 2010 — were in China (9), South Korea and Russia.

As of 1 January 2026, according to the World Nuclear status report – WNISR-2026:

  • * 404 nuclear power reactors were operating in the world — five less than a year earlier and 34 less than the historic peak of 438 in 2002.
  • * Nuclear accounted for 9.0 percent of global electricity generation, barely half its historic peak of 17.5 percent in 1996.
  • * 31 countries were operating nuclear power plants worldwide, one fewer than a year earlier as Taiwan closed its last reactor in May 2025.

Taiwan is the fifth country to abandon its nuclear power program following Italy (1990), Kazakhstan (1999), Lithuania (2009) and Germany (2023).

Overall, the 25-year pattern of global stagnation continues, with no end in sight. Installed nuclear capacity of 4.4 GW in 2025 was 180 times lower than the estimated 793 gigawatts of solar and wind capacity (up from 717 GW in 2024).

In China, new nuclear capacity in 2025 amounted to 2.5 GW whereas solar capacity installed in the first 11 months of 2025 amounted to an estimated 275 GW. The nuclear share of electricity generation in China has fallen for four years in a row after peaking at 5.0 percent in 2021.

That’s despite China’s status as the only significant growth market in the world, with a net growth of around 50 reactors over the past 20 years and a net decline of around 50 reactors in the rest of the world.

Conspicuously absent from the lists of reactor startups and construction starts are any small modular reactors or any ‘Generation IV’ reactors such as fast neutron reactors, fusion reactors, molten salt reactors, etc.

Dramatic drop in number of countries building reactors

The number of countries building power reactors has fallen off a cliff. WNISR-2026 notes:

“The number of building countries declined by almost one third, from 16 to 11, in just two years, with several countries having completed their last construction project (France, United Arab Emirates, United States), or suspended if not terminated construction (Argentina, Brazil, Japan), while only one country was added to the list (Pakistan).

“Only eight of the 31 countries currently operating commercial nuclear plants are building new ones, while three are newcomer countries (Bangladesh, Egypt, Türkiye) in the course of building their first reactors, all implemented by the Russian nuclear industry.”

The number of countries operating power reactors reached 32 in the mid-1990s. Since then it has fallen to 31.

Globally, the number of power reactors under construction increased by seven in 2025 — entirely due to China. China has 36 reactors under construction, more than half of the global total of 66.

Not a single power reactor is under construction across the 35 countries of the American continent.

Only one reactor is under construction in the European Union (in Slovakia). Solar and wind (30 percent combined) overtook fossil fuels (29 percent) for EU electricity generation last year.

All renewables (including hydro) accounted for 47.7 percent while nuclear (which fell by nearly two percent last year) now accounts for less than half that amount (23.4 percent).

Over the six-years from 2020-26, Chinese and Russian companies have been the only builders worldwide responsible for reactor construction starts, with the exception of one project in South Korea. Only Russia, China and France are building reactors abroad.

The ‘peaceful atom’

WNISR-2026 notes that of the total of 66 reactors under construction in 11 countries, 63 (95 percent) are either in nuclear-weapon states (50) or are implemented by companies controlled by nuclear-weapon states in other countries (13). Only the three construction projects in South Korea fall outside this category.

Iran’s uranium enrichment program drew attention to the potential to weaponise the ‘peaceful atom’ and the military attacks on Iran’s nuclear facilities last year by Israel and the US added to the long history of nation-states attacking nuclear plants to prevent weapons proliferation (or for that reason among others).

Other examples of conventional military attacks on nuclear plants to prevent weapons proliferation include Israel’s destruction of reactor components awaiting shipment to Iraq, in France in 1979; Israel’s destruction of a research reactor in Iraq in 1981; military strikes by Iraq and Iran on each other’s nuclear facilities during the 1980-88 war; the United States’ destruction of a research reactor in Iraq in 1991; Iraq’s attempted missile strikes on Israel’s nuclear facilities in 1991; and Israel’s bombing of a suspected nuclear reactor site in Syria in 2007.

Russia’s attacks on nuclear plants in Ukraine probably aren’t motivated by weapons proliferation concerns. Nonetheless, the risk of a nuclear catastrophe on top of the ongoing mass murder of conventional warfare highlights the role of nuclear plants as stationary terrorist targets or weapons of mass destruction.

International Atomic Energy Agency chief Rafael Grossi recently said that fighting around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant has left Europe’s largest nuclear plant in an “extremely fragile, volatile condition”.

Apart from the fragile, volatile situation at Zaporizhzhia, low-lights in 2025 included a drone attack which seriously damaged the protective dome over the stricken Chernobyl #4 reactor and, more importantly, more than 10 attacks on nuclear power plant substations in Ukraine which are, according to the IAEA, “essential for nuclear safety and security” and “absolutely indispensable for providing the electricity all nuclear power plants need for reactor cooling and other safety systems.”

Industry hype

Despite the 25-year pattern of stagnation, the World Nuclear Association claims that global nuclear power capacity could more than triple to reach 1,446 GW by 2050. But there’s plenty of fine-print undermining this absurd projection:


  • * A big chunk of the projected growth (542 GW) “is not yet supported by identified projects”.
  • * Another big chunk (425 GW) comprises reactors that are planned, proposed or potential … all essentially meaningless categories.
  • * A “substantial” share of the required capacity growth depends “on large-scale programmes for proposed, potential, and government-targeted capacity that are not yet supported by firm investment decisions”.
  • * The required 65 GW per year from 2046-2050 is “roughly double the historic peak build rate seen in the 1980s”.
  • * Achieving the projection will require “unprecedented construction rates, strategic lifetime extension of existing reactors, and significant policy and market reforms”.
  • * Several national targets (such as the 293 GW of new capacity required to meet the United States’ 400 GW target) “rely heavily on an expansion of nuclear capacity where there is currently little or no ongoing construction, or identified reactors planned or proposed for deployment”.

Here’s the World Nuclear Association’s decidedly ‘iffy’ conclusion:

“If governments uphold their stated ambitions, if regulatory and market frameworks are adapted to support both existing and new reactors, and if the nuclear industry expands its capacity to deliver at scale, the world’s nuclear fleet can more than triple by 2050.”

It’s all comical nonsense. But put yourself in the position of a spin-doctor employed by the World Nuclear Association … could you do any better than to play make-believe?

A much more likely scenario is that the past 25 years of nuclear stagnation will be followed by another 25 years of stagnation. If there is any growth — and there may not be due to the ageing of the global reactor fleet and the industry’s other challenges — it will be marginal growth.

Nuclear power is staggeringly, stunningly and possibly irretrievably uneconomic

At the top of the list of the industry’s challenges is that it is staggeringly, stunningly and possibly irretrievably uneconomic. Here are the costs of some recent and proposed projects:

USA — Vogtle (Georgia) US$34 billion / 2.4 GWA$23.5 billion / GW (completed)
UK — Hinkley Point£46 billion / 3.2 GW$A29.4 billion / GW (under construction)
UK — Sizewell C£47.7 billion / 3.2 GWA$30.6 billion / GW (construction yet to begin)
France — Flamanville€19.1 billion / 1.6 GWA$21.3 billion / GW (completed)
SMR — NuScale (USA)US$9.3 billion / 462 MWA$30.1 billion / GW (cancelled before construction began)
SMR — Darlington (Canada)C$20.9 billion / 1.2 GWA$19.1 billion / GW (construction yet to begin)
SMR — CAREM (Argentina)US$750 million / 32 MWA$34.0 billion / GW (construction began in 2014, abandoned 2025)

Nuclear stagnation vs. renewables growth

As noted above, installed nuclear capacity of 4.4 GW in 2025 was 180 times lower than new solar and wind capacity.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) predicts the installation of 4,600 GW of new renewable capacity in the five years from 2025-2030, twice as much as in the previous five years. (Current global nuclear capacity is 369 GW.)

The IEA stated in October 2025 that:

  • * Renewables will surpass coal at the end of 2025 (or by mid-2026 at the latest) to become the largest source of electricity generation globally. (The World Economic Forum states that renewables overtook coal in the first half of 2025.)
  • * The share of renewables in global electricity generation is projected to rise from 32 percent in 2024 to 43 percent by 2030.
  • * From 2025-2030, renewables are expected to meet over 90 percent of global electricity demand growth.


Over the past decade we’ve seen renewable electricity generation double then triple nuclear power generation. By the end of this decade renewables will out-generate nuclear by a factor of 5-7.

Dr. Jim Green is the national nuclear campaigner with Friends of the Earth Australia and a member of the Nuclear Consulting Group.

January 27, 2026 Posted by | ENERGY | Leave a comment

Artificial intelligence will not revive the nuclear industry

  by beyondnuclearinternational, https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2026/01/25/artificial-intelligence-will-not-revive-the-nuclear-industry/

On the contrary, we need renewable energy and natural intelligence, writes Stéphane Lhomme

The current boom in artificial intelligence is accompanied by a massive increase in energy and water consumption, and, according to what we are told, this phenomenon is only just beginning and will grow exponentially. 

However, far from taking measures to stop or at least slow down this phenomenon, industrial and political leaders are instead competing with announcements and decisions to support it. As a result, various countries, including France, are trying to attract data centers by promising their owners, mainly the famous GAFAM (Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft), to provide them with cheap and, above all, “green” electricity. 

France is offering its nuclear power because, as everyone knows, nuclear power is “clean”… if we are willing to forget the devastation caused by uranium mines, the massive radioactive, chemical, and thermal discharges from power plants into rivers and oceans, radioactive waste, and the occasional contamination of an entire country or continent (during disasters such as Fukushima and Chernobyl). 

During the World Nuclear Energy Exhibition (WNE) held in Paris from November 4 to 6, 2025, the vast majority of the media reported the countless announcements about a supposed “return to favor of nuclear power,” which, however, is just as illusory as the “great return of nuclear power” announced in the early 2000s – already accompanied by much fanfare at the time – by the same media outlets and sometimes the same journalists, who are taking advantage of the general amnesia of our “information” societies.

Despite the efforts of the high priestess of nuclear power at the time, Ms. Lauvergeon, revered by most of the media (always the same ones!) before leading her company Areva into bankruptcy (we are still waiting for the investigations that have been ongoing for 15 years to result in a trial), there was no “great comeback.”

Producing 17.1% of the world’s electricity in 2001, nuclear power has since seen its share steadily decline to below 10% in 2020 and below 9% in 2024 (8.97% to be exact). A veritable collapse as a “return to favor.” But we would have to believe that this time, buoyed by GAFAM and their unlimited checkbooks, the nuclear industry will truly experience a golden age (or rather a plutonium age). Let’s take a look at some of the thunderous announcements made in recent months.

Last June, Google announced that it would be relying on nuclear fusion to power its data centers! Let’s just remember that for 70 years, the major nuclear powers have failed completely in this endeavor, even when they joined forces in the Iter project in Cadarache (Bouches-du-Rhône). If nuclear fusion really is what powers Google, then this search engine is bound to shut down quickly!

In fact, last October, Google fell back on a plan B: restarting the Duane Arnold nuclear power plant in Iowa, which had been shut down since 2020. Never one to be late in relaying the nuclear industry’s announcements, AFP produced a dispatch reminding readers that this was the third project of its kind.

Indeed, the restart of the Palisades nuclear power plant in Michigan has been announced for 2023. But almost no one mentioned the official report of October 2024 revealing that the reactor, which had been shut down for several years, was severely affected by corrosion.

In reality, it is highly likely that this plant will never restart, nor will the Duane Arnold or Three Mile Island plants: in the latter case, the plan is to restart reactor 1, which was shut down in 2019, and not reactor 2 (whose core melted during a serious accident in 1979), as reported by the media, which we will charitably describe as inattentive.

Another avenue for the supposed “return to favor of nuclear power” and its ability to fuel the insane consumption of AI is that of the famous SMRs, small modular reactors, which are of course touted as being “safe, easy to build, and inexpensive.” So all we had to do was think of it.

However, the 127 SMR projects identified worldwide by the OECD’s Nuclear Energy Agency, far from making this idea a reality, show instead a total lack of focus: many start-ups are chasing subsidies generously granted by politicians who are ignorant and, above all, terrified of being seen as dinosaurs who have missed the boat on renewal.

The SMR bubble is about to burst. In France, the main start-ups (Naarea, Newcléo, Jimmy, etc.) are in serious difficulty or have already suspended payments, and EDF’s Nuward project has been postponed indefinitely. In the US, the only project that had made any progress, NuScale, has already closed down.

After initially announcing the construction of new nuclear reactors (large or SMRs), then falling back on restarting shut-down reactors, GAFAM companies are now cautiously turning to existing facilities. In the US, for example, gas-fired power plants are being called upon. In addition, Meta (Facebook) has signed an agreement to purchase the output of the Clinton nuclear power plant (Illinois), a plant that is currently in operation: this is safer than relying on virtual or shut-down plants!

It is already clear that, wherever data centers are built, GAFAM will monopolize electricity production to the detriment of the population. This situation, which one might have thought was the stuff of science fiction, is already a reality in the US, for example in Virginia, Georgia, and Arizona, where the population is deprived of water, which is monopolized for cooling the numerous data centers built in these states, which attracted them by exempting them from taxes (again to the detriment of the population).

The same is true, for example, in Chile and already, or soon, in all countries that have had the bad idea of welcoming these famous data centers. Selfishly, we can only hope that, despite the grandstanding of the showman Macron, France will fail to attract data centers. It will then be the “winners” of this absurd race who will fall victim to GAFAM, and thus there will be electricity and water left for the needs of the French population. It should also be noted that various countries are beginning to take measures to slow down or suspend the installation of data centers.

Unfortunately, it is to be feared that nothing and no one will put a stop to the madness of AI and its senseless consumption of electricity (not to mention the “mining” of bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies, an activity that also consumes a tremendous amount of energy and water).

However, contrary to what is claimed in the numerous articles mentioned above, nuclear power will not be able to meet this demand: as demonstrated by the failures of large reactors—EPR (France) and AP1000 (USA)—as well as SMRs, the construction of nuclear power plants is far too uncertain, slow, and costly.

Moreover, according to the International Energy Agency, since 2020, 90% of new electricity generation capacity worldwide has been renewable, which is much cheaper than nuclear power and, above all, can be brought online very quickly. AI will therefore not save nuclear power; quite the contrary: once they have finished with their absurd announcements, even the GAFAM companies will turn away from it and choose realistic options. That said, while it is of course much better for electricity to be renewable rather than nuclear, one wonders where the progress will be if it is monopolized to power AI rather than meet the needs of the population.

On this subject, there is still time to cancel the senseless EPR reactor projects (even renamed EPR2 to make them seem like an improvement), which EDF is proving incapable of building and operating, and to devote the available money to realistic, decentralized energy efficiency and renewable energy projects that are supported by and for the population: Natural intelligence and renewables rather than artificial “intelligence” and nuclear power.

Stéphane Lhomme is the founder and director of Observatoire du nucléaire. This article was originally published by Observatoire du nucléaire.

 

January 27, 2026 Posted by | spinbuster | Leave a comment

No Healthy Person Wants To Rule The World Or Become A Billionaire

Caitlin Johnstone, Jan 26, 2026, https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/no-healthy-person-wants-to-rule-the?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=185791943&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

No mentally healthy person wants to rule the world.

Nobody with a functioning conscience and a working empathy center in their brain is interested in becoming a billionaire.

We are ruled by the most dysfunctional members of our species. The most wounded, neurotic and sociopathic among us. The least wise, caring and insightful.

What drives a person to claw their way to the top of a wildly sick society and become a lord of the dystopia?

What compels someone to amass obscene amounts of wealth in a world where so many have far too little?

What causes someone to ascend to political leadership of a power structure that’s built for the purpose of robbing and oppressing the most underprivileged populations on earth?

Nothing wholesome, to be sure. That impulse is never coming from anywhere good.

The worst among us are striving to prevail in this dystopia by riding the tides of its ugliest inclinations, while the best among us are striving to dismantle the dystopia and replace it with something kind and equitable. This causes the worst of us to be elevated to the top and the best of us to be smacked down to the bottom.

Under our current system the easiest way to set yourself on a trajectory from millionaire to billionaire to trillionaire is to exploit workers, crush your competition, plunder the available resources of the global south, externalize the costs of industry onto society and the ecosystem, bribe the government to advance your corporate interests via lobbying and campaign donations, contract with the most murderous military and intelligence agencies in the world, and psychologically manipulate the public into consuming products and services they don’t need.

Who is going to be most successful in this endeavor? The very worst people alive. People whose hearts and minds are so stunted and dysfunctional that they see other human beings as tools for their own personal enrichment, to be used up and discarded like juice boxes or condoms.

These are the people who are touching the most lives on this planet. These are the people whose decisions affect the most of us.

Michael Parenti has passed away after a luminous life advancing powerful ideas and insights about the abusive dynamics of human civilization and how best to address them. He did not die a wealthy man. The mainstream papers did not report on his departure from our world. Only a relatively small percentage of the population is aware he ever lived.

But everyone knows who Elon Musk is. Everyone knows who Jeff Bezos is. Who Bill Gates is.

The best of us live and die in relative obscurity, generally being subjected to scorn and derision from the ruling establishment the entire time. The worst of us become plutocratic demigods.

It’s an uphill battle. You spend your life swimming against the current of dystopia, and you are not handsomely rewarded for your efforts. You’ll get deplatformed, censored and smeared. You might even get shot by government agents for standing up for the disempowered. And you’ll definitely never be a billionaire.

But it’s absolutely worth it, and you should do it. Fighting for truth and justice in a civilization made of injustice and deceit is the only way to live. It’s the only way to feel satisfied with your efforts during this life. The only way to be sure that when you are on your deathbed you can look back and know you spent your time here in a right and admirable way.

It costs a lot to fight for a healthy world. But it costs a lot more not to.

January 27, 2026 Posted by | Religion and ethics | Leave a comment

War is Silicon Valley’s new business

Today in the US, Trumpism favours war.com, fuelling and justifying risky investments ==> investments take the State hostage ==> the State secures many contracts and in turn the contracts produce infrastructure ==> infrastructure such as megaservers, clouds, low-altitude satellites, cable networks, etc., become indispensable to the population and generate large profits ==> profits finance more risky investments…and so on, to the detriment of State Sovereignty and in favour of the Digital Oligarchy.

Ismaele, Jan 26, 2026

Today I am providing my English translation of an article by Glauco Benigni, originally in Italian and published first on ItaliaNelFuturo.com on Wednesday 3rd December 2025 and then on ComeDonChisciotte.org on Sunday 7th December 2025

Over the last 30 years, a fifth Caste has been added to the four dominant Castes that have been handed down through history, namely Brahmins, Merchants, Warriors and Scribes: the Caste of Digital Tycoons. Many of them are former executives involved in the various processes that took place at the end of the 1990s in the “forge” of PayPal. They are “affectionately” known as the PayPal Mafia. Now fifty-year-old billionaires, these former Silicon Valley youngsters grew up in the cyber world, combining the skills of the previous castes and conquering important parts of Nasdaq, every social network, artificial intelligence and e-commerce. What’s more, they have a monopoly in the West on the collection and processing of big data.

Today, each of them is a mix of Brahmin, Merchant and Scribe. For some time now, they have also been revealing themselves as Warriors, both because they build and manage the weapons of Cognitive Warfare and because they have put their knowledge and best practices at the service of the Armed Men (Pentagon, Intelligence, Private Security), in many cases eliminating the distance between the client (the Warrior State) and the contract manager and, as we shall see, officially taking on prestigious positions in the institutions to which they provided services and consultancy.

The leading representatives of this new Caste are: Peter Thiel and Alex Karp, founders in 2003 of Palantir (a technology company specialising in big data analysis and artificial intelligence). The two are known as “the architects” of the new system; Elon Musk, now known as “the voice of the techno-populist right”; Davide Sacchi, known as “the techno-currency czar”, and Marc Andreessen, the ideologue of acceleration. To these must be added J.D. Vance, US Vice-President (according to gossip columns: Peter Thiel’s boyfriend) and Donald Trump Jr., son of the current occupant of the White House. Of course, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg are also closely linked to the Circus of Wonders we have described. This is undoubtedly a “fine little team”, whose financial strength (turnover and stock market capitalisation) amounts to several trillion US dollars. In other words, more than the 2024 national GDPs of countries such as the UK, Germany or France.

Trump has surrounded himself with them in the hope – not even a secret one – that they can anaesthetise many of the fractures and pains still caused by the Deep State. How? Mainly by exercising remote control over antagonists and cognitive warfare: sophisticated activities that you can engage in if you have computing power and networks, megaservers, microchip production and the cloud at your disposal. In essence, Trump’s choices are consolidating the new powers of the third millennium, namely the Webcracy that I describe at length in my book of the same name.

The new Caste has made its way into the White House, NASA, the Pentagon and the intelligence agencies, and is taking the helm of change in the US, first thanks to the cuts made by Elon Musk’s DOGE programme and now thanks to funding diverted to the digital bosses and taken away from the old Fordist world figures who have ended up in the shadows.

At the end of July 2025, in the labyrinthine corridors of the Pentagon, the US Army calmly signed away a piece of its sovereignty. A ten-billion-dollar contract with Palantir Technologies – one of the largest contracts in the history of the Department of Defence – was presented to the public and promoted in the business world as a step towards “efficiency”. The contract consolidated seventy-five previous procurement agreements into a single mutual commitment. This new relationship is considered a fundamental strategic step, thanks to which military functions are conferred on a private company. So far, there would be little to be surprised about if its founder, Peter Thiel, did not go on television to declare the Truth as seen from his privileged observatory: “freedom and democracy are no longer compatible”.

Translated: “You are all being monitored 24/7 without your knowledge, and we use your Big Data to guide your choices and make you like robots”. Honestly, Westerners living in NATO territories should not sleep peacefully after hearing these words: in addition to the spectre of war looming over us, we are now being told to forget the dream of freedom and to go along with the new aggressive and belligerent technological tyranny.

A nice little s****y programme, which goes hand in hand with the implied statement to the peoples already involved in the delirium of conflict: “Stop shooting each other or we won’t sell you any more weapons”.

We are therefore witnessing an increasingly authoritarian technology that tends towards dictatorship. In this scenario, US Vice President J.D. Vance, supported in his election campaign with $15 million from Peter Thiel, has become the face of techno-right governance. Behind him, his financier and boyfriend has firmly established himself in the techno-military heart of the state.

Waving the flag of “patriotic technology”, this new bloc is building the infrastructure of control: clouds, artificial intelligence, financial positioning, drones, satellites, an integrated system that Americans call the authoritarian Stack1. A faster, more ideological and almost completely privatised form of governance: a regime in which the boards of digital corporations, rather than public law, set the rules.

Some US media outlets describe Webcracy as a large lobby that operates with powers similar to those of the state: it writes or omits rules as its interests change, wins contracts and exports its model to Europe, where it poses a direct challenge to what remains of the Old Continent’s democratic governance. A governance so fragile and sick that it is unable to react. So let’s clarify one thing: Silicon Valley is no longer building search engines, social networks and apps, it is building a new empire. Or at least it is trying with all its might. Which is no small thing…………………………………………………………………………………

Guys… the die is cast! War tout court, war.com, has become the engine of development for NATO countries and is leading us towards privatised military sovereignty. Unlike the old authoritarianism built on fear and force, this new system governs through algorithms, the anarchic proliferation of financial capital and the ownership of networks that carry digital signals (web, telephones, TV, etc.).

Today in the US, Trumpism favours war.com, fuelling and justifying risky investments ==> investments take the State hostage ==> the State secures many contracts and in turn the contracts produce infrastructure ==> infrastructure such as megaservers, clouds, low-altitude satellites, cable networks, etc., become indispensable to the population and generate large profits ==> profits finance more risky investments…and so on, to the detriment of State Sovereignty and in favour of the Digital Oligarchy.

Let’s see which venture capital firms are currently active in the scenario described above:

Founders Fund, Thiel’s $17 billion flagship company, took Anduril from a valuation of $1 billion to $30.5 billion. It was the first institutional investor in Palantir and SpaceX, which are Thiel and Musk’s respective “crown jewels”. Palantir’s quarterly revenue now exceeds $1 billion, up 53% thanks to government contracts.

1789 Capital was founded by Thiel’s confidants and recently acquired by Donald Trump Jr. ……………………………………

The five domains of privatised sovereignty

Critical State infrastructure is being privatised in five sectors – data, defence, space, energy and money – the foundations of contemporary power. These domains constitute the architecture of privatised sovereignty: a technological regime in which power manifests itself through algorithms, laws, infrastructure, platforms and automated procedures…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

Once Palantir becomes indispensable, once Anduril drones are standard NATO weapons, once nuclear plants power the AI that manages everything else… the transformation is irreversible. Europe faces an existential choice: build true technological sovereignty now, or accept governance exercised through platforms whose architects see democracy as a slow and obsolete operating system. https://geopolitiq.substack.com/p/war-is-silicon-valleys-new-business?publication_id=2232768&post_id=182686946&isFreemail=true&r=3alev&triedRedirect=true&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

January 27, 2026 Posted by | weapons and war | Leave a comment

Resisting Trump

 January 25, 2026 by daryan12, https://daryanenergyblog.wordpress.com/2026/01/25/resisting-trump/

So, only after Trump started threatening to annex Greenland, did it suddenly occurred to European leaders that maybe appeasing a fascist, wasn’t the smartest decision. Who could have known!….aside from anyone whose studied history since the 1930’s. Hell I’m half expecting Starmer to come back from his latest ass-kissing session meeting with Trump brandishing a piece of paper promising peace in our time.

Clearly the EU and the UK need to be both more united on this topic and more forceful. Appeasing fascists will only ever make them more aggressive and means they will demand more and more, until they demand too much. Europe’s capitulation to Trump over tariffs last year, their failure to criticise his ICE crackdowns, the murder of supposed drug smugglers without due process, Israel’s genocide or his actions in Venezuela were all seen by the white house as signs of weakness, or de-facto approval. Which emboldened him to make further demands regarding Greenland. By contrast, those nation’s who have stood up to Trump, such as Canada, Brazil, China or Mexico, have gotten by more favourably.

Yes Trump has gone on epic 2am twitter tirades and threatened them with this and that. But eventually TACO Trump has prevailed. This needs to be the strategy from now on.

So for example, Trump has said he’s not happy about the Chagos Islands agreement, which btw was originally negotiated by the Tories not Starmer (although labour took things further). Oh and Trump had originally said he was okay with this deal. Well if I was Starmer I’d tell him, fine we’ll just hand back the Islands to Mauritius anyway, you can take it up with them if you want to keep your airbase there. Now being an idiot he’d probably respond by trying to annex Diego Garcia, but that would just put the US in the same legal mess the UK is currently in, so all of those court cases will relocate from London to DC.

There’s also the small matter of refugees. You see a number of refugees have made it to the Islands (often from places like Myanmar, Sri Lanka, India, Somali, etc.). They often have quite compelling cases for asylum making returning them legally difficult, quite apart from the fact that the other governments don’t want them back (as they are viewed as trouble makers). Plus many of those government’s are backed by either China or India, so good luck trying to threat them with tariffs. In fact the UK has been ultimately forced to accept these refugees transfer to the UK (which as you can imagine isn’t going down well with the bigot brigade).

In short, if America took control of the Chagos Island’s they’d quickly become a magnet for refugees across the Indian ocean, as anyone who can make it to the Islands is pretty much guaranteed a free trip state side (and you can imagine how MAGA are going to feel about that). Trump would soon be left with little choice but to go cap in hand to Mauritius and either pay them an absurd amount of money, or accept terms less favourable than Starmer’s current deal (assuming China doesn’t make them a better offer and he loses one of their most strategic outposts to Beijing). Either way, the response to Trump’s bluster will be to make him look weak and foolish and that’s means he’ll learn to bite his tongue in future.

Another option would be to go after Trump’s personal finances. For example, take away his UK golf courses. What’s that you say, the government can’t just take private property off someone. Actually in this case they can. Turnberry is an ex-RAF airfield. So it would be perfectly reasonable for the government to say, well because some dickhead is threatening Greenland, we need the land back, sorry. If you really want to grind his gears, say you’ll be renaming the new airbase after Obama. His other golf course is a sight of special scientific interest, so a ban on golfing activity (or manicuring all of those lawns) would be well within the government’s remint. Either way, the message to Trump is, mess with us, we will go after to you personally.

And trump plus his family are up to all sorts of illegal corrupt activities. Why is this not being investigated by the UK police and Europol? Starting an investigation to reign in the corruption of the Trump regime is unfortunately going to be necessary, given that the broken US justice system (which now stands for Just Us), means Europe’s going to have to step up. Not least because of the geopolitical implications. E.g. Trump’s “board of Peace” is clearly intended to work as some sort of sleazy slush fund for the Trump family, despots and oligarch’s to trade favour’s for cash. That has too be reigned in. And again, if Europe doesn’t offer push back, the White house will view that as a sign of weakness, if not silent support.

Others have highlighted other methods, such as an export ban of semiconductor lithography machines from ASML holdings. This is a Dutch company that leads the world in microchip manufacture. Its estimated that for any other country to match their technology would take a decade or two. Which means such a ban on the US would intermediately burst the AI bubble and devastate both Trump’s personal finances but also the tech bro’s who prop him up. Similarly, stricter regulation of crypto and AI by the EU would have serious financial consequences for Trump and his supporters.

Then there’s the matter of the 2026 world cup and the 2028 Olympics and boycotting these events. Not merely to emasculate Trump, but also his minion the FIFA boss Infantino. Quite apart for the risk to fans from ICE (as well as showing support to those Americans under attack from ICE). However, to be effective it will require getting other parties on board, the European teams, Brazil, Columbia, Iran, Uruguay, South Africa, etc. Yes, this means the teams that stay in will have an easier time, in fact it would pretty much guarantee a Argentinian victory. But it will be a hollow victory. And there’s nothing to stop the boycotting teams going somewhere else in the world with lots of football stadiums (such as, oh…how about Europe!) and having their own invitation tournament. This will humiliate Trump, and he will be anxious to avoid similar humiliation with the Olympics, which gives us leverage.

Perhaps more importantly is it shows the need for greater UK and EU co-operation. Brexit was the brainchild for American / Russian oligarch’s and fascists who saw benefits in weakening Europe. Recognising that and undoing the damage it has caused is now a vial step in countering fascism and oligarchy.

January 27, 2026 Posted by | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Australia’s Lack Of Speech Protections Means We Should Be MORE Hostile To Speech Regulation

Caitlin Johnstone, Jan 25, 2026, https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/australias-lack-of-speech-protections?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=185687870&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

A normal, healthy person would look at Australia’s lack of free speech protections and say “Hmm, Australian leaders should be extremely resistant to new laws and policies which restrict speech then, because it would be very easy for those restrictions to become abusive.”

Australian leaders look at our lack of free speech protections and say “See? This means we get to take away your right to protest genocide!”

Nowhere is this more clearly exemplified than the repeated statements from New South Wales premier Chris Minns saying it’s fine to silence Australians because we don’t have free speech rights.

Over and over again Minns has defended his promotion of authoritarian speech crackdowns in his state by claiming it’s okay to stomp out dissident speech of Australians because Australians don’t have the same speech protections as Americans, saying “we don’t have the same free speech rules that they have in the United States and I make no apologies for that” and similar statements in recent weeks.

To be clear, Minns is being repulsively tyrannical when he says this, but factually speaking he isn’t wrong.

As Joe Lauria wrote for Consortium News following the passage of Australia’s frightening new “hate speech” bill:

“Unlike the United States, Australia has no Bill of Rights in its Constitution protecting freedom of speech, assembly and other rights. Much as Israel would want it, a law such as this adopted in Australia would still be difficult to pass in the U.S. on paper, despite the Israel Lobby’s hold over the U.S. Congress.”

If Australians had the same speech protections that they have in the United States, we could appeal tyrannical new laws on First Amendment grounds. Because we have no such protections, it is much harder to oppose authoritarian speech restrictions once they are in place.

As I often remind readers, Australia is the only so-called democracy in the world which has no national charter or bill of rights of any kind. A tremendous amount of faith has been placed in state and federal legislators to simply do the right thing, which has proved foolish and ineffective. Professor George Williams wrote for the Melbourne University Law Review in 2006:

“Australia is now the only democratic nation in the world without a national bill of rights. Some comprehensive form of legal protection for basic rights is otherwise seen as an essential check and balance in democratic governance around the world. Indeed, I can find no example of a democratic nation that has gained a new Constitution or legal system in recent decades that has not included some form of a bill of rights, nor am I aware of any such nation that has done away with a bill of rights once it has been put in place.”

It has been clearly and conclusively established that this system does not work. State and federal governments are working frenetically to shred the right of Australians to oppose the actions of the state of Israel, with their assault on our civil rights disguised as an effort to fight “antisemitism” in our country and help Jewish Australians feel more safe. The fact that this happens to advance the information interests of the western power alliance, we are told, is purely coincidental.

The evidence is in and the case is closed. The Australian system does not work. We need a national bill of rights, and we need free speech to be enshrined in our constitution.

In the meantime, we need to be aggressively opposed to laws and policies which assault our freedom of speech. We need to be more aggressive in our opposition than Americans would be, because we have fewer safeguards against tyrannical abuses.

It’s so disgusting how these freaks are telling us right to our faces “Yeah well you guys don’t have any rights, so I’m going to silence you and oppress you and I make no apologies about that.”

That kind of arrogant, abusive authoritarianism deserves nothing but ferocious defiance.

January 27, 2026 Posted by | AUSTRALIA, civil liberties | Leave a comment