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

Nuclear needs to build up to 8,000 SMRs just to catch up with wind and solar. By 2035, they might have 5

Giles Parkinson, May 27, 2026, https://reneweconomy.com.au/nuclear-needs-to-build-up-to-8000-smrs-just-to-catch-up-with-wind-and-solar-now-by-2035-they-might-have-5/

Australia’s almost indistinguishable far right political parties – the Liberals, Nationals and One Nation – are pushing the nuclear barrow once again, not for climate reasons but because of the “anything but wind and solar” ideology demanded by their fossil-fuelled benefactors.

So it came as a timely reminder on Wednesday, when one of the world’s leading green energy analysts, Michael Liebreich, underlined just how useless nuclear energy is for dealing with climate change, and how far the small nuclear reactors championed by many are from competing with surging wind and solar.

Liebreich is the founder of Bloomberg New Energy Finance and his address to the Energy Efficiency Council’s National Conference also touched on the perils of net zero targets (because it puts the focus on what’s really hard rather than what’s readily achievable), and the overwhelming push for electrification for “just about everything.”

But it was the nuclear hype that he was also keen to puncture, if only to underline the sheer scale and dominance of wind and solar, and its rapidly growing share of “useable” energy, as opposed to “primary energy” that ignores the massive inefficiencies of fossil fuels.

SMR are still not being built but they are championed by some of the world’s richest people, the AI and social media “tech bros” who are looking for ample energy sources to power their massive data centre needs (while contracting tens of gigawatts of wind and solar in the meantime).

“They (the tech bros) love nuclear, and they’re going to be very angry when they discover what everybody discovers, which is nuclear is kind of expensive and long and complicated,” Liebreich said.

“But even if they succeed, it’s not going to be a climate solution,” he said. And the reason is that simply to match the output of wind and solar in the 2024 calendar year, the industry would need 1,250 of the 470 MW SMRs that are being developed by Rolls Royce, or up to 8,000 of the much smaller SMRs pushed by the likes of Oklo.

“If they build five by 2035 that will be a big win,” Liebreich said. “And so, as a climate solution, by the time you did build 2000 Westinghouse SMRs, where do you think wind and solar is going to be?

“It’s obviously going to have grown. That green curve is not stopping, it is taking off, and you can see it’s taking off even in the countries that are really trying to build nuclear.”

The nuclear push is usually associated in Australia by calls to abandon net zero targets, with the main argument being – without evidence – that it is trashing the economy.

Net zero has been criticised by others supportive of strong action. Andrew Forrest, aiming for real zero at Fortescue’s giant iron ore mines by 2030, says net zero is an excuse to do not much and use offsets instead of cutting emissions, others say a 2050 target is used by an excuse to do not much anytime soon.

Liebreich’s criticism is that it makes everything sound too hard. “By focusing on zero, immediately your eye is drawn to doing the difficult bits, and the difficult bits are expensive, and we just don’t have to have those discussions right now.

“If we can’t do aviation, there’s … a smorgasbord of opportunities right in front of us that we should be doing first and quickly, because time matters. Carbon has a time value, once it’s up there, it stays up there.”

As an example of that smorgasbord, Liebreich pointed to EVs, and specifically the Nissan Leaf, which from its 2011 version to its 2026 version had trebled the size of its battery, quadrupled its range, doubled the power, and cut the cost by one third.

Simply looking at efficient technologies can also achieve so much.

“If you go from coal-fired incandescent light bulb to an LED, same energy service, you cut primary energy by 95 per cent.

“Electric cars are the same, you go from a fossil car to electric car, (you get a) 75 per cent cut in primary energy. Same for heating, you go from a boiler to a heat pump, (you get) a 75 per cent reduction in primary energy.”

Liebreich says the greater efficiency of wind ands solar – useable energy as opposed to the primary energy championed by the fossil fuel industry trying to pretend that non-hydro renewables have no impact – will accelerate that change.

“What it does is it pushes fossil off the system, it’s a transition, and if you think about it, when we went from analog to mobile and digital telephony, we didn’t measure it by how many landlines were disconnected in 1995.

“We just asked how many people have got mobile phones. Peak landline happened over 30 years after the invention of the mobile phone, in 2006. So if you had said in 2000 there’s no transition, it’s failed, it’s troubled, it’ll never happen, you look pretty stupid now.

“Peak horse in the US was 1920. The car was invented in 1886. So you measure a transition by the growth of the new, not the crushing of the old.

“And I also think … the politics of talking about how we’ve got to stop this and block this and destroy that, and so it’s very, very difficult.

“We’re telling people you’re going to stop them from using things, whether it’s coal or petrol or diesel or their boiler, or whatever, it is politically difficult. Well, it’s unacceptable. So I think we’ve got to talk about growing anew. That brings me to electrification, and electrification, I think, is the solution to all of the above.”

And for more on that, please see our recent story on Liebreich’s recently released Elecrification Staircase – From cars to coastal shipping, we can electrify almost everything, according to Electrification Staircase.

May 31, 2026 Posted by | ENERGY | Leave a comment

Energy Department takes steps toward allowing plutonium, historically used in weapons, in nuclear fuel

by Rachel Frazin – 05/26/26, https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/5896154-energy-department-plutonium-nuclear-power/
 

The Energy Department may allow up to five companies to use its surplus plutonium — which it has historically been used in nuclear warheads — as fuel.

The department has selected the firms for “advanced negotiations regarding the potential allocation of surplus plutonium materials,” a spokesperson for its nuclear energy office said Tuesday.

The five companies entering advanced negotiations are: Oklo, Exodys Energy, Shine Technologies, Standard Nuclear and Flibe Energy, Inc. 

The Energy Department has historically used plutonium in nuclear warheads. It produced a significant amount of it during the Cold War.

In March, the White House issued an executive order directing the department to halt a prior program that sought to dilute and dispose of the plutonium. The order also directed the department to instead set up a program making surplus plutonium available to the nuclear energy industry.

In October, the Energy Department said that the available surplus for the program includes weapons-grade, fuel-grade, reactor-grade or mixed plutonium.

According to the department, the plan to give plutonium to energy companies “is anticipated to help companies unlock the next level of private funding to broaden domestic nuclear fuel supplies, spur innovation on American recycling technologies, and unlock private sector funding to fuel the nation’s nuclear renaissance.”

However, critics argue that repurposing plutonium for civilian energy could have security and other risks.

“Plutonium-based fuels and reprocessing have a poor track record when introduced in civilian nuclear energy programs,” Ernest Moniz, who was energy secretary under former President Obama, wrote last year, adding that it could lead to “the creation of additional stocks of weapons-usable materials.”

Meanwhile, Oklo cofounder and CEO Jacob DeWitte said in a written statement on Tuesday that the Energy Department program could help speed up the development of nuclear energy.

“Fuel supply constraints are a key throttle to advanced reactor development,” DeWitte said. “This program creates a pathway to use existing surplus material as bridge fuel for advanced reactors to bring more reactors online sooner.”

May 31, 2026 Posted by | ENERGY, USA | Leave a comment

Bully Trump pivots from strong Iran to weak Oman – Walt Zlotow


Walt Zlotow West Suburban Peace Coalition Glen Ellyn IL, 29 May 26

Donald Trump is the classic schoolyard bully. Alas, instead of hurting, indeed terrorizing weaker school mates, he’s terrorizing the weaker on a global scale, both at home and abroad.

On the domestic front he’s demonizing the ‘other’ by abusing, sometimes killing decent, hardworking undocumented. He uses the Bully Pulpit, not in the rhetorical sense to uplift society promoting wise polices, but to dismantle most sensible domestic policies and institutions, and demonize anyone who crosses him. Nearly every critic of Trump within the Republican Party has been bullied from public office. Every Democrat is slimed as a terrible, horrible person. Classic bullying.

But it’s on the world stage where his bullying is relentlessly murderous. Over 60 bombings of imagined bad guys in Somalia without a hint of justification, much less even a mention. Swooping down into pitifully powerless Venezuela to snatch its president on trumped up charges, slaughtering hundreds in the process. Blowing up small, unarmed boats in the Caribbean then bragging his sick, murderous rampage saved a million US lives.

But on February 28th bully Trump met match. He attacked large, powerful Iran believing the lies of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and own war cabinet that Iran would collapse within days once Netanyahu assassinated Iran’s ruler. A few days turned into 39 days of bombing before Trump realized that Iran was not only surviving but winning. How? By unleashing a massive missile barrage on every US Gulf States base, Gulf States oil infrastructure, Israel, and closing the Strait of Hormuz to a fifth of the world’s oil supply.

What to do? After 91 days of humiliating defeat, bully Trump turned his bullying on tiny Oman which shares the Strait of Hormuz with Iran. Oman will be Iran’s partner in controlling traffic thru the Strait which consists of Iran and Oman territorial waters.

When asked if he’d accept a short-term deal that involved Iran and Oman jointly controlling the Strait of Hormuz, bully Trump unloaded on Oman. “No, the Strait’s got to be opened to everybody. It’s international waters. Nobody’s going to control it. We’ll watch over it, but nobody’s going to control it. Oman will behave just like everybody else, or we’ll have to blow them up. They understand that they’ll be fine,

Sorry bully Trump. Knowing Trump can no longer ‘blow up’ anybody in the region after squandering much US firepower on his lost Iran war, Oman will stand up to bully Trump just like Strait partner Iran.

Now that bully Trump has been exposed as the powerless bully he is, it’s all over for him to strut the world stage like he owns it. He’s alienated friend and foe alike with his murderous bullying, duplicitous negotiating and utter lack of credibility.

Trump’s bullying served him well in both his business career and his takeover of the r Republican Party for two presidential terms. But Karma eventually comes to bullies who believe they can bully their way thru life. It’s going to take months, years, possibly a decade to undo the damage of Trump’s bullying at home and abroad. But as Bob Dylan sang long ago…”Even the President of the United States must sometimes have to stand naked.”

May 31, 2026 Posted by | PERSONAL STORIES, politics international, USA | Leave a comment

7 June – WEBINAR -Get Inspired by Protests Against Military Bases!

WEBINAR – https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_QOJuFnibTF6eUmBt-tL8-A

As militarization pushes itself into almost every corner of our lives, as weapons become more powerful, as military bases across the world become nuclear armed, we know this is not about defense. This is about imperialism hand in hand with capitalism. It is about land grabs, resource extraction, pollution and climate change. It is about turning our communities into targets and deforming the future of our children.

Many brave women across the world have stood firm to defy this onslaught of aggression. We bring you the voices of meaningful protest from some of those standing in the front line of defiance.

Saturday – June 6, 2026 – appr. 2 hrs including Q&A

16.00 Central European time (CET) –  10.00am New York time – 23.00 Tokyo time – 24.00/midnight Australia time

Speakers

·       South Korea  – Sung-Hee Choi – Women Cross DMZ  – “People’s protests against the naval base and militarization of Jeju”

·       Philippines – Corazon Fabros – IPB – protests against US military bases.

·       New Zealand – Liz Remmerswaal – active in WILPF, World BEYOND War – videoclip/protests against US military bases 

·       Australia – Margaret Prestorius – Wage Peace – videoclip/ protests against US military bases 

·      Italy – Patrizia Sterpetti – WILPF – Public Prosecutor complaint/illegal

·       Japan – tba possession and transfer of nuclear bombs

·       UK – Sophie Bolt – Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament/CND – protests at military bases

·       Germany – Kristine Karch – Stopp Air Base Ramstein – Peace week camp and demonstration at the base, June 2026

·       Spain – Juan José Ruiz – active for peace – Neither Yankees nor Spaniards, bases out!

·       France – Marie Sigogneau – Sortir du nucléaire pays nantais – Nuclear Exit Nantes Region – Protests against nuclear facilities

·       Ireland – Veterans for Peace, Irish Peace and Neutrality Alliance  – Edward Horgan – weekly protests at Shannon airport in 2025 and 2026

·       Netherlands – tba

Organised by

Global Women for Peace United Against NATO – GWUAN

Supported by

Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND)

No to War – No to Nato network

Stop Airbase Ramstein

Mujeres de Negro/Women in Black Madrid

WIPLF Italy

Sortir du Nucleaire Pays Nantais, France

Women for Peace – Finland

IWA – International Women’s Alliance

World Beyond War

United National Antiwar Coalition (UNAC)

Host and moderator

Hosted by: UNAC  

Moderator: Annachiara Canetta, World BEYOND War

on behalf of Global Women United for Peace against NATO

One linktree for all our media https://linktr.ee/WomenAgainstNATO

May 31, 2026 Posted by | Events | Leave a comment

U.S. Turns Cold War Plutonium Into Nuclear Fuel

Oil Price, By Charles Kennedy – May 28, 2026, 

  • The U.S. is exploring the use of Cold War-era plutonium from dismantled nuclear warheads as alternative fuel for advanced nuclear reactors due to uranium supply shortages and reliance on foreign enriched uranium.
  • The Department of Energy has shortlisted five nuclear companies, including SMR developers.
  • Critics warn the plan raises nuclear proliferation risks and could prove technically and economically difficult, as converting weapons-grade plutonium into reactor fuel remains highly expensive.

……………………………………………………………. The plutonium considered for distribution to nuclear companies is from dismantled warheads from the Cold War. The radioactive material—50 tons of surplus supply, according to the New York Times—was originally to be diluted and buried, but President Trump last year suspended that plan, per Reuters, which also recalled reports about Washington planning to make 20 tons of plutonium available to private companies.

……………………………There are, of course, opponents to the idea of using weapons-grade nuclear material for nuclear power generation by private companies. Indeed, some Democratic members of Congress have publicly protested the plan.

“The transfer of weapons-usable plutonium to private industry would increase the risk of nuclear weapons proliferation, including to rogue states or terrorists,” Massachusetts senator Ed Markey and representatives Don Beyer and John Garamendi said in a letter from last September. “The United States cannot effectively discourage other countries from using plutonium for civil purposes if we use it ourselves.”

The idea behind the move is to encourage the development of small modular nuclear reactors that could be built much more quickly than conventional ones—at least theoretically. The practical application of SMR technology, however, has stumbled after pioneer NuScale had to scrap its plans to build the first small modular reactor in the U.S. amid much higher than hoped-for costs, leading to insufficient numbers of future buyers willing to sign up for the facility’s output.

Despite these challenges in the MR segment, nuclear is back in a big way, not least thanks to Big Tech’s AI rush, which requires these companies to secure massive amounts of electricity for their facilities—and make it reliable. This is boosting the popularity of nuclear electricity outside the Big Tech community as well—higher electricity bills are making the construction costs of new nuclear power plants more palatable than they would have been a couple of years ago.

Whether plutonium would make an equivalent substitute for uranium in this nuclear renaissance remains questionable, it seems. The fact that the element could be used for the production of nuclear weapons is one problem with the idea. Another problem appears to be of a more technical nature, per the New York Times, which also cited critics as saying the cost of turning plutonium into nuclear fuel was prohibitively high. https://oilprice.com/Alternative-Energy/Nuclear-Power/US-Turns-Cold-War-Plutonium-Into-Nuclear-Fuel.html

May 31, 2026 Posted by | - plutonium, USA | Leave a comment

The Israeli Knesset just voted to dissolve itself, but this won’t end the Gaza genocide

Even if Netanyahu and his right-wing allies are ousted from government, Israel’s genocide in Gaza, ethnic cleansing in the West Bank, and the wars against Lebanon and Iran enjoy broad support across the Israeli political spectrum.

By Qassam Muaddi  May 27, 2026  , https://mondoweiss.net/2026/05/the-israeli-knesset-just-voted-to-dissolve-itself-but-any-new-government-will-still-pursue-genocide/

Israel might change its government sooner than expected after the Israeli Knesset voted to dissolve itself last week. The bill presented to the parliamentary body on May 20, which passed with a majority of 110 votes in favor and no opposing votes, could lead to early elections in September rather than November of this year. The vote was held in the absence of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and is set to be reconsidered at three more readings before moving toward implementation.

If passed, the current Knesset will expire, along with the government coalition based on its composition and the current cabinet led by Netanyahu. According to Israeli polls, Netanyahu’s main coalition allies, namely hardline ministers Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, have low chances of winning. Although the two main opposition leaders, Naftali Bennet and Yair Lapid, joined forces in a new party, polls indicate that Netanyahu’s Likud Party would still win 56 out of 120 seats in the Knesset. This leaves the Likud as the main political force in Israel, but without enough of a majority to form a government on its own, forcing it to form a coalition with other opposition parties.

The vote came amid renewed controversy surrounding the military drafting of Orthodox Haredi Israelis to military service. Haredi leaders presented the bill after Netanyahu’s government failed to advance another bill to exempt the Haredis from military service. 

The vote to dissolve the Knesset also comes amid mounting criticism of Netanyahu over his performance during the war on Iran and the security failure on October 7, 2023.

But what would the dissolution of the Israeli Knesset mean for Palestinians? And what does it say about the current state of Israeli politics that Netanyahu didn’t oppose the vote to move to early elections?

The short answer is: not much, or at least not for the better. Israel’s opposition parties have backed the war on Gaza, the expansion of settlements, and the war on Lebanon just as fervently as Netanyahu’s coalition, and in some cases have criticized him for not going far enough. Any new government will most likely pursue the same fundamental policies toward Palestinians. In the near term, the more pressing concern is what the current government will do to shore up its electoral standing before it leaves office. Precedent suggests that means further escalation.

Right-wing politics

Israeli politics has been dominated by its most extreme right-wing forces for almost two decades, but a common feature shared by past Israeli governments has been the lack of a simple majority by any single political party. In order to make up a majority government, any political party with the most seats in Knesset would have to form a coalition with other, smaller parties, such as Ben-Gvir’s Jewish Power and Smotrich’s Religious Zionism. When such government coalitions have formed, the junior partners have gained outsized leverage by the very fact that their presence keeps the government together. 

Yet in all these varying combinations of successive government coalitions, Israeli policy toward Palestinians has remained largely the same.

Settlement expansion and the push toward the annexation of the West Bank have been constants of every right-wing Israeli government, as has the policy of siege and periodic military offensives in Gaza. So, too, has the escalating crackdown on Palestinian prisoners and the deterioration of their conditions, and the repeated attempts to alter the status quo in East Jerusalem and at Al-Aqsa Mosque — arenas where Israeli politicians have long competed to score political points, especially in the run-up to elections.

Netanyahu’s standing was already in decline before October 7, battered by his corruption trials, his attempts to overhaul the Israeli judiciary, and the Haredi draft crisis. After October 7, he faced additional backlash over his handling of the hostage negotiations and, later, over what many Israelis saw as unsatisfactory results from the war on Iran, particularly the way the U.S.-Iran ceasefire was reached without Israeli consultation. But none of this criticism has targeted the substance of Netanyahu’s policies, as reflected in the polls’ projections for the next election.

Both Lapid and Bennett, and most other opposition figures, have supported the war on Gaza, including actions that human rights organizations have characterized as genocidal. The Israeli opposition has also backed the war on Lebanon and the expansion of settlements in the West Bank — and has, in fact, harshly criticized Netanyahu for allowing the U.S. to constraint Israeli action in Lebanon and Iran. Whatever government emerges from the next election will almost certainly be composed of parties that support those same policies, with or without Netanyahu and his closest allies.

That said, the next Israeli government could bring a certain “cooling down” of some of the more aggressive policies, according to Esmat Mansour, a Palestinian journalist and specialist in Israeli politics.

Mansour believes that current regional conditions, including the reorganiztion of the region’s geopolitics in the wake of Iran’s newfound strategic advantage in its war with the U.S., might have an impact on the policy of the coming Israeli government. “The current situation pushes towards reorganizing the region geopolitically, and the ongoing wars that Israel is engaged in have taken a toll on Israel’s political credibility and on its social and military capacity, too,” Mansour told Mondoweiss. “This makes it necessary for any new government to focus on rebuilding and repairing damage.”

“This could lead the next government to ease its stranglehold on the Palestinian Authority financially, or to stop blocking its return to Gaza, and to allow aid and reconstruction materials into the Strip,” Mansour said. “It might also mean a reduction in settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank, and some improvements to daily life, like allowing West Bank workers back into the Israeli labor market.”

More of the same

But Mansour clarified that “this doesn’t mean that the next Israeli government could be one of peace, but the internal conditions and Israel’s loss of international credibility impose new priorities.” He also stressed that “such a shift depends on Palestinians’ ability to restore their unity, and on the position Arab countries take once the war on Iran is over.”

The trajectory of any incoming Israeli government will also be shaped by the international community’s position and the pressure from global solidarity movements. In the meantime, the current Netanyahu government will do everything it can to improve its electoral prospects before the elections. At the earliest, that could be next September. Most alarmingly, this effort could include resuming the genocide in Gaza, as Israeli officials have repeatedly threatened to do in recent weeks.

As for Lebanon, the Netanyahu government already discussed expanding its war on Lebanon in a security cabinet meeting on Tuesday. Meanwhile, Smotrich has made moves to accelerate the annexation of the West Bank through a rash of legislation and unilateral orders, including the passing of the so-called “Antiquities Bill” that would transfer authority over West Bank antiquities from the Palestinian Authority to Israel, the unprecedented approval of settlement construction, and orders to erase numerous Bedouin communities around Jerusalem. All these drastic measures would stand to shore up popularity for Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition, especially among the younger right-wing voting bloc of Israeli settlers.

In other words, the way in which the Netanyahu government seeks to strengthen its electoral prospects will invariably come at the expense of Palestinians — and the other peoples of the region.

May 31, 2026 Posted by | Israel, politics | Leave a comment

Trump’s government-wide NDA (non disclosure agreement) seeks to silence whistleblowers

May 26, 2026 / Freedom of the Press Foundation, https://freedom.press/the-classifieds/trumps-government-wide-nda-seeks-to-silence-whistleblowers/

Washington, D.C., May 26, 2026 — The Washington Post reported today that the Trump administration is planning a broad, government-wide nondisclosure agreement to combat leaks to the press.

The following can be attributed to Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF) Daniel Ellsberg Chair on Government Secrecy Lauren Harper:

“The proposal by the ‘most transparent administration in history’ that millions of federal employees sign a blanket NDA is not just absurd, it’s unnecessary and dangerously secretive.

“This policy, from a president who has previously attempted to impose oppressive, corporate-style confidentiality and nondisclosure agreements on federal employees, would kneecap whistleblower protections, undermine the First Amendment, and wrongly inhibit the public’s right to know. It comes at a time when agency watchdogs are sidelined, FOIA officials are being fired, and leaks to the press — which are the sole reason the public knows about so much of this administration’s misconduct — are being demonized and prosecuted.

“We know exactly what kind of information the administration wants to bury. Look no further than the FOIA release to Freedom of the Press Foundation that showed the administration had no solid legal rationale for conducting mass deportations under the Alien Enemies Act, substantiating a leak the administration called ‘fake news’ and cited as false justification for loosening restrictions on subpoenas to reporters.

“Trying to force the entire federal government to adopt the Trump organization’s aggressive use of NDAs won’t make anybody safer and won’t improve agency processes. Its sole intent would be to protect the administration from the leak of embarrassing, politically damaging, or unlawful information.”

May 31, 2026 Posted by | media, USA | Leave a comment

With potential Iranian deal on the horizon, MAGA media’s drawing red lines

by Jason Campbell, 26 May 26, https://www.mediamatters.org/media-matters-weekly-newsletter/media-matters-weekly-newsletter-may-29#paragraph–narrative-item–3479479

Deep divisions have emerged in right-wing media since President Donald Trump started a war with Iran three months ago. Some conservative media figures have loudly supported Trump’s war while others have been extremely and vocally opposed to new entanglements in the Middle East. Many figures fell somewhere in the middle, tepidly supporting the president while urging for a quick end to the conflict. With a potential deal (again) reportedly on the horizon, some voices on the right are starting to draw their hard lines for an end to the conflict.

The infighting between right-wing media pundits over the war has at times been deeply personal. This week, for example, Fox’s Mark Levin and podcaster Benny Johnson traded blows over the war. Johnson, who has been supporting Trump but also urging for a swift end to the fighting, said, “I don’t understand people like Mark Levin,” and then asked “How many people do you think are being paid by Israel?” Levin, a staunch supporter of the conflict, fired back at “BJ Benny Johnson,” saying, “He’s been a grifter.” Levin also said “Benny Johnson, a nobody, and his ilk. And his ilk, they’re the ones who trash the president. They give aid and comfort to the Iranian Islamic regime.”

With a potential deal coming, some right-wing figures are already laying out what would be tolerable for the Trump administration to accept. Ben Shapiro, who has consistently taken a hardline stance supporting the war, laid out some red lines for a deal, including claiming that the United States cannot give Iran money to rebuild its infrastructure. A Charlie Kirk Show producer said the proposed deal is “not a perfect deal” and “would be getting us back to the situation before the war.” Fox’s Martha MacCallum commented on the potential deal, saying, “It doesn’t feel like we’re any closer than we were before.” On Fox News, staunch war supporter Jack Keane said the U.S. can’t give Iran immediate sanctions relief. A Newsmax host said the reported deal with Iran “sounds like a pretty bad deal.” 

The war with Iran has caused serious turmoil inside Trump’s MAGA base. With the disastrous effects of rising fuel prices accumulating and the war’s catastrophic unpopularity with the American people growing, the political need for a swift end to the conflict may butt up against MAGA hardliners who want to see Iran capitulate further.

President Donald Trump, amid ongoing negotiations with Iran and a new spate of U.S. military strikes against it, spent part of Tuesday morning watching Fox News and then posting thanks on social media to on-air commentators who praised his efforts in the region. 

U.S. and Iranian diplomats are once again negotiating toward an agreement to end the three-month war. Against this backdrop, Trump spent his Tuesday morning watching Fox News, a typical source for both information that shapes his worldview and praise to salve his various grievances. We know this because he posted on social media about segments that captured his fancy soon after they aired, a phenomenon Media Matters’ Matt Gertz termed the Fox-Trump feedback loop. 

Major domestic and international affairs can turn on what Trump sees on Fox, though whatever he ends up deciding to do, the network’s hosts will surely fall in line behind their Dear Leader.

  • Excuse me?
    • Newsmax host Carl Higbie responded to a hunger strike at the Delaney Hall ICE detention center, saying “If they want to not eat, that’s on them. I don’t really care. Saves us some taxpayer money, I guess.” Fox’s Greg Gutfeld also commented on the food in Delaney Hall, saying, “Maggots or not, the food is dietitian approved.”
    • Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts argued “there ought to be certain restrictions against not just religions, but particular political implementations of religions.”
    • Speaking about Iran, Fox’s Laura Ingraham admitted “All of their military sites, I guess, have not been destroyed.”
    • In the 19 hours following the breaking news, Fox News failed to cover the Justice Department’s new criminal investigation into E. Jean Carroll, who previously won a civil judgment against Trump that he had sexually abused and defamed her. In contrast, all 12 CNN shows that aired after the news broke covered the story, and 7 of 8 such MS NOW programs covered it.

After New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani unveiled his plans to make affordable housing more available in the city, Fox News personalities and guests fixated on the plan’s efforts combating negligent landlords. They declared that enforcement against negligent landlords amounted to “public theft,” said it was a “throwback to Stalin,” and ranted that legal action to turn over properties from them to more responsible stewards will lead to “mass killing” and similar atrocities.

Fox hosts have also peddled the myth of tax flight, which you can read about here. 

May 31, 2026 Posted by | media, USA | Leave a comment

Extreme Heat Headlines Obscure The Scale Of The Crisis

Nate Bear, May 29, 2026, https://www.donotpanic.news/p/extreme-heat-headlines-obscure-the

It’s been record hot in parts of Europe and Asia over the last week and this has provoked an outburst of three things that have become de rigeur whenever this happens:

  1. Climate change scepticism
  2. Exclusive focus on heat by legacy media
  3. Divorced context

The first one is baked in to the conversation, you might say, if you were reaching for an appropriate metaphor. And normally I’d not be that bothered. But I’ve been seeing more of it across my social media, especially on Twitter/X, and the explanation I think is two-fold.

Firstly, and most obviously, Musk and Nikita Bier, the guy in control of the algorithm, boost right-wing accounts by policy, which means scepticism and denial at moments of climate extremes become more visible, given these positions tend to be rightist in nature. Secondly, despite my leftist politics, my anti-Zionism and pro-Palestine writings have attracted people who approach anti-Zionism from a more right-wing, pro-sovereignty, pro-nationalist perspective. These people, my intuition tells me, put climate change and Zionism in the same bracket – as a mainstream, elite-led “narrative” to be rejected. As such I’ve been seeing some of these accounts, who I agree with on Israel, Palestine, imperialism and Zionism, in my feed posting content and takes sceptical of climate change.

To me, this is not a coherent politics. Zionism and a heating planet grow from the same root. Imperialism is a fuel source for climate change, and anti-imperialism cannot be separated from ecological destruction. The Pentagon is the single biggest institutional emitter of greenhouse gases, burning more fossil fuels annually than entire countries like Portugal, Sweden and Denmark. An empire which projects global power and launches missiles thousands of miles from its shores to impose its violent will on the world could not survive without fossil fuels. Which is why, among many other reasons, Trump, and US empire historically, have loved oil so much.

In the first 15 months of the genocide in Gaza, Israel burnt more fossil fuels than Estonia and Costa Rica burn in a year combined.

Now it’s been more than two and a half years, the ecological cost to the atmosphere of genociding Gaza and mass murdering Palestinians will be equivalent to the pollution necessary to power the lives of tens of millions of people. But instead of using fossil fuels to provide the necessities of life, Zionism uses fossil fuels on a massive scale to end lives. Zionism kills Palestinians as a first order effect, and then boosts the heatwaves that cause death and suffering years later.

That brings me to number two.

A heating planet is just one outgrowth of the current global system, yet far too often legacy media ignores the vast scale of the ecological crisis to focus narrowly on climate change. And this is where an argument for climate as a narrative can be made, but it’s not the argument made by those who scorn it as a tool to provoke fear and impose control. If climate change is pushed as a narrative, it’s because an easy solution can be sold within the existing confines of globalised neoliberal capital. A transition to solar and wind, fuelled by mega-mining companies blasting the holes and digging up the minerals which are transported by the mega-shippers, the market lubricated by metals traders, with the profits captured by the energy giants.

Crucially, in this telling of the crisis, nothing really has to change. On the contrary in fact. In this telling, capitalist growth policies become essential to combating climate change.

The root of climate change as a mainstream narrative is better understood then as seeded in and growing out of imperialist-capitalist relations, not conspiracist adjacent globalist plots.

Which brings me to complaint number three.

If the crisis is understood not just as a climate crisis but as a whole-system ecological crisis underpinned by the existing system of globalised neoliberal capital, no easy, sellable solutions can be proffered. If our ecological predicament is understood as encompassing greenhouses gases, plastic pollution, ocean acidification, nitrogen pollution, tropical forest destruction, ozone depletion and species extinction, the story of the crisis becomes far harder to tell as a soundbite. If ecological damage is assessed not just in terms of extreme heat but in terms of an integrated system under a multi-faceted assault, the breadth and scale of the problem quite obviously defies any singular, energy source-focused solution.

Taking the crisis as a whole would require a discussion which slays sacred capitalist cows, confronts elite power structures and concludes with the necessity to completely reshape not just energy systems, but many of the systems which drive our civilisation. It would require serious policies that reject global capital and move us towards sustainable, local systems that benefit communities not oligarchic structures and corporate entities, whether that be in energy, farming, tourism or trade.

Here’s the unifying kicker: a politics of true global sustainability would require the same kind of revolutionary thinking and action that would also end imperialism and Zionism.

In conclusion, yes, the world is heating up, and that’s because of the extraordinary increase in the rate at which carbon dioxide is being released from burning fossil fuels. And yes, this heating will have to stop or lots of people will die and the system will collapse. But fossil fuels can be used usefully or badly, and the externalities of their burning (the heat trapping pollution) can be more, or less, worth the cost of burning them.

Genocide, conquest and imperialism are vile and depraved ways to use any energy resource, let alone a non-renewable one that has planetary effects long into the future.

To be honest, I may have written this article for an audience that doesn’t exist. But I have been frustrated for a long time now with how ecological collapse has been so divorced from the majority of anti-imperial thought. I think that is also partly to do with a belief that imperialists weaponise climate change to demonise, for example, China’s use of coal or Venezuela’s use of its oil revenues (now of course captured by empire).

I understand this perspective, and imperialist media definitely does this.

But that isn’t a reason to pretend basic physics is wrong or to write off climate change as a conspiracy or a globalist plot.

It’s a reason to think more deeply about how and why climate change is presented to us as a problem in the way that it is, not a reason to doubt whether it is a problem at all.

May 31, 2026 Posted by | climate change | Leave a comment

Global heating is making hajj ever more dangerous, report finds

 Global heating has “fundamentally altered” the climate of Mecca and is
exposing millions of hajj pilgrims to extreme and dangerous heat even in
months outside summer, new analysis has found.

Carbon dioxide emissions
from fossil fuels means scorching temperatures of 40C (104F) are now
regularly experienced in May, the study showed. In past decades, such peaks
would only have occurred in summer. The researchers said that hajj, the
annual Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca, would take place amid dangerous heat
almost all year round by the end of the century without a rapid transition
away from fossil fuels.

Saudi Arabia, which hosts hajj, is the world’s
second biggest oil producer and a long-term obstructer of climate action.

 Guardian 29th May 2026, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/may/29/global-heating-hajj-muslim-pilgrimage-saudi-arabia-dangerous

May 31, 2026 Posted by | climate change, MIDDLE EAST | Leave a comment