2026 April 04 « nuclear-news

Washington Post Promotes Nuclear Agenda Tied to Bezos’ Investments

The piece contains no disclosure about Bezos’ financial ties to the nuclear energy sector, continuing a trend previously identified by FAIR (11/20/25). Bezos is the largest individual shareholder of Amazon, which has invested $500 million in small modular reactor nuclear (SMR) startup X-Energy. X-Energy recently signed a letter of intent to explore deployment in areas that include Illinois. Amazon is a member of the Nuclear Energy Institute, which advocated to end the state’s moratorium.

Peter Castagno, 1 April 26, https://fair.org/home/washington-post-promotes-nuclear-agenda-tied-to-bezos-investments/

The Washington Post has devoted four editorials to supporting the expansion of nuclear energy in the past three months, relying on factual errors and distortions to make the case for the Trump administration’s unprecedented cuts to nuclear safety regulation. The Post‘s owner, Jeff Bezos, is the chair of Amazon, a company dependent on electricity-guzzling data centers that invested more than $1 billion in nuclear energy last year.

The first of the editorials (1/15/26) was headlined “The Facts About Nuclear Energy Are Sinking In. Even in Illinois.” It lauded Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker’s decision to end the state’s moratorium on building new nuclear plants.

‘Clean energy’ (except the toxic waste)

The Washington Post editorial said of Pritzker:

The 2028 presidential hopeful personified the Democratic Party’s gradual realization that the country cannot meet its electricity needs—let alone combat climate change—without embracing the world’s largest source of clean energy.

As FAIR has previously noted, leading experts dispute the claim that nuclear energy is essential to address climate change. Describing it as “clean” obscures unresolved problems such as radioactive waste. More than 100,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel are stored in pools requiring active cooling and dry casks throughout the country—over 11,000 tons in Illinois alone, the largest stockpile of any state.

An expert report published the same day as the Post‘s Illinois editorial, co-authored by former NRC chair Allison Macfarlane, described the situation as a national imperative: The federal government has collected more than $50 billion from ratepayers for a waste repository it has never built, paid more than $12 billion to reactor owners in damages for failing to take the waste, and is projected to pay an additional $40 billion more.

Illinois’ 1987 moratorium was a bipartisan measure signed into law by a Republican governor that prohibited construction of new nuclear plants until the federal government identified and approved a means of disposing of radioactive waste. That condition has never been fulfilled. The Post omits the reason for the moratorium, instead characterizing nearly four decades of policy as a “perplexing attitude” driven by ideological environmental activists:

Illinois has suffered for decades from serious cognitive dissonance on nuclear energy. The state boasts the nation’s largest fleet of nuclear reactors, generating more than half its electricity from those plants. Yet lawmakers in Springfield followed the lead of environmental activists who regard the industry with open disdain…. That perplexing attitude is finally changing.

The Post also did not consider how the state’s years-long criminal nuclear scandal might affect its residents’ views. Since 2020, Illinois utility Exelon and its subsidiary Commonwealth Edison have agreed to more than $200 million in fines with federal authorities for bribing political figures to pass legislation that included roughly $2.35 billion in nuclear subsidies—the same subsidies Exelon has repeatedly stated it requires to keep its Illinois plants operating. The scandal is part of a broader pattern of corruption in the industry that the Post elided in other editorials.

Celebrating safety rollbacks

A month later, under the headline “America’s Nuclear Future,” the Washington Post editorial board (2/14/26) championed the Trump administration’s nuclear safety rollbacks:

Sometimes, regulators have even forced changes to designs mid-construction, as happened in 2009, when they required containment buildings for reactor developments in Georgia and South Carolina to be able to withstand direct aircraft strikes, driving up costs and delaying construction.

The editorial board invoked the Vogtle project in Georgia and the VC Summer project in South Carolina as cautionary tales about regulatory overreach. The Post did not mention that VC Summer’s failure in South Carolina was primarily caused by executive fraud and mismanagement (Power, 10/15/21).

Further, a senior representative of Southern Nuclear, the operator of Georgia’s Vogtle reactors, recently attributed reactor construction delays to macroeconomic events and lead contractor Westinghouse’s bankruptcy rather than over-regulation. The new reactors cost $35 billion, more than twice the original estimate, and were completed seven years late in 2024.

The Post claimed the Nuclear Regulatory Commission forced changes while reactors were “mid-construction” in 2009, but physical construction for both projects did not begin until 2013, as noted by Edwin Lyman, director of nuclear power safety for the Union of Concerned Scientists, and the pro-nuclear source they cited.

The Post made other misleading claims in the article regarding the science of radiation dangers. The editorial board expressed support for the Trump administration’s efforts to drastically weaken the NRC’s radiation guidelines, which are based on the Linear No-Threshold (LNT) model. LNT maintains cancer risk as proportional to radiation dose, with even tiny amounts causing small but real risks, particularly for infants and vulnerable populations. The Post wrote:

The science underpinning the radiation rule is mushy, at best. It’s based on a theory that because radiation poses a serious cancer risk at high doses, it must also pose a low risk at lower doses.

It is irresponsible for a reputable news outlet to describe the science supporting LNT as “mushy.” As the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (10/15/25) recently explained, the use of LNT model for radiation has been repeatedly affirmed by authoritative scientific bodies, including “the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, virtually all international scientific bodies, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the NRC itself.”

The Post did disclose Amazon’s nuclear energy investments in the February 14 piece, and in two following editorials. But those disclosures don’t convey the scope of their efforts to influence nuclear policy.

Amazon spent nearly $19 million on lobbying last year, including on nuclear energy–related issues. Amazon Data Services is a member of the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI), the nation’s biggest trade group pushing to cut safety regulations—the same NEI that recently celebrated the Post’s inclusion of nuclear energy in its “25 Good Things That Happened in 2025.” In January, the Bezos Earth Fund donated $3.5 million to the Nuclear Scaling Initiative to help coordinate bulk purchases of standard reactor designs. Shannon Kellogg, vice president of public policy at Amazon, chairs the Data Center Coalition, another prominent lobby group that has pushed nuclear safety regulatory rollbacks.

Don’t mention the P-word

The Washington Post’s next pro-nuclear editorial (2/22/26)—headlined “Fixing America’s Broken Nuclear Supply”—advocated the practice of nuclear reprocessing, which refers to the separation of uranium and plutonium from spent fuel. The extracted materials are then repurposed for use as reactor fuel, but also can be used to create nuclear weapons.

The Post editorial did not contain the word “plutonium.” It glossed over the proliferation risk, the foremost historical concern with reprocessing, only mentioning it once:

President Jimmy Carter banned the practice out of fears of weapons proliferation. President Ronald Reagan later reversed that decision, but reprocessing never rebounded, mostly because nuclear companies decided that sourcing new uranium was more cost-effective.

Reprocessing was originally invented to develop plutonium for nuclear weapons. India used it to create a nuclear bomb from its atomic energy program in 1974, which Carter explicitly cited as the impetus for the ban. Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton also did not encourage reprocessing due to proliferation concerns.

‘Crucial to power AI’

In its most recent nuclear editorial—“The Government’s Freeze on Nuclear Energy Is Thawing”—the Washington Post (3/6/26) celebrated the NRC’s March approval of a construction permit for Bill Gates’ SMR startup TerraPower:

Something shocking happened this week: Bureaucrats approved a project ahead of schedule. Even better, it was for a nuclear project that promises to make energy production safer and cleaner than traditional reactors. The government still holds back America’s nuclear industry too much, but it’s a victory worth celebrating.

The Trump administration has taken unprecedented measures to accelerate new nuclear reactors. It has secretly overhauled nuclear safety rules, proposed to severely cut inspections and radiation standards, and exempted new reactors from environmental reviews. Over 400 NRC employees have left the agency since Trump took office. These developments were not concerning to the Post, however, which wrote “the government still holds back America’s nuclear industry too much.”

The Union of Concerned Scientists’ Lyman warned that the NRC’s fast-tracked review for TerraPower failed to address serious safety concerns inherent to its design. The Post’s claim about TerraPower’s safety ignores unresolved issues admitted to by the NRC in the agency’s December safety evaluation:

The staff did not come to a final determination on the adequacy and acceptability of functional containment performance due to the preliminary nature of the design and analysis.

Unlike traditional reactors, TerraPower’s design does not include a physical containment dome to guard against the release of radioactive material in the event of a meltdown.

The Post wrote:

The speed with which the NRC has been able to review the TerraPower project is a testament to growing bipartisan support for climate-friendly nuclear energy. In June 2024, shortly after the company submitted its application, Congress overwhelmingly passed a bill called the Advance Act to cut red tape. Those reforms were crucial given the surging demand for new energy to power artificial intelligence.

The Post presented TerraPower’s rapid review as a “testament to growing bipartisan support for climate-friendly nuclear energy.” It does not mention that Trump fired the former Democratic NRC chair for the first time in its agency’s history, and its two remaining Democratic commissioners told lawmakers they believe they could be fired for refusing to approve reactors for safety reasons. Multiple Democratic lawmakers who voted in favor of the Advance Act have lambasted the Trump administration’s actions to expedite reactor approvals as dangerous and illegal.

The Post editorial did not mention the primary impetus for TerraPower’s rapid licensing process: a series of executive orders Trump signed last May. They directed the NRC to approve new reactors within 18 months, consult with DOGE on a wholesale revision of its regulations, and weaken radiation protections rooted in its “overly risk-averse culture.” A recent ProPublica investigation (3/20/26) revealed that nuclear firms were given the opportunity to offer edits for the EOs, many of which are financially connected to DOGE’s leadership.

‘Energy to cost less’

The Post went on to claim expanding nuclear energy will lower energy costs: “Anyone who wants energy to cost less should be excited about the US producing more of it.”

Yet as FAIR (4/21/16) explained in a 2016 analysis, Lazard investment bank’s widely cited, annual levelized cost of energy report has repeatedly found nuclear energy to be far more expensive than renewables, a finding that remains unchanged in its most recent report.

The Post claimed that the new generation of Silicon Valley–backed SMRs will be cheaper than traditional reactors, but the first expected commercial SMR project was canceled in 2023 due to repeated cost overruns that spent over $600 million in federal funds.

X-Energy, the SMR firm backed by Amazon, has also steeply increased its cost projections. In 2021, the Department of Energy awarded TerraPower around $2 billion, and gave $1.2 billion to X-Energy. X-Energy’s projected cost estimates have surged since then, from roughly $2.5 billion in 2021 to a range of $4.75–5.75 billion in 2023.

The Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis warned these cost increases should serve as a “red flag” in a 2024 analysis. It concluded:

Investment in SMRs will take resources away from carbon-free and lower-cost renewable technologies that are available today and can push the transition from fossil fuels forward significantly in the coming 10 years

As physicist MV Ramana argues in his book Nuclear Is Not the Solution (2024), tech billionaires like Bezos are backing nuclear energy rather than doubling down on renewables for reasons of ideology, military and government alliances, and, crucially, profit opportunities. X-Energy filed for an IPO last month, giving Amazon the opportunity to leverage AI and nuclear hype into a higher opening valuation.

When the Post’s editorial board (10/15/25) hailed small reactors last year as a “worthy gamble” in an editorial headlined “The Military’s Big Gamble on Small Nuclear Reactors,” it did not mention its owner stood to profit from that wager.

April 4, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | media, USA | Leave a comment

From ISIS to Iran: Joe Kent Says Washington Keeps Repeating the Same Catastrophic Playbook

April 3, 2026, ScheerPost Staff, https://scheerpost.com/2026/04/03/from-isis-to-iran-joe-kent-says-washington-keeps-repeating-the-same-catastrophic-playbook/

In a wide‑ranging and unusually candid conversation, former National Counterterrorism Center Director Joe Kent explains why he resigned over the Trump administration’s war on Iran—and why he believes the United States has once again walked into a strategic disaster of its own making.

Kent’s account, drawn from decades inside U.S. covert and military operations, offers a rare insider narrative of how Washington’s pro‑war reflexes, Israeli pressure, and America’s own history of regime‑change hubris converged into the current crisis.

A War Built on a False Premise

Kent opens with the core claim that drove his resignation: Iran posed no imminent threat to the United States.

As he puts it, “Iran was not on the cusp of attacking us… They observed a very calculated escalation ladder.”

According to Kent, Iran halted proxy attacks once Trump returned to office, sat at the negotiating table, and even refrained from striking U.S. forces during the 12‑day war—until Israel launched its own attack on Iranian nuclear sites.

The only “imminent threat,” Kent argues, came not from Tehran but from Israel’s unilateral actions, which forced Washington into a conflict it did not need and could not win.

How Israeli Influence Shapes U.S. War Decisions

One of the most explosive threads in the interview is Kent’s description of how Israeli intelligence, lobbying networks, and media allies shape U.S. policy far beyond what most Americans understand.

Kent describes a “multi‑layered influence ecosystem” that bypasses normal intelligence vetting and pressures senior U.S. officials directly.

“They will come in and say, ‘They’re within two weeks of getting a bomb,’ and that night it’s repeated on TV,” he explains.

This echo chamber, he argues, successfully moved the U.S. red line from “no nuclear weapon” to “no enrichment at all”—a shift that made diplomacy impossible and war inevitable.

The Forever-War Reflex in Washington

Kent echoes what former officials like Lawrence Wilkerson have long warned: Washington has a structural bias toward war.

Defense contractors, political incentives, and a bipartisan foreign‑policy class create what Kent calls the “factory settings” of U.S. power—settings that default to escalation, not restraint.

Even Trump, who campaigned on ending endless wars, was eventually pulled into the Iran conflict. Kent argues Israeli officials and neoconservative advisers played to Trump’s ego, promising an easy, historic victory.

The U.S. Role in Creating ISIS—And Repeating the Pattern

Kent’s most damning historical analysis concerns the U.S. role in the rise of ISIS and al‑Qaeda affiliates in Syria.

He recounts how the Iraq War destabilized the region, empowered Iranian‑aligned militias, and pushed Gulf states and Israel to back radical Sunni factions in Syria.

“We were supporting al‑Qaeda, which eventually morphed into ISIS,” Kent says bluntly.

He describes how U.S. and Turkish support helped elevate Abu Mohammad al‑Julani, an al‑Qaeda figure who now effectively governs northwest Syria with tacit Western acceptance.

The lesson, Kent argues, is clear: regime‑change wars always produce monsters—and America never seems to learn.

Iran’s Strategy: Win by Not Losing

Kent believes Iran has adopted a long‑term strategy shaped by watching U.S. failures in Iraq and Afghanistan:

• survive • absorb blows • raise global energy costs • outlast Washington’s political will

Iran doesn’t need to defeat the U.S. militarily, he argues—only to avoid collapse.

And with control over the Strait of Hormuz, ballistic missile capacity, and regional alliances, Iran can keep the war costly indefinitely.

The Nuclear Danger: A Self‑Fulfilling Prophecy

Kent warns that U.S. and Israeli pressure may push Iran toward the very outcome Washington claims to fear.

“We basically destroyed the school of thought that opposed nuclear weapons,” he says, referring to the killing of Iran’s former Supreme Leader and the rise of hardliners.

He predicts Iran may now pursue a “North Korea solution”—a nuclear deterrent to prevent future attacks.

The Only Exit: Restrain Israel, Reopen Diplomacy

Kent’s prescription is stark:

Publicly restrain Israel’s offensive operations
Cut military aid if necessary
Offer sanctions relief
Reopen the Strait of Hormuz
Return to negotiations

Without restraining Israel, Kent argues, the U.S. will remain trapped in an endless cycle of escalation.

“Unless we restrain Israel, I just don’t see us having a way out of this,” he warns.

This conversation is not just another critique of U.S. foreign policy. It is a rare moment when a senior insider—someone who helped run America’s counterterrorism apparatus—publicly breaks with the system he once served.

For ScheerPost readers, Kent’s testimony reinforces what independent journalists have long documented:

• U.S. wars are rarely about security • Israeli influence shapes U.S. decisions in ways the public never sees • regime‑change operations consistently backfire • Washington’s war machine is structurally incapable of learning from its failures

Kent’s resignation and his warnings should be a national scandal. Instead, they are being heard mainly on independent platforms—another sign of how tightly controlled mainstream narratives around war have become.

or Joe Kent’s Resignation, in His Own Words, Reveals MAGA’s Fracture Over War—Not a Break From Empire

Remember this too: as Nate Baer reported, “Then you’ve got the frauds like Joe Kent, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center who just resigned over the war. A MAGA devotee and former special forces operative who pulled the trigger for U.S. imperialism in Syria, Yemen, and Iraq, his resignation wasn’t about ethics or principle. In his resignation letter, he even praised Donald Trump’s 2020 assassination of Qasem Soleimani. Trump was doing imperialism right then—now, in Kent’s view, he’s simply doing it wrong.”

April 4, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Iran, Israel, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Does the Trump administration understand how ‘enriched’ uranium is made into weapons?

Harmeet Kaur, CNN, 2 April 2026

For the US to reach a deal with Iran or to end its war in the country, President Trump has said he wants Iran to surrender its “enriched” uranium.

“We want no enrichment, but we also want the enriched uranium,” he told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins last week.

The president has at times cited Iran’s “enriched” uranium stores as part of his ever-changing rationale for the war, and in recent days, he’s reportedly considered sending US troops in to seize them. But nuclear arms experts say the way Trump and his lead negotiator have talked about uranium enrichment raises doubts about how well they understand the technicalities.

For one, Trump keeps referring to “nuclear dust,” which is not a known term in the nuclear energy industry. And since the February 26 US-Iran nuclear talks, Steve Witkoff, a former real estate developer who has been leading US negotiations with Iran along with Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, has made claims that experts say betray a similarly weak expertise………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

Uranium that has been enriched above the natural 0.7% level of uranium-235 and up to a 20% concentration is considered low-enriched uranium, used for civilian purposes. Commercial reactors typically require uranium enriched to less than 5%, while research reactors used for testing or medicine generally require uranium enriched to up to 20%.

Uranium enriched beyond 20% is considered highly enriched uranium, and uranium enriched above 90% is considered weapons-grade.

The higher the enrichment level, the more quickly uranium can be enriched to weapons-grade, Diaz-Maurin says. Once uranium has been enriched to 20%, a vast majority of the work required to enrich it to weapons-grade levels has been completed. It becomes exponentially easier to enrich 20% uranium to 60%; enriching from 60% to 90% is even easier, he says.

The higher the enrichment level, the lower the minimum mass of enriched uranium required to produce a bomb, says Diaz-Maurin. For example, uranium that’s been enriched above 20% can technically be used to produce a crude weapon, but you would need about 400 kilograms of it, making it inefficient and impractical. When the enrichment level goes up to 60%, the critical mass drops down to about 42 kilograms. Uranium enriched to weapons-grade requires about 28 kilograms, which can fit into a missile warhead, he says.

Since Trump pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal in his first term, Iran has been enriching its uranium closer and closer to weapons-grade, though it officially proclaimed a religious prohibition against building a nuclear weapon. Now, given that the US and Israel have attacked the country as negotiations were ongoing, Iran’s hardliners in parliament are calling on the regime to advance to full nuclear armament.

Western nations, as well as the UN watchdog International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), have long expressed concerns about Iran’s production and stockpiling of highly enriched uranium. On June 12 last year, the IAEA estimated that Iran’s stockpile included 440 kilograms of uranium enriched up to 60%, Diaz-Maurin wrote in a recent analysis. The next day, Israel attacked Iran, killing prominent nuclear scientists and significantly damaging Iran’s main enrichment site.

Enrichment level is an important indicator of risk, but there are a host of other factors that should be considered in assessing how quickly Iran could produce weapons-grade enriched uranium, says Kelsey Davenport, director for Nonproliferation Policy at the Arms Control Association. Those other considerations include the amount of enriched uranium a country has, its capacity to enrich it and whether the uranium is being held in solid fuel rods or in gas form.

“Witkoff had a poor grasp of the details,” she says.

For example, Davenport says comments that Witkoff made in the aftermath of February 26 negotiations with Iran indicated some confusion between nuclear reactors, which use enriched uranium for power, and the centrifuge facilities where the enrichment process takes place. Witkoff seemed particularly concerned about a research reactor in Tehran that he claimed was being used to stockpile highly enriched uranium. Reports from the UN’s nuclear watchdog estimate that Iran had about 45 kilograms of 20% enriched uranium stored in fuel assemblies at the reactor, which Davenport says “is not even enough for one bomb.”

To be developed into a nuclear weapon, she says the uranium at the reactor would need to be converted back to gas form and then be further enriched to weapons-grade. Before Israel’s strike on Iran’s main conversion facility last June, that might not have been difficult. Now, the situation has changed. “Could Iran convert that material back to gas form? Yes,” she says. “Could they do it quickly and easily at this point? No.”

Davenport says Witkoff was also reportedly surprised by how much enriched uranium was in Iran’s stockpile, even though this information was well documented by international inspectors. “I think he was focused on the wrong details and did not have the nuclear expertise or the expert team available to him to assess how the Iranian proposal would have impacted risk overall,” Davenport says.

Iran also said that it made an offer to dilute its 60% enriched uranium to a lower percentage, which Diaz-Maurin calls “a sound one from a non-proliferation perspective.” But he says it doesn’t appear that US negotiators took the proposal seriously. “I suspect that they did not really understand what the meaning was,” he adds. “And here we are.”

Less than two days after Witkoff and Kushner met with Iran to discuss its nuclear program, the US and Israel attacked the country. Some experts suggest that the decision was informed, at least partially, by a shallow understanding of Iran’s nuclear program and positions.

“It certainly seems as though there was a gap, and that’s a huge problem on something like this, especially when it seems like potentially a military decision was made based on things that were happening in that room,” says Connor Murray, a research analyst for the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation.

A month on, the US is engaged in an intense war that experts argue could potentially have been avoided with another word: Diplomacy. US and Israeli strikes have indeed severely diminished Iran’s capacities to enrich uranium, Diaz-Maurin says. But he says Iran’s know-how and political will to build nuclear weapons probably won’t be destroyed so easily.

“You can’t really bomb away an idea, a program and knowledge. So there will always be a suspicion that Iran is doing something,” he says. “And one could argue that now more than ever, they have incentive to accelerate whatever program they have.” https://edition.cnn.com/2026/04/01/us/word-of-week-enriched-cec

April 4, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics, Uranium, USA | Leave a comment

Escalating To Catastrophe

when Trump and Hegseth use this phrase, they are using it knowingly and deliberately. They are channelling all of LeMay’s savagery, racism and fascism.

They are simply reflecting the dominant belief held for decades by US military planners that the US can, and should, commit war crimes and mass murder to get what it wants.

Nate Bear, Apr 02, 2026, https://www.donotpanic.news/p/escalating-to-catastrophe

In his televised address last night Trump said the US was going to continue attacking Iran for another two or three weeks and would bomb the country “back to the Stone Ages, where they belong.”

Dimona’s shadow: How Israel’s nuclear monopoly warps Middle East security

Since David Ben-Gurion articulated the post-Holocaust doctrine of “Never Again,” nuclear capability has been framed as the “Samson Option”, a last-resort deterrent that ensures Israel can destroy the region if its existence is threatened.

Israel’s success in maintaining its status as the Middle East’s sole nuclear power rests on its policy of amimut, or nuclear opacity.

March 30, 2026, by Ronny P Sasmita, https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20260330-dimonas-shadow-how-israels-nuclear-monopoly-warps-middle-east-security/

The skies over Tehran and Natanz may still carry the lingering haze of joint U.S.-Israeli operations. Yet the world, filtered through the dominant voice of Western media, continues to be fed a singular narrative: the latent danger of Iran’s uranium enrichment, perpetually described as being “one step away” from a nuclear warhead. Amid the noise of economic sanctions, United Nations Security Council resolutions, and preemptive military strikes that have devastated Iran’s civilian-military infrastructure, there exists a deafening silence surrounding the Middle East’s most tangible arsenal of weapons of mass destruction: Israel’s nuclear stockpile.

In reality, the region’s security architecture is not threatened by a nuclear capability that might exist in the future, but by one that has existed for more than six decades. In the Negev desert stands the Dimona complex, a black box untouched by inspections from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), immune to sanctions, and maintained as one of the international community’s most tightly guarded open secrets. This contradiction represents perhaps the most blatant manifestation of global double standards, preserving Israel’s nuclear privilege above international law.

In the Negev desert stands the Dimona complex, a black box untouched by inspections from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), immune to sanctions, and maintained as one of the international community’s most tightly guarded open secrets.

History shows that Israel’s nuclear ambitions were not merely a reaction to external threats, but part of a broader geostrategic design to secure regional hegemony. Since David Ben-Gurion articulated the post-Holocaust doctrine of “Never Again,” nuclear capability has been framed as the “Samson Option”, a last-resort deterrent that ensures Israel can destroy the region if its existence is threatened. Yet this privilege did not emerge organically. It was constructed through deception, clandestine procurement networks, and sustained diplomatic protection from great powers, ironically, those that now present themselves as global guardians of non-proliferation.

Israel’s success in maintaining its status as the Middle East’s sole nuclear power rests on its policy of amimut, or nuclear opacity. Through this doctrine, Israel enjoys the strategic advantages of nuclear deterrence without incurring the political or economic costs. This has fundamentally distorted the regional discourse: the world is compelled to panic over a state that formally adheres to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), albeit under scrutiny, while tolerating another that refuses to sign the treaty and is widely believed to possess hundreds of nuclear warheads.

READ: Israeli nuclear city emerges as focal point in escalating Iran–Israel confrontation

The Labyrinth of Opacity and God-Tier Privilege

The turning point that legitimized this international hypocrisy came in 1969. In a secret meeting at the White House, President Richard Nixon and Prime Minister Golda Meir forged an understanding that would shape U.S. foreign policy for decades. Washington would cease pressuring Israel to sign the NPT or allow inspections of Dimona, provided Israel maintained a low profile and refrained from overt nuclear testing. In effect, the United States became a diplomatic shield for Israel’s undeclared nuclear weapons program, an irony for a country that has repeatedly invoked nuclear concerns to justify interventions elsewhere.

This marked a stark departure from the era of John F. Kennedy. JFK was the only U.S. president willing to confront Israel’s nuclear ambitions directly. For him, nuclear proliferation was a “personal nightmare” that threatened global stability. He went so far as to warn Ben-Gurion that U.S. support could be “seriously jeopardized” if independent inspections of Dimona were not permitted. Following Kennedy’s assassination, however, such pressure evaporated under the Johnson and Nixon administrations, replaced by a pragmatic accommodation that allowed Israel’s “bomb in the basement” to quietly expand.

In effect, the United States became a diplomatic shield for Israel’s undeclared nuclear weapons program, an irony for a country that has repeatedly invoked nuclear concerns to justify interventions elsewhere.

This privilege has enabled Israel to develop an advanced nuclear triad, including Jericho ballistic missiles, modified F-15I fighter jets, and Dolphin-class submarines capable of launching nuclear-armed cruise missiles from beneath the sea. With estimates ranging between 90 and 400 warheads, Israel possesses not only a deterrent but also a potent instrument of diplomatic coercion. When Arab states, led by Egypt, have consistently called for a Weapons of Mass Destruction-Free Zone in the Middle East, the United States and its allies have routinely blocked such initiatives to preserve Israel’s exceptional status.

This nuclear privilege has also created what many non-Western diplomats describe as a “compliance trap.” States like Iran, which are signatories to the NPT, face intense scrutiny and economic punishment for procedural deviations. Meanwhile, Israel—operating outside the framework of international law—enjoys access to the most advanced military technologies from the West. This systemic inequity fuels instability, signaling that the most effective way to avoid international pressure is not compliance, but power.

An Architecture of Sabotage

To maintain its nuclear monopoly, Israel has pursued an aggressive geostrategic doctrine that routinely violates the sovereignty of other states. Known as the Begin Doctrine, formalized in 1981, it asserts that Israel will not allow any Middle Eastern country to acquire weapons of mass destruction. This is an extraordinary claim of authority: a state with undeclared nuclear weapons asserting the right to destroy others’ nuclear capabilities, even those intended for peaceful purposes, under the banner of self-defense.

Its first manifestation came with Operation Opera on June 7, 1981, when Israeli fighter jets destroyed Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor. Despite condemnation from the United Nations, the precedent was set. Israel effectively assumed the role of the region’s unilateral enforcer. This pattern repeated in 2007 with Operation Outside the Box, which obliterated Syria’s Al-Kibar facility. These preemptive strikes were driven by a clear calculation: that major global powers would continue to grant Israel impunity, regardless of the overt violations of international law.

When Arab states, led by Egypt, have consistently called for a Weapons of Mass Destruction-Free Zone in the Middle East, the United States and its allies have routinely blocked such initiatives to preserve Israel’s exceptional status.

Against Iran, this architecture of sabotage has reached unprecedented levels of sophistication and lethality. Over the past two decades, Israel has waged a shadow war involving the assassination of nuclear scientists in Tehran, sometimes using remotely operated weapons, as well as cyberattacks like Stuxnet, which crippled thousands of centrifuges at Natanz. These operations have often been conducted in close coordination with U.S. intelligence, underscoring how Western non-proliferation policy frequently functions as an instrument to preserve Israel’s military dominance.

The escalation culminated in the Rising Lion campaign in 2025 and Operation Epic Fury in early 2026. Backed by the Trump administration and tacit support from several European capitals, Iran’s nuclear infrastructure was targeted through large-scale airstrikes that largely disregarded the risks of radiation exposure to civilians. Israel justified these actions by claiming diplomacy had failed. Yet this narrative omits a critical reality: Israel has consistently undermined diplomatic efforts, including by seizing Iran’s nuclear archives in 2018 to help justify the U.S. withdrawal from the JCPOA. The objective has never been merely to prevent an “Iranian bomb,” but to preserve Israel’s monopoly on power.

READ: Israel says it intercepted Iranian missiles fired towards Dimona

A Shadow Alliance in the Negev Desert

The portrayal of Israel as a small, self-reliant state under constant siege is a carefully constructed myth. The history of its nuclear program is one of covert international collaboration, involving countries that now lead global anti-nuclear campaigns. Without technological assistance from France, heavy water supplied by Norway via the United Kingdom, and uranium sourced from Argentina, the Dimona facility would never have materialized.

Israel has consistently undermined diplomatic efforts, including by seizing Iran’s nuclear archives in 2018 to help justify the US withdrawal from the JCPOA. The objective has never been merely to prevent an “Iranian bomb,” but to preserve Israel’s monopoly on power.

France, now a vocal critic of Iran, played a central role by supplying the EL-102 reactor and a plutonium reprocessing plant in 1957, partly as repayment for Israel’s support during the Suez Crisis. Even more striking was Israel’s nuclear collaboration with apartheid South Africa in the 1970s. As two internationally isolated regimes, they developed deep military ties. Declassified documents reveal that Shimon Peres once offered to sell nuclear warheads to Pretoria. This partnership likely culminated in the 1979 Vela Incident, when a suspected nuclear test was detected in the Indian Ocean. Despite strong evidence pointing to a joint Israeli-South African test, the Carter administration chose to obscure the findings to protect its ally.

Such collaborations demonstrate that, for Israel, international norms are secondary to strategic imperatives. While aiding a racially segregated regime’s nuclear ambitions, Israel simultaneously leveraged its diplomatic influence to block cooperation between its adversaries and other states. This pattern persists today in the form of cyber and surveillance technologies exported to authoritarian regimes in exchange for diplomatic support.

Western backing has also extended to high-level intelligence operations to secure nuclear materials. In the 1968 Plumbat Affair, Israeli intelligence reportedly acquired 200 tons of yellowcake uranium through a front-company scheme involving a cargo ship in Antwerp. Rather than triggering sanctions or legal consequences, the operation was widely regarded as a remarkable intelligence success. Over time, the international community has normalized such state-level misconduct, creating a skewed moral framework where the security of one nation is deemed more important than the integrity of international law itself.

The Double Standard

Today, when the international community speaks of nuclear threats in the Middle East, the subject is invariably Iran. Yet the most immediate and substantial threat, Israel’s nuclear arsenal, remains untouchable. This double standard has evolved into a kind of doctrine in global diplomacy, where allegiance to Israel’s security necessitates the suspension of logic and justice. How can a state with hundreds of unmonitored nuclear warheads be framed as a “stabilizing force,” while another under strict IAEA oversight is cast as an existential threat?

This hypocrisy is especially evident in the application of the NPT. Intended as a universal instrument, it has instead functioned in the Middle East as a mechanism to constrain Arab states and Iran, while allowing Israel to expand its nuclear capabilities unchecked. The United States has consistently used its veto power in the UN Security Council to block resolutions targeting Israel’s nuclear program. Such policies not only undermine Washington’s credibility but erode the very foundations of international law. When laws apply only to the weak, they become instruments of domination rather than justice.

This hypocrisy is especially evident in the application of the NPT. Intended as a universal instrument, it has instead functioned in the Middle East as a mechanism to constrain Arab states and Iran, while allowing Israel to expand its nuclear capabilities unchecked.

Looking ahead, Middle Eastern security will not be achieved through bombing Natanz or assassinating scientists in Tehran. As long as Israel is permitted to maintain its nuclear monopoly under the protection of Western double standards, the region will remain locked in a cycle of proliferation. Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and others will inevitably seek their own nuclear capabilities to counterbalance Israeli dominance. Israel’s strategy of “mowing the grass” may delay conflict, but it cannot resolve it.

The time has come for the world to stop feigning ignorance about Dimona. Any serious conversation about peace in the Middle East must begin with dismantling Israel’s nuclear privilege and demanding universal transparency. Without equal pressure on Israel to join the NPT and place its facilities under IAEA safeguards, the rhetoric of non-proliferation is little more than diplomatic theater. Regional security can only be built on a foundation of equality, not under the shadow of a nuclear monopoly sustained by global hypocrisy.

April 4, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Legal challenge against nuclear site plan rejected

BBC 2nd April 2026,
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cy01wkgw2z8o

A judge has thrown out a legal challenge against a plan to extract water at the UK’s largest nuclear site.

Sellafield, in Cumbria, was given permission last May by the Environment Agency (EA) to extract water from its site, as part of the process to build a new radioactive waste storage facility.

Campaigners for Lakes Against Nuclear Dump (LAND) submitted a legal challenge against this, amid fears for the impact on nearby rivers. A high court judge said there was “no credible evidence” to allow the challenge to go ahead.

A Sellafield spokesman said the outcome would allow it to focus on its “mission to deal with the hazards on our site safely and sustainably”.

The licence granted to Sellafield would allow the company to extract up to 77,077,224 gallons (350,400 cubic metres) of water a year until 2031.

The EA previously said it had considered all the potential impacts on the environment before giving permission.

Marianne Birkby, who submitted the challenge for LAND, said the group disagreed with the decision and would be looking to lodge an appeal.

It argued the environmental impacts of the licence had not been properly assessed and feared contaminated water would end up in the rivers Calder and Ehen.

“We feel we must challenge the Environment Agency’s continual rubberstamping of Sellafield’s wish lists,” Birkby said.

Sellafield said removing water from a construction site was standard practice when preparing land for a building project.

A spokesman said: “This water will not be discharged to the rivers Calder or Ehen. It is pumped to on-site storage tanks for testing prior to being discharged direct to sea.”

April 4, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Legal, UK | Leave a comment

Inspiring the Authentic Journalist: The Pentagon’s Renewed attack on Press Credentials

1 April 2026 Dr Binoy Kampmark AIM Extra, https://theaimn.net/inspiring-the-authentic-journalist-the-pentagons-renewed-attack-on-press-credentials/

On March 20, 2026, US District Senior Judge Paul Friedman found for The New York Times in a ruling deeming the Pentagon’s media access policy in breach of the US Constitution. Central to the policy was the requirement that all credentialled journalists sign a pledge that officials would not be asked for information they were not authorised to release. The Pentagon Facilities Alternative Credentials (PFACs) policy was found to have violated the First Amendment for its lack of reasonableness and being “viewpoint-discriminatory,” and the Fifth Amendment for not outlining clear standards governing cases when press credentials can be denied.

The judge thought the policy’s purpose was rooted in notions of removing “disfavoured journalists” while filling, in their emptied ranks, those “favourable to or spoon-fed by department leadership.” Indeed, that happened, with an exodus of main stable news organisations refusing to take up the pledge, leaving those friendly to the administration to take their place in mild leisure and bigoted sympathy.

The irony there is that the Pentagon media pack do not, for the most part, need to be encouraged by such feeding practices. They normally swallow the slop and staple whole. Truly intrepid reporters wedded to sharp if ugly authenticity are rarely seen at press gatherings conducted and managed by officialdom in the capital cities of the world, certainly those in the business of defence and security. The issue is not the correctitude of the ruling that the PFAC policy breached the Constitution but the curious sense that the Fourth Estate was necessarily better informed for sharing desks in situ, or near officials, moving through corridors without invigilation and having what is known as “access” to aides and advisers

The judge certainly gave little thought in examining that premise, taking the evidence at face value that the “presence of PFAC holders at the Pentagon has enhanced the ability of journalists and news organizations to keep Americans informed about the US military while posing no security or safety risk to Department property or personnel.” (In what way?) The environs of the building also offered chances for press briefings, even those called at short notice, and opportunities to question officials at, before or after such briefings. Semi-formal and informal opportunities to question personnel also helped identify “the context and detail needed to report accurately and effectively about defense policy and military operations.”

The Pentagon promised to both appeal the ruling and introduce a revised restrictive policy as stridently buffoonish as its first one. Instead of abiding by the ruling to re-credential the Times reporters and permitting those who had refused to sign the pledge to have their passes restored, the department shut down access to most of the building. The intention is to house these bought scribblers in a new, and yet unbuilt annex. The decades-old Correspondents’ Corridor has been shut down, and journalists given limited unescorted access to a library at the complex’s periphery.

With The Times again taking the matter to court, Judge Friedman found these arrangements “weird.” “Is this a Catch-22? Is this Kafka?” Hardly. Had Franz Kafka advised this peculiar administration, he would have informed them about bureaucracy’s innumerable options of control regarding the media message in war. The press would have been given the grand review and assessment on battles and engagements, curated, scrupulously controlled. No wrinkles, no frowns. Questions would have been near irrelevant, lies, generously scattered and sprinkled.

At the hearing itself, Justice Department attorney Sarah Welch weakly suggested to Friedman that the information given to the paper may have been outdated: journalists could access a designated, temporary workspace directly from the Pentagon parking lot, or take the shuttle. Such is the nature of Secretary of War Pete Hegseth’s thin and ever thinning charity.

In addition to issues of access, Friedman was also concerned that a journalist’s credentials might be revoked if anonymity is offered to sources of information known to be classified or barred from release by statute. Merely asking a question cannot constitute grounds of punishment. “I thought I answered that question,” he explained in the hearing. “A journalist can always ask and they can ask anybody.”

The lawyer representing the Times, Ted Boutrous, pursued the obvious line that the revised interim policy was intended to “purge the Pentagon of reporters who are engaged in independent reporting.” This policy of sheer “gibberish” was merely a form of “gaslighting.” The Pentagon had “made the press credential we fought so hard to get back into a meaningless piece of plastic.” But did it really have much meaning to begin with?

Reporters were subsequently told by Commander Timothy Parlatore that any stern reviewing of credentials would ignore published work, focusing instead on journalists daring to sniff out classified or legally barred information. “Anytime a person with a security clearance has somebody that approaches them trying to solicit information, they’re supposed to report that.” The First Amendment was a relic farthest from his mind as he expressed satisfaction that the “constant leaks and constant reports about classified things” had “largely stopped.” The missions in Venezuela and Iran had been executed to perfection “without the same worry of the classified leaks.” His news is obviously of that unique variety: unchallenged and unverified.

Trump and his simian henchmen, some slobbering in sanguineous yearning and prayer (Hegseth again), would be surprised by the notion that the Fourth Estate is not to be bullied but seduced, not to be ridiculed but praised. Vanity in searching for a source often blights the searcher: confirmation bias and dreams of the scoop are imbibed with the establishment cocktail. Give the press pack a story, however, true, and they will run with it. Once the information limps to the newsroom, broadsheet or podcast, it will have been managed and mangled into spectral irrelevance, lost in the short-term stutters and moist mutterings of social media. It would have become just another establishment story.

In this context, leaks become more imperative than ever. As the Iran War groans on, the hunger for such disclosures is bound to be stimulated. Showing a stunning lack of foresight, the Trump administration’s attempt to control information through removing credentials or barring reporters’ access to most of the Pentagon may well encourage journalists to finally seek richer, more reliable alternatives. The public will get the copy it deserves, unmanaged and unspun by the media magicians in the department and the pliant regurgitators of the Pentagon Press Set.

April 4, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | media, USA | Leave a comment

The Platform of Shame: How Australia Normalised a Genocidal Regime

1 April 2026 Dr Andrew Klein, PhD AIM Extra. https://theaimn.net/the-platform-of-shame-how-australia-normalised-a-genocidal-regime/

An ambassador who calls dead journalists terrorists. A death penalty for Palestinians only. A government that says nothing. And a Press Club that provides the stage.

I. The Spectacle

On March 31, 2026, the National Press Club of Australia hosted Dr Hillel Newman, the newly appointed ambassador of Israel, for an address titled “Reshaping the Middle East.”

What unfolded was not diplomacy. It was propaganda. It was the marketing of genocide. And it was allowed to continue, uninterrupted, on Australian soil, under the lights of an institution that once stood for journalistic integrity.

Newman rejected a figure of 70,000 dead in Gaza – a number, he said, provided by Hamas. He claimed the ratio of civilian to combatant casualties was “the lowest in urban warfare” and that Israel should be “commended” for the “low number of uninvolved civilians that were actually killed.”

He was speaking over the bodies of 70,000 people. He was speaking over the findings of a United Nations commission of inquiry that, in September last year, found that Israel had committed genocide in the Gaza Strip – accusing the nation of having committed four genocidal acts, “namely killing, causing serious bodily or mental harm, deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the destruction of the Palestinians in whole or in part, and imposing measures intended to prevent births.”

The Press Club did not challenge him. The journalists in the room did not walk out. The broadcast continued.

II. The Death Penalty Law

On March 30, the Israeli Knesset passed a law imposing the death penalty for terrorism-related offences. Human Rights Watch has analysed the bill and found it explicitly discriminatory.

The law makes death by hanging the default punishment for West Bank Palestinians convicted of nationalistic killings. It also gives Israeli courts the option of imposing the death penalty on Israeli citizens convicted on similar charges – language that legal experts say effectively confines those who can be sentenced to death to Palestinian citizens of Israel and excludes Jewish citizens.

Within the military court system of the Occupied Palestinian Territory, the bill imposes the death penalty for killings classified as acts of terrorism as defined under Israeli law, even without a prosecutorial request. The bill only allows courts to order life imprisonment in unspecified exceptional cases where “special reasons” are found, limiting judicial discretion. It also prohibits commutation of sentences and mandates execution within an accelerated timeframe of 90 days.

Israeli citizens and residents are explicitly excluded from this provision: military jurisdiction applies exclusively to Palestinians, while Israeli settlers are tried in civilian courts.

Human Rights Watch has noted that military trials of Palestinians have “an approximately 96% conviction rate, based largely on ‘confessions’ extracted under duress and torture during interrogations.”

Adam Coogle, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch, stated: “Israeli officials argue that imposing the death penalty is about security, but in reality, it entrenches discrimination and a two-tiered system of justice, both hallmarks of apartheid. The death penalty is irreversible and cruel. Combined with its severe restrictions on appeals and its 90-day execution timeline, this bill aims to kill Palestinian detainees faster and with less scrutiny.”

The Palestinian Authority has condemned the law as a “war crime” and a “flagrant violation of international humanitarian law, particularly the Fourth Geneva Convention, which guarantees protection for individuals and fair trial rights.”

At the Press Club, Newman defended the law. “Just like in the United States, in Japan and in India, which have capital punishment, Israel has the right, as a sovereign state, to decide … capital punishment,” he said.

He did not mention the discrimination. He did not mention the 96% conviction rate. He did not mention the torture.

III. The Journalists

Newman was asked about the killing of journalists in Gaza and Lebanon. The International Federation of Journalists has reported that 261 journalists and media workers have been killed in Gaza since October 7, 2023. The Committee to Protect Journalists has accused Israel of killing a record 129 journalists in 2025.

Newman’s response was chilling.

He claimed that two of three journalists killed in an Israeli air strike in Lebanon were “100 per cent terrorist” members of Hezbollah’s elite Radwan force. He said they were “dressed up as journalists.” He claimed that both Hamas and Hezbollah “disguise themselves as press and remain terrorist operatives.”

When pressed on what percentage of killed journalists were not terrorists, he admitted: “The honest truth is that we have no way of knowing the exact amount of journalists who weren’t 100 per cent journalists who were killed.”

He has no way of knowing. Yet he called them terrorists anyway. On Australian soil. At the National Press Club.

The Committee to Protect Journalists has previously described such accusations as “smear campaigns” without “credible evidence to substantiate their claims.”

Newman also dismissed the broader death toll of journalists, saying: “When people outside quote 250, 300 journalists [have been killed], what they’re doing is they’re just buying [it] hook, line and sinker. If they would check, they would find that the majority of all the journalists, so-called journalists, that were affected were actually activists guised as journalists.”

He has no evidence. He provided none. The Press Club did not ask for it.

IV. The Frankcom Family

While Newman spoke inside the Press Club, the family of Zomi Frankcom stood outside.

Frankcom, an Australian aid worker, was killed by an Israeli drone strike on April 1, 2024, while working for World Central Kitchen in Gaza. Seven aid workers died. The convoy was struck three times.

Two years later, the family is still waiting for justice. They are still waiting for the release of critical drone footage audio that would establish motive. Former Defence Force chief Mark Binskin, who conducted an independent inquiry, was given access to unedited drone footage – but it did not include audio.

Newman was asked repeatedly whether the Israeli government would apologise to the Frankcom family. He refused. “Every incident of an innocent person or aid worker that is affected by a war situation is tragic, and we’ve expressed full sympathy with the family,” he said.

Sympathy. Not an apology.

He said reparations were “dependent on the final outcome of the interrogation.” Two years later, the interrogation is still not final.

Mal Frankcom, Zomi’s brother, said the family would like a formal apology, but he believed this was unlikely because it “could be seen as an admission of guilt.”

He met with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on Tuesday. He urged the government to use all possible diplomatic levers to pressure Israel to complete its investigation.

The ambassador was asked about the audio. He said: “That’s not in my hands. It’s in the IDF’s hands.”

The IDF’s hands. Where it has been for two years.

V. The Australian Government’s Response

Foreign Minister Penny Wong told the Labor caucus that Australia opposes the death penalty “in all instances.” She pointed to a joint statement Australia signed alongside France, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom that opposed the measure.

The statement said: “We are particularly worried about the de facto discriminatory character of the bill. The adoption of this bill would risk undermining Israel’s commitments with regards to democratic principles.”

A joint statement. Words. Not action.

The government has not summoned the ambassador. It has not imposed sanctions. It has not suspended military cooperation. It has not done anything that would cost Israel anything at all.

The same government that rushed to pass hate speech laws after the Bondi terror attack – laws that criminalise the phrase “from the river to the sea” – has nothing to say about a law that would execute Palestinian prisoners by hanging within 90 days, with no right of pardon, under a discriminatory legal regime.

The same government that welcomed Israeli President Isaac Herzog to Canberra has not condemned the man who wore a noose-shaped lapel pin while celebrating the passage of this law – Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s National Security Minister.

The same government that expelled Iran’s ambassador after ASIO concluded Tehran orchestrated the bombings of a synagogue and a kosher restaurant has not applied the same standard to Israel.

VI. The Question of Double Standards

In 2024, the Albanese government expelled Iran’s ambassador, Ahmad Sadeghi, after domestic spy agency ASIO concluded that Iran had orchestrated the bombings of a synagogue in Melbourne and a kosher restaurant in Sydney.

A top Iranian diplomat, Mohammad Pournajaf, defected from the regime and was granted asylum in Australia. The government acted. The ambassador was expelled.

Yet Israel’s ambassador calls dead journalists terrorists, defends a discriminatory death penalty law, refuses to apologise for the killing of an Australian aid worker – and the government says nothing.

Why was the Iranian ambassador expelled, but the Israeli ambassador remains?

The answer is the network. The donors. The lobbyists. The fear of being labelled antisemitic. The capture of our political class by a foreign ideology that demands silence in exchange for support.

VII. Has the Press Club Been Captured?

The National Press Club is meant to be a forum for robust journalism. For challenging those in power. For holding the powerful to account.

On March 31, 2026, it provided a platform for an ambassador who called dead journalists terrorists. Who defended a discriminatory death penalty law. Who refused to apologise for the killing of an Australian aid worker.

The journalists in the room did not walk out. They did not cut the microphone. They did not refuse to platform a man who accused the dead of being terrorists without evidence.

This does no credit to Australian journalism. It does no credit to the Press Club. It does no credit to Australia.

VIII. The Questions They Refuse to Ask

We will ask the questions they refuse to ask:

Why was Hillel Newman given a platform to call dead journalists terrorists?
Why did the National Press Club not challenge his claims in real time?
Why has the Australian government not summoned the ambassador to answer for the death penalty law?
Why has the government not condemned the law in the strongest possible terms?
Why has the government not suspended military cooperation with Israel?
Why has the government not imposed sanctions?
Why has the government done nothing that would cost Israel anything at all?
Why was the Iranian ambassador expelled, but the Israeli ambassador remains?

The Frankcom family deserves answers. The Palestinian prisoners facing execution deserve the world to speak. The Australian people deserve to know why their government is silent.

IX. The Larger Pattern

This is not an isolated incident. It is the same pattern we have been exposing for weeks.

The same network that brought us the Segal Plan – mandatory Zionist indoctrination in universities. The same network that brought us the police crackdown in New South Wales – eight armoured officers breaking down a woman’s door at 5am. The same network that is turning our public service into an arm of foreign influence. The same network that has captured our political class.

The same silence. The same complicity. The same refusal to act.

Israel is committing genocide. The International Court of Justice has found it “plausible.” The United Nations commission of inquiry has found it has committed genocidal acts. The world is watching.

And Australia says nothing. Or says a few words in a joint statement, then returns to business as usual.

X. What Must Be Done

The National Press Club must answer for its decision to platform Newman. Why was he not challenged? Why was the broadcast allowed to continue? Why were dead journalists slandered without evidence on Australian soil?
The Australian government must summon the ambassador. He must answer for the death penalty law. He must answer for his comments about journalists. He must answer for the Frankcom family.
The government must condemn the death penalty law in the strongest possible terms. A joint statement is not enough. Words are not enough. Australia must use every diplomatic lever to oppose this discriminatory, inhumane legislation.
The government must suspend military cooperation with Israel. Australia cannot claim to oppose the death penalty while cooperating militarily with a state that imposes it discriminatorily.
The government must impose sanctions. The time for words is over. The time for action is now.
The Frankcom family must receive justice. The audio must be released. The investigation must be completed. Those responsible must be held accountable.

XI. A Warning

What happened at the National Press Club on March 31, 2026, was not an aberration. It was the logical conclusion of a pattern.

A foreign ambassador called dead journalists terrorists. He defended a law that executes Palestinians by hanging within 90 days, with no right of pardon, under a discriminatory legal regime. He refused to apologise for the killing of an Australian aid worker.

And Australia was silent. The government was silent. The Press Club was silent. The media was silent.

This is what complicity looks like. Not active participation. Silence. The refusal to speak. The refusal to act. The refusal to hold accountable those who commit atrocities in our name, with our support, under the cover of our alliance.

The wire is not cut. The shells fall short. The men who send others to die do not walk the ground.

But we will not be silent. We will ask the questions they refuse to ask. We will name the names. We will expose the pattern.

And we will keep cutting the wire until there is nothing left but the garden.

This article is dedicated to my wife, who stands with me shoulder to shoulder, and I am so proud of her.

Sources:……………………………………………………………

April 4, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | AUSTRALIA, civil liberties | Leave a comment

Scenario Analysis for Partitioning and Transmutation(P&T) in a Phase-out Scenario

In February 2025, the German Federal Agency for Disruptive Innovation
(SPRIN-D) published the “Implementation Study on an Accelerator-Driven
Neutron Source at the Site of a Former Nuclear Power Plant” (Houben et
al. 2025), proposing an alternative waste management option. This type of
radioactive waste management is often summarized under the broader term of
Partitioning and Transmutation (P&T).

The SPRIN-D study has been critically
assessed with respect to its assumptions, feasibility, and expected
benefits for Germany e.g. by the German Federal Ministry for the Safety of
Nuclear Waste Management (Bundesamt für die Sicherheit der nuklearen
Entsorgung (BASE) 2025).

The P&T scenarios in the SPRIN-D study address
only a narrow and highly constrained case. They do not provide a
transparent, reproducible nationwide system description for the treatment
of the full German high-level waste inventory (HLW). Additionally key
modelling parameters and interim results are only partly documented. Under
the explicit assumption of hypothetical technical feasibility, based on
documented parameters and literature values, this INRAG study estimates
what a national implementation of a P&T scenario in Germany based on
Transmutex’ START concept could entail.

After briefly outlining the
background, we define a consistent set of scenario parameters and
justifying the chosen values. We then present the modelling results, such
as the number of facilities and time periods required under the stated
boundary conditions, followed by a discussion of selected potential safety
implications of operating a full-scale system over multiple decades.

The analysis is limited to technical and system-dimension aspects. Overall, the
results indicate that the optimistic assumptions in Houben et al. (2025) do
not provide a transparent, reproducible nationwide mass-balance model and
results change drastically if parameter ranges are applied as reported in
the scientific literature.

Even under optimistic modelling assumptions, P&T
does not remove the need for a geological repository. Rather, the burden of
nuclear waste is shifted into a long-lived multi-site nuclear industrial
system with additional facilities, operational waste streams, and prolonged
institutional requirements.

INRAG 11th March 2026,
https://www.inrag.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/inrag_put_publication_V2.pdf

April 4, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Germany, wastes | Leave a comment

Manchester Professor appointed expert reviewer for Government nuclear decommissioning review

A University of Manchester Professor has been appointed by Lord Vallance,
Minister of State for Science, Innovation, Research and Nuclear, as an
Expert Reviewer for an independent assessment of the Nuclear
Decommissioning Authority (NDA); an executive non-departmental public body
that is charged with, on behalf of government, the mission to clean-up the
UK’s earliest nuclear sites safely, securely and cost effectively.

Professor Zara Hodgson FREng is an internationally recognised expert in
nuclear energy policy and research, and Director of the University’s
Dalton Nuclear Institute. She has been appointed to support the NDA 2026
Review, which has been commissioned by the Government to provide assurance
on the NDA’s performance and governance, and to make recommendations on
improvements.

The Review is led by Dr Tim Stone CBE, a senior expert
adviser to five previous Secretaries of State in two successive UK
governments and the Chair of Nuclear Risk Insurers. Professor Hodgson will
join a team of three other independent experts to support Dr Stone. The
review will focus on the NDA’s strategic planning and management, project
and programme delivery, and financial management. It will assess how
effectively the NDA delivers value for money for the taxpayer while
maintaining the highest standards of safety, transparency and governance
across the UK’s civil nuclear legacy. Reviewers will challenge current
practices, propose bold value-for-money recommendations, and highlight good
practice while identifying areas for improvement.

Manchester University 1st April 2026, https://www.manchester.ac.uk/about/news/manchester-professor-appointed-expert-reviewer-for-government-nuclear-decommissioning-review/

April 4, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics, UK | Leave a comment