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FIFA, Eurovision expelled Russia but Israel has Impunity

 June 8, 2026 Mohammed Samaana Informed Comment, https://scheerpost.com/2026/06/08/fifa-eurovision-expelled-russia-but-israel-has-impunity/

Hypocrisy and double standard are the words that come to mind in relation to how the west in general deals with the plight of the Palestinian people.

This is well manifested in culture and sports. Two major events this year have demonstrated just that. The first is the popular annual European singing contest Eurovision which was no different this year to any other year with Israel allowed to participate despite the ongoing genocide and ethnic cleansing against the Palestinian people in their own homeland.

Though five European countries – Spain, Ireland, Slovenia, Iceland and The Netherlands – took the higher moral ground and applied pressure by boycotting the contest in protest against Israel participation, this year’s edition of Eurovision went ahead without the participation of five European countries to ensure that Israel is present. To add insult to injury, the annual event took place at the usual time of every year when the Palestinian people mark the Nakba anniversary of their 1948 expulsion from their ancestral homeland by the Israelis. Because of its invasion and occupation of Ukraine, Russia hasn’t been allowed to participate in the Eurovision contest since 2022.

The second event is the World Cup. This year’s men football World Cup is another arena where the West is showing its hypocrisy. Russia was banned from all FIFA and UEFA soccer / football competitions in 2022 because of its illegal invasion of Ukraine and attempt to annex its territory, and the ban has become indefinite. All Russian national representative teams and club teams are prohibited from participation in global football events. Yet Israel’s deliberate assault on civilians and key infrastructure in Gaza and Lebanon is much worse than anything Russia has done, bad as it is.

We all also remember the calls to boycott the last World Cup in Qatar over allegations of human rights abuses, including LGBTQ and migrant workers rights and the environment. Given the current and previous US administration’s record on human rights home and abroad, it is only common sense to ask the logical question, where are those who called to boycott the last World Cup four years ago?

If they were concerned about human rights then why they are not concerned about Joe Biden and Donald Trump administrations’ support for the Israel genocide in Gaza where well over 72,000 Palestinians, the vast majority civilians, are confirmed dead so far as a direct result of Israeli fire without taking into consideration the missing and the ones who died indirectly as a result of the Israeli assault? This is besides Israel aggression towards other countries in the region including its destruction of Lebanon and the destitution of its civilian population after Israel grabbed land in the south of the country. This is besides Israel expansion into Syria and and its war on Iran which is more likely to have impacted every human on this planet at least financially.

Additionally, during Qatar World Cup in 2022, the German players famously took a photo covering their mouths in protest against the FIFA denying them freedom of expression. No sign of Germany’s team this year protesting against the American security oppressing protests against the genocide in Gaza on college campuses and elsewhere or for that matter their own German security forces brutality against similar protests in Germany or the German government support for the genocide. 

Moreover, where is the concern about individual sexual rights in the light of the reports about sexual violence against Palestinian detainees and international peace activists who were at the Sumud (Steadfastness) flotilla after being kidnapped by Israeli soldiers at international waters. It is no wonder why the UN added Israel to the blacklist of states that uses sexual violence in conflict.

In terms of the environment, a study showed that the carbon footprint during the first 15 months of Israel ecocide war on Gaza mainly provided by the US is greater than the planet-warming emissions of a hundred countries.

Furthermore, how could any one be concerned about immigrants’ rights and overlook the brutality of the America Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers? In 2025 alone 32 died in ICE custody. Not to forget  the treatment of Palestinian human rights activist and green card holder Mahmoud Khalil and the ongoing effort to deport him

For the qualifying games to the World Cup, Israel has always played in the European groups with no concern over human rights violations whatsoever except for protests by solidarity groups and other peace activists. At club level, Israeli clubs take part in the European competitions. This applies to all sports and not only soccer / football.

It is important to point out that Israel is located in west Asia, not in Europe. This means that Europe is under no obligation to allow Israel to take part in any European sport or cultural events. But by allowing Israel participation especially when it is committing a genocide, Europe indicates it support for Israel and everything that it does which makes Europe complicit.

Any times these issues were raised, the world was told to keep politics out of sports. The same, however, didn’t apply when Russia was thrown out of every sport and cultural event over its invasion of Ukraine. Even if we were to accept their double standards by keeping politics out of sport when it comes to Israel, it is impossible to argue for keeping ethics or human rights out of sports. Those who insist on applying exceptionalism when it come to Israel know very well that they are enablers of its atrocities by allowing it to sportswash its reputation.

Mohammed Samaana , a freelance journalist published in the Belfast Telegraph, is originally from Palestine and lives in Belfast.

June 11, 2026 Posted by | Israel, secrets,lies and civil liberties | Leave a comment

Screwed again: small investors to bail out billionaires from SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic

In the past, companies had to wait, and have a track record of revenues and profits.

But that rule is gone. Now, a newly public company can qualify, simply based on size—how big it is.

This is work the Wall Street Journal is supposed to be doing. That’s what the Securities and Exchange Commission is supposed to be asking questions about. Instead it’s left to “Where’s your Ed at?” and a handful of podcasts who are showing the world that the investment thesis for the entire American AI industry is blowing up. Costs are rising, not falling.

Inside China / Business, Kevin Walmsley, Jun 07, 2026

SpaceX will soon go public, in an offering that will value the company at over a trillion dollars.

Anthropic and OpenAI are Artificial Intelligence companies, who also plan IPO’s for later in the year.

Recent changes to indexing rules will compel massive share buys into these companies by retirement and pension plans, and by passive ETF’s and mutual funds.

In the past, new companies were required to wait until insiders sold most of the shares after the lockup periods before being added to investment indices. Companies also needed to show a strong history of growth and sound financial practices.

The heads-up on this story comes from one of our favorite Substacks, Gold and Geopolitics. Our concern is that the public, normal people, are at least unaware, and maybe even indifferent, to how really screwed they are at the highest level, and by people at the highest level. It’s not the kind of story that is felt tangibly, at least not at first, like a big spike in gas or food prices. And it’s also difficult to follow, and that’s exactly what the architects of our financial and political system are counting on.

It involves the qualification requirements for a new company to be included in the NASDAQ-100. The regulators changed those rules, so that new public companies can be part of the index. In the past, companies had to wait, and have a track record of revenues and profits. Because trillions of dollars’ worth of pension investments—which is money invested on behalf of workers, millions of private retirement plans, plus exchange-traded funds and other mutual funds, are invested in those indices. And they do so, assuming that the top 100 tech companies, in this case, are well-managed and profitable businesses.

But that rule is gone. Now, a newly public company can qualify, simply based on size—how big it is. And they changed the definition of “public”. Companies can qualify as a megacap public company simply by being large at the time of its IPO, then limiting how many shares they sell to the public. The index now accepts a weighting multiplier. That is what “small float” means—insiders of the company still own almost all of shares, and so completely control the company, even though it’s “public”.

They also threw out the rule for four consecutive quarters—one full year—of profits.

With these rule changes, the guardrails are down and regular Americans will be forced to buy shares of bad companies, that don’t make money.

The NASDAQ, in this case, gets big fees from the Initial Public Offerings of companies that want to avoid the rules that used to govern the industry, and protect small investors, somewhat, and SpaceX, in this case, will have tens of millions of passive investors buying their shares. That massive, passive buying will put a floor under the stock price no matter what happens, at the same time that insiders are allowed to dump their stock. Insiders and early investors are restricted from selling their shares during the IPO; they must wait to do so, until later.

That was previously a major risk to company insiders, and early investors: if the IPO price is set too high, or if the company does poorly after the IPO, their shares will be worth far less than they had hoped, just as they and all the other insiders are selling. But with these rule changes, passive investors will be buying shares, every single month, because they’re buying the index.

This is the source document. Paragraph 2 explains the new “fast entry” rules for new companies that list on the NASDAQ exchange. If the company’s market cap is in the top 40 of companies already there, it’s a Fast Entry addition, and will be put into the index after 15 trading days. So 15 days after the IPO, SpaceX will go into the index. The company will be exempt from “seasoning and liquidity requirements”—seasoning is how much experience the company has, earning money, and liquidity is how much money it has in the bank. Exempt………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

This is work the Wall Street Journal is supposed to be doing. That’s what the Securities and Exchange Commission is supposed to be asking questions about. Instead it’s left to “Where’s your Ed at?” and a handful of podcasts who are showing the world that the investment thesis for the entire American AI industry is blowing up. Costs are rising, not falling. AI data centers today are budgeted to cost $50 billion per gigawatt to build—and they’re not getting built anyway. Soon they’ll cost $80 to $100 billion per.

And the costs are rising just as companies who use the AI are realizing they’re not getting their money’s worth. Uber is a client of Anthropic, and has already spent its entire 2026 budget. Will they load up on some more tokens, to get through the rest of the year? Doubt it—it was a “head exploding moment” to learn how much Uber spent on tokens, which did NOT result in useful consumer features.

Alibaba is a Chinese company, and their Qwen large language model is the world’s most popular AI tool for business owners outside the United States. Airbnb tried to use ChatGPT to design a new reservation feature on their app, and even though the CEO of Airbnb is good friends with Sam Altman at OpenAI, his company switched over to Qwen instead. It works faster and costs less.

And that is catching on. Other companies are quietly making the switch to Chinese large-language models because they cost far less, and they’re open source and easier for their teams to use in their companies. The performance of Chinese models is similar to Silicon Valley’s best products, and are easier to use, cost less, and are more efficient. Companies are enterprise users—they pay for tokens, and executives lose their jobs if other executives heads blow up when they see their AI bill and ask what they’re getting for it. Companies are looking for alternatives to OpenAI and Anthropic, and signing up for DeepSeek instead. That also means that data is not going through US data centers, it’s coming to China instead, where electricity also happens to cost a lot less.

That could be the biggest challenge of all. For active investors – not the passive ones — business models matter. Revenues and profits – they matter. And the cost of compute is what is driving these corporate users of AI. They pay for the AI. Their engineering teams use it, every day, to develop new tools and applications, and they’re switching over to Chinese LLM’s.

Anthropic and OpenAI are fundamentally bad companies, with bad valuations, and produce financial reports that not even their own top executives trust. Their customers are moving away. And that used to mean that the insiders cannot cash out and make billions of dollars. They might even go to jail. But that was before they changed the rules, and so they’ll make you buy them instead.

Be Good.

Resources and links:……………………………………………………………………………………….. https://kdwalmsley.substack.com/p/screwed-again-small-investors-to?publication_id=3320368&post_id=200908108&isFreemail=true&r=3alev&triedRedirect=true&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

June 11, 2026 Posted by | business and costs | Leave a comment

Media’s Ceasefire Fiction Masks Continuing War

 SCHEERPOST, June 7, 2026, Joshua Scheer

One of the most revealing aspects of this war has not only been the violence itself, but the language used to explain, justify, or obscure it. As the death toll has climbed and entire communities have been erased, many journalists have struggled to confront a disturbing reality: narratives that would be unthinkable in other conflicts have become routine when discussing Gaza.

Veteran journalist Kathy Gannon reflects on how certain assumptions and talking points have seeped into media coverage, often shifting attention away from those carrying out the destruction and onto those enduring it. Her observation is less about a single comment than a broader pattern—one that raises uncomfortable questions about how suffering is framed, whose voices are amplified, and how language can become a tool for sanitizing mass violence.

“A media colleague described devastated Gazans as “under the boot of Hamas,” not under the horrific bombing of Israel, or the devastating attacks that have wiped out entire families, denied food and medical supplies, subjected to enforced starvation, all by Israel. I wondered at what it could mean. It was as if it was offered, as the reason or to somehow soften Israel’s killing of Gazans by the tens of thousands, 20,000 children killed, journalists targeted, hospitals destroyed, schools devastated. Of course there are still those in the media who say Israel isn’t targeting journalists, but rather it is just not paying enough attention, just not being careful enough. Really? Israel has killed more journalists than any other country, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, nearly 300 have been killed, scores listed as targeted.”

Kathy Gannon Substack

What Kathy Gannon lays out is what far too many newsrooms still refuse to say plainly: there is no cease-fire when Israel continues killing civilians, journalists, and entire families in Gaza and Lebanon with total impunity. Calling this a “fragile cease-fire” is not reporting — it’s participating in a lie.

Since the so‑called Gaza cease-fire was announced, Israel has killed more than 1,000 Palestinians, many of them children. It has expanded the “yellow line”, shot civilians near it — including children — and continued bombing neighborhoods where displaced families were told to shelter. These are not “violations.” This is policy.

In Lebanon, Israel has bulldozed villages, bombed civilian areas, and assassinated three senior Lebanese military officers in a targeted strike. That alone shatters any pretense of a cease-fire. And yet Western media still repeats the script.

Meanwhile, the death toll of journalists is staggering: nearly 300 journalists killed, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists — the highest number ever recorded in a single conflict. Many were targeted, not caught in crossfire. To pretend otherwise is to launder the killing of the very people documenting the war.

Israel’s own officials flaunt this brutality. National Security Minister Itamar Ben‑Gvir — a man who has openly advocated genocide — posted video of himself abusing flotilla activists protesting the slaughter in Gaza. This is the level of impunity we’re dealing with.

International law is not ambiguous. The Fourth Geneva Convention prohibits transferring settlers into occupied territory. UN Security Council Resolution 2334 declares Israeli settlements a “flagrant violation.” Yet media outlets still describe illegal settlers as merely “seen by many as illegal,” as if the law were a matter of opinion.

Hospitals, schools, and refugee camps have been bombed in Gaza — and now in Lebanon. Israel claimed Gaza’s hospitals were targeted because of tunnels. What’s the excuse for the hospitals in Lebanon?

This is why Gannon’s warning matters: the more the world normalizes Israel’s actions, the more it signals to Palestinians and Lebanese that their lives do not matter. And the more Western governments expose their own hypocrisy — preaching human rights while enabling mass killing.

If journalism means anything, it must start with refusing to repeat government talking points. Stop calling this a cease-fire. Stop sanitizing the killing of children. Stop pretending journalists aren’t being targeted. Stop turning victims into perpetrators.

We have watched journalists be killed in staggering numbers, and the refusal of empire’s defenders to even acknowledge their deaths is not only unacceptable — it is the predictable rot of a country drifting toward tyranny, where legacy media long ago bartered away its soul.

This is not fragile. This is not complicated. This is not a cease-fire. It is a war on civilians — and the world is watching, even if CBS pretends not to.

Read more here about press freedom and Israel — though it omits the daily, mounting murders of women and children under the ongoing genocide……………………………………………………………….https://scheerpost.com/2026/06/07/medias-ceasefire-fiction-masks-continuing-war/

June 11, 2026 Posted by | Israel, media | Leave a comment

The Gazafication of Lebanon: How Israel Exports Destruction and Washington Protects It

7 June 2026 Dr Andrew Klein,, Australian Independent Media

Dedication: To the people of Lebanon – who have been told that their country is a “failed state” by those who worked ceaselessly to break it.

“The destruction will stop only when the silence is broken. Break it.”

On 1 March 2026, Israel launched a full-scale military offensive against Lebanon. The official rationale was self-defence: to push Hezbollah away from the border, to “demilitarize” Lebanon, and to secure the northern settlements. Within weeks, the death toll passed 3,500; 1.6 million people – roughly one‑fifth of Lebanon’s population – were displaced; hundreds of towns and villages were flattened.

The violence did not come from nowhere. It was the product of decades of Israeli military intervention, occupation, political interference, and a US‑backed policy that has systematically dismantled Lebanon’s sovereignty. The objective is not peace. It is the Gazafication of Lebanon: the imposition of a siege-and-destruction model that has already been perfected in Gaza, now exported to a second country.

This article is a comprehensive examination of the historical record, the current violence, and the geopolitical machinery that enables it. It is based on verifiable sources: official government statements, United Nations data, peer‑review

 peer‑reviewed research, and on‑the‑ground reporting.

II. The Anatomy of the Current Assault

The offensive began on 2 March 2026, two days after a joint US‑Israeli attack on Iran. Hezbollah responded with rocket fire; Israel responded with a full‑scale ground and air campaign. By early June, the Lebanese health ministry had recorded more than 3,500 killed – including 711 women, children, and medical personnel – and over 10,000 wounded.

The disparity in casualties is stark:

  • Israel: 24 soldiers and 4 civilians killed.
  • Lebanon: Over 3,500 killed, plus 1.6 million displaced.

According to the UN, between 8 and 10 May 2026 alone, Israeli forces carried out 1,296 strikes in Lebanon, killing 87 people and wounding hundreds more – all during a supposed “ceasefire.” The United States‑brokered truce, ostensibly in place since April, has been violated by Israel on a near‑daily basis.

Evacuation orders have been issued for roughly 15% of Lebanese territory, including vast areas south of the Litani River. The military has drawn up maps for a permanent “buffer zone” that extends north of key cities such as Bint Jbeil, Aita al‑Shaab, and Khiam, reaching the Litani River and beyond.

The destruction is systematic. Human Rights Watch and the Lebanese government have documented “widespread demolitions” of entire villages, flattening of residential areas, and severe damage to schools, hospitals, mosques, and civilian infrastructure, including bridges and gas stations. One report described the operation as “the Gaza model” applied to Lebanon: mass displacement, wholesale destruction of housing stock, and the deliberate degradation of the country’s capacity to sustain life.

III. The Invention of Hezbollah: Israel’s Self‑Fulfilling Prophecy

The current violence is often presented as a war between Israel and an Iranian “proxy.” This framing ignores history. Hezbollah would not exist without Israel’s own actions.

On 6 June 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon, deploying up to 75,000 troops and advancing all the way to Beirut. The official objective was to remove the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), which had been launching cross‑border attacks. But the invasion quickly became an occupation, lasting 18 years in southern Lebanon.

The brutality of the invasion – the siege of Beirut, the massacres at Sabra and Shatila (carried out by Lebanese Christian militias but enabled by Israeli forces surrounding the camps), the widespread destruction – galvanised a resistance movement. In the aftermath of the invasion, Iran sent a contingent of Revolutionary Guards to the Bekaa Valley to help organise local Shi’ite militias. In 1985, these groups formally coalesced into Hezbollah – the “Party of God.”

Hezbollah was born to fight an Israeli occupation. It was not a “terrorist” group in any meaningful sense of the word; it was a national resistance movement recognised as such by a broad cross‑section of the Lebanese population. That Israel now cites Hezbollah’s existence as a justification for further violence is a grotesque circular argument: Israel invades, Hezbollah forms, Israel calls Hezbollah a “threat,” and invades again.

The pattern has repeated for over four decades. The 2006 war, which killed more than 1,100 Lebanese (mostly civilians) and devastated the country’s infrastructure, was the dress rehearsal. Today’s assault is the full performance.

IV. The “Greater Israel” Project – Not a Conspiracy, But a Policy

Statements by Israeli ministers make the objective abundantly clear: this is not about security; it is about expansion.

In March 2026, a map circulated by Israeli officials depicted a “Greater Israel” stretching from the Litani River in Lebanon to the Suez Canal in Egypt, swallowing the West Bank, Gaza, most of Lebanon, large parts of Syria, and all of Jordan.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly stated that the goal of the current operation is to “demilitarize Lebanon” and to establish Israeli security control over the Litani area – a demand that goes far beyond anything required for border security. In a CNBC interview on 3 June 2026, he declared: “If we want to save Lebanon, we have to disarm Hezbollah and demilitarize Lebanon.”…………………………………………………………………………………………

V. Lebanon: A State Crippled by Design

To understand why Lebanon is so vulnerable, it is necessary to understand how it was deliberately crippled.

The French Mandate (1920–1943)

Modern Lebanon was carved out of the former Ottoman Empire by the French. The French mandatory authorities institutionalised a confessional political system, distributing power among 18 officially recognised religious sects on the basis of a 1932 census that gave Christians a slight majority. This system was further codified in the unwritten National Pact of 1943, which reserved the presidency for a Maronite Christian, the prime ministership for a Sunni Muslim, and the speakership of parliament for a Shi’ite Muslim.

The confessional system was not designed to foster national unity; it was designed to make Lebanon governable by divide and rule. …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

VI. US Complicity – The Perpetual Enabler

Every major Israeli military operation – 1982, 2006, 2024, 2026 – has been carried out with direct US diplomatic, military, and financial backing………………………..

The current US‑brokered “ceasefire” is a farce. It has been violated by Israel almost daily. Rather than enforcing its terms, Washington has used it as a cover to continue arms shipments and diplomatic protection.

Hezbollah MP Hassan Hamade described the reality accurately: the conflict is part of a “Zionist‑US scheme” to redraw the map of the region and to incorporate Lebanon into a Greater Israel project.

VII. The Two Narratives – What They Say at Home vs. What They Tell the World

Israel consistently presents two incompatible narratives.

To its own public and to Western allies:

  • The war is a defensive operation against a “terrorist” organisation (Hezbollah) that holds Lebanon hostage.
  • The goal is to push Hezbollah north of the Litani River and to “demilitarize” Lebanon – a “peace” operation, not a conquest.
  • The destruction of civilian infrastructure is regrettable but unavoidable, because Hezbollah “hides among civilians.

To the rest of the world (and through the actions of its ministers):

  • The goal is territorial expansion, as made explicit by the “Greater Israel” maps and the statements of ministers like Ben‑Gvir and Strock.
  • The objective is the permanent displacement of populations – both in Gaza and in Lebanon – to create “facts on the ground” that prevent any return.

………………………………………………………………… VIII. A Double Standard That Undermines International Law

No other state in 2026 would be permitted to behave as Israel does.

No other state’s ministers openly call for the establishment of settlements in a third country, to be populated by its own citizens.

No other state systematically occupies territory in defiance of decades of UN Security Council resolutions.

No other state issues mass evacuation orders covering a fifth of a neighbour’s population while claiming “self‑defence.”

No other state’s ministers openly call for the establishment of settlements in a third country, to be populated by its own citizens.

The international community’s response has been a masterclass in moral cowardice. The UN Security Council is paralysed by the US veto. The International Criminal Court’s investigation into Israeli officials – including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant – proceeds at a glacial pace, while arrest warrants for Russian officials were issued within months………………………………………………………………………………………….

IX. The Gazafication of Lebanon – A Deliberate Export

The term “Gazafication” – the deliberate application of the Gaza model (siege, mass displacement, and wholesale infrastructure destruction) to another territory – is not hyperbole. It is an accurate description of current Israeli strategy……………………………………………………………………..

X. Conclusion: No Sovereign State Should Dictate Terms to Another

The official Israeli narrative – that this is a war against “terrorism” – collapses under the weight of the evidence.

  • Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982; Hezbollah was formed to resist the occupation.
  • Israel has occupied Lebanese territory for over 40 years (the Shebaa Farms, the Kfar Shuba hills).
  • Israel has interfered in Lebanese politics, assassinated its leaders, and undermined its sovereignty.
  • Israeli ministers openly call for the expansion of “Greater Israel” into Lebanese territory.
  • The United States has protected every single Israeli violation of international law.

No sovereign state should be forced to accept that its northern river marks the boundary of a foreign power‘s “security zone.” No people should be told that their homes must be destroyed to satisfy the expansionist ambitions of a neighbour.

The “Greater Israel” project is not a fringe fantasy; it is official policy. The “buffer zone” maps have been published. The ministers have spoken. The bombs have fallen. The only question is whether the international community will continue to look away.

History will not forgive those who remained silent while a second country was systematically dismantled.

References…………………………………………. https://theaimn.net/the-gazafication-of-lebanon-how-israel-exports-destruction-and-washington-protects-it/

June 11, 2026 Posted by | MIDDLE EAST, politics international | Leave a comment

Investigating the Foolish: The AUKUS Public Inquiry is Announced

The inquiry proposes to answer a number of salient if self-evident questions. Will Australia, for instance, ever receive the sought and undeservedly celebrated submarines? Where and how will the toxic medium to high-level nuclear waste be stored?  How many actual jobs will be created in Australia, and at what opportunity cost?

7 June 2026 Dr Binoy Kampmark, https://theaimn.net/investigating-the-foolish-the-aukus-public-inquiry-is-announced/

Of the three countries involved in AUKUS, that most draining, useless and even pernicious of security pacts, Australia has been the only country indifferent, even scoffing, about the need for an inquiry into its merits. Unsurprisingly, both the US and UK inquiries have found much to merit the project – Australian taxpayer money has sluiced and soothed the submarine industrial base of both countries – but have also expressed concern about their respective production rates of nuclear-powered submarines.

While the first pillar of the agreement promises, with mighty emptiness, that the Royal Australia Navy will receive three Virginia-class nuclear-powered submarines (SSNs), with the possible opportunity to acquire a further two, the prospect of their timely arrival looks increasingly doubtful. The recent developments at the Shangri-La Dialogue held in Singapore that these will be hand-me-downs from the US Navy already suggests the lack of regard Australian personnel and their slavish representatives are held in. Add to this a joint as yet undesigned UK-Australian SSN design that will use US technology, the chances that a fleet of these expensive hulks finding their way into the hands of Australian sailors looks damnably remote.

With the Canberra mandarins and political governors insisting that no official inquiry be conducted into AUKUS, it has fallen to those keen on a public inquiry to take up the mantle. The crowd-founded AUKUS Public Inquiry, coordinated by the Australian Peace and Security Forum (APSF), will be led by a number of commissioners, spearheaded by former federal environment minister and frontman for Midnight Oil Peter Garrett. Former MPs, retired military and naval officers (these include former chief of the Australian Defence Force Chris Barrie), strategists and academics, human rights lawyers and union leaders promise to feature in this inquiry into the unpardonably foolish.

In remarks made on launching the inquiry, Garret declared that AUKUS “was the most significant, and by far the most costly decision made in secret by an Australian government, tying us to two other sovereign governments, and taking out an extraordinary amount of taxpayers’ money on a proposition which has got a lot of distinct and very difficult complexities and potential problems lying up ahead.”

The inquiry proposes to answer a number of salient if self-evident questions. Will Australia, for instance, ever receive the sought and undeservedly celebrated submarines? Where and how will the toxic medium to high-level nuclear waste be stored? (Australia lacks a single facility suitable for that task.) How many actual jobs will be created in Australia, and at what opportunity cost? (The conservative estimate of AU$368 billion is a ruinous one when considering what other parts of the federal budget will suffer as a result.) Why does Australia find itself in a situation where it will potentially join a war with the United States against China, its largest trading partner? The two last questions go to the central soundness (or lack of it) regarding AUKUS: whether sovereignty will be jeopardised (a moot point: it already has been), and whether the pact will turn the country into a nuclear target.

Other subsidiary matters will also fall within the purview of the inquiry. Transferring nuclear technology in this manner not only sets a precedent of destabilising value but raises concerns about nuclear non-proliferation treaty commitments and the environmental costs arising from developing nuclear storage facilities. Governments in Australia have repeatedly failed to consult and engage local communities about such projects, which have usually stymied in failed negotiations and costly litigation. How the martial dictates of AUKUS risks corrupting the tertiary sector in terms of research and university institutions is also a worry, given the tentacular nature of the military-industrial-university complex seen in such countries as the United States. Money hungry university vice chancellors and their morally flabby inner circles can always be trusted to make their institutions and countries less secure if the price is right. Then comes that most relevant of considerations: “Were credible and less costly alternatives to AUKUS properly assessed before the decision was made in secret?”

Civil society groups have welcomed this long-awaited effort. “The AUKUS agreement was conceived in secret and continues to be shrouded in secrecy,” observed Rtd Army Major Cameron Leckie, spokesperson for the Independent and Peaceful Australia Network (IPAN). “Australians deserve the truth about what they are paying for, what they are getting, and what risks this agreement carries for our sovereignty and security.”

In parliament, independent MP Allegra Spender raised a “Matter of Public Importance” demanding that the government “be transparent about the risks to the delivery of AUKUS and how Australia’s national and security interests will be protected especially in light of recent changes to contract terms.” There were also “emerging gaps in capability” arising from the Collins-class Life-of-Type Extension program, intended to supposedly drag out the deployment of boats beyond their retirement. Other parliamentarians, all independents, including Sophie Scamps, Dai Le, Zali Steggall, Nicolette Boele, Kate Chaney and Monique Ryan, also expressed similar reservations about AUKUS. Pithily, Ryan, who represents the Melbourne federal seat of Kooyong, called the crowdfunded independent inquiry into AUKUS “a national embarrassment” for the government: “it’s only a matter of time before we find ourselves crowdfunding for the submarines themselves.”

Even more heartily, there are rumblings of disquiet within the Australian Labor government about the pact. Former cabinet minister Ed Husic, whose career as a frontbencher was scrapped, if only temporarily, by the factional fanaticism of his own party, is demanding a fresh caucus vote on the agreement. “We are not going to get the deal that was promised,” Husic told Sky News. He suspected a straitjacketed deal were the submarines ever to arrive. “You know, you can almost imagine [the Americans] saying, ‘We give you these, you will do this with them’. And so there’s an active sovereignty question there.”

While his efforts to raise the issue on June 2 were dismissed by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and the Minister for Defence Industry Pat Conroy with the usual nonsense that AUKUS was more than just a submarine agreement, the number of dissenters are growing. May their numbers burgeon sooner rather than later.

June 11, 2026 Posted by | AUSTRALIA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

North Korea will never give up its nuclear weapons, says Kim Jong-un’s sister

The sister of Kim Jong-un has insisted that North Korea will never give up
its nuclear weapons, setting back hopes of progress towards
denuclearisation during Monday’s visit to Pyongyang by President Xi of
China. Kim Yo-jong, a senior figure in the leadership who sometimes serves
as spokeswoman for her brother, said North Korea’s “status as a nuclear
weapons state is the line of no retreat and it is a stark reality whether
anyone recognises it or not”.

Times 7th June 2026, https://www.thetimes.com/world/asia/article/kim-jong-un-sister-north-korea-nuclear-deal-president-xi-zs7qbkt5c

June 11, 2026 Posted by | North Korea, weapons and war | Leave a comment

The timeline for restoring operations at the Chornobyl nuclear waste storage facility following Russian shelling remains unknown – IAEA

A Russian drone strike damaged a nuclear storage building near the
Chornobyl NPP and the IAEA office. It remains unclear when the facility
will be able to resume receiving spent fuel from Ukraine’s operational
nuclear power plants.

A Russian drone strike on the Central Spent Fuel
Storage Facility (CSFSF) near the Chornobyl NPP on Sunday morning caused
significant structural damage to part of the fuel reception building,
including the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards office
located there. This was reported in a statement by the agency, UNN informs.

UNN 8th June 2026, https://unn.ua/en/news/the-timeline-for-restoring-operations-at-the-chornobyl-nuclear-waste-storage-facility-following-russian-shelling-remains-unknown-iaea

June 11, 2026 Posted by | safety, Ukraine | Leave a comment

Natasha Walter: Labour’s workaday repression of protest doesn’t alarm us. But it should

If a far-right government detained activists for months without trial and declared them terrorists, there would be outrage. But Palestine and climate campaigners are being treated like this in a social democracy, writes the author and columnist

But as a result of these complicated, bureaucratic moves we are seeing more and more people locked up for longer and longer periods, and more and more people dissuaded from protesting at all. And if our next government is a far-right one, with the groundwork for greater authoritarianism already dug, with so many precedents already set, many more dissenters will be locked up. 

Natasha Walter, Jun 10, 2026, https://www.thenerve.news/p/natasha-walter-column-protest-palestine-action-sentencing-terrorist-connection-elbit?utm_source=www.thenerve.news&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=tuesday-edition-natasha-walter-on-protest-sangita-myska-on-farage-hotlist&_bhlid=ea754b28990feab0acf9d70ebf48f5b17a368a9a

I hate lazy parallels with the 1930s, but one echo does keep running through my mind just now. In 1933, my grandfather was imprisoned for three years for “high treason”, for being a member of a proscribed organisation. The first nine months of his imprisonment was pre-trial – on remand, as we would call it now. The organisation that had been outlawed in that year was the Communist party, and he was living in Germany. 

This is not the start of the Third Reich in Britain, for sure: not even close. But when I look at the young people who are being held for long periods – up to 20 months – on remand right now, and when I see that this Friday four protesters face being sentenced as if there had been a “terrorism connection” to their crimes during a break-in at the Elbit Systems weapons factory in Bristol, I realise a little more clearly how it is that even when the right to dissent is being directly threatened, most people can shrug it off, and so the slide to further repression is eased.

For those who are not turning away, this case has particular weight. The four individuals have been convicted of criminal damage and grievous bodily harm, which can potentially carry long sentences. But the prosecution has submitted that the offences have a “terrorist connection”, which means that the defendants would have no chance of early release and face the possibility of long-term surveillance. The jury in the trial was not asked to deliberate on this terrorist connection, so it is something that – for the first time in British legal history – the judge will decide alone. And the judge in question, Mr Justice Jeremy Johnson, has already lost the trust of many observers.

In the trials of those individuals and others, Johnson has ruled that the defendants could not give evidence on their motivations, including their reasons for joining Palestine Action, their beliefs about Elbit’s supply of weapons to Israel for use in the war in Gaza, or their views about the actions of Israel in Gaza and its legality. He even referred one of the defendants’ lawyers, Rajiv Menon, for contempt of court because Menon had reminded the jury that they could acquit the defendants based on their own consciences. 

As usual, a number of people will turn up outside the court who have become thorns in the police’s side. We’ve seen them before, those often elderly people with their handwritten signs and fold-out chairs, their unbowed determination to turn up in all weathers and despite all threats of arrest. 

Right now, I think we should all be saluting their determination. Indeed, the question keeps nagging away at me: why aren’t more people alarmed by this extreme erosion of the right to protest and what it means for our country?

It’s telling that so often this government doesn’t actively own these repressive developments, but portrays itself as simply compelled to carry them out

A few weeks previously I had been talking with an eminent lawyer who has been involved in many cases involving protesters. “What’s going on here right now is shocking,” he said. “It is making the UK an outlier in Europe. Other countries are looking at us and wondering how on earth this is happening when we don’t even have a far-right government.”

“When we don’t even have a far-right government.” I think that this is key to why more people aren’t protesting about these developments, and why so many people who are otherwise politically engaged are shrugging off this assault on people’s liberties. If a far-right government with a Trumpian narrative of a grand assault on dissent was putting in place the kind of measures we have recently seen, there would be an outcry from all sides. But because our government is not shouting about it, and is not even putting it into an ideological frame, the shift has simply become part of the political weather for most people. 

Indeed, it’s telling that so often this government doesn’t actively own these repressive developments, but portrays itself as simply compelled to carry them out. When Labour took power, many who voted for them expected them to repeal the anti-protest legislation that had been put in place by the Conservatives, but instead they kept it and built on it. When questioned, David Lammy, the deputy prime minister, said it would take up “so much parliamentary time” to undo it. It was notable that when Yvette Cooper, as home secretary, banned Palestine Action, she referred darkly to things she couldn’t disclose about the group, about shadowy “advice and intelligence” and “assessments”. 

And many other developments to silence protesters have taken place in an even more shadowy way, with no scrutiny by members of parliament or the public. Mr Justice Johnson’s refusal to allow Palestine Action defendants to bring evidence on the context and motivation for their actions has been preceded by other judges in climate protest trials who refused to allow defendants to discuss the climate emergency and its effects, or even about fuel poverty and home insulation. 

The recent revealing report by the Centre for Climate Crime and Climate Justice at Queen Mary, University of London (I am an honorary professor at the centre, though had nothing to do with this report), showed that this direction of travel by judges means that many protesters are therefore locked up not because of their original protest, but because of behaviour that is deemed in contempt of court, including refusing to keep quiet in the courtroom. Many others have been imprisoned for breaching injunctions granted to private companies stopping protests around oil terminals or other buildings. This kind of repression carried out by courts is often too complicated and bureaucratic to campaign on. It’s hard to explain quickly on an Instagram reel; it’s hard to get excited about. 

But as a result of these complicated, bureaucratic moves we are seeing more and more people locked up for longer and longer periods, and more and more people dissuaded from protesting at all. And if our next government is a far-right one, with the groundwork for greater authoritarianism already dug, with so many precedents already set, many more dissenters will be locked up. 

When my grandfather was imprisoned in Germany for attending Communist party meetings, most people shrugged off that first wave of repression – it was just the Communists and the oddballs who were getting locked up. To repeat, I don’t think this is our 1933, but the road we are walking down now is ever more shadowed. As Trudi Warner – who has been arrested several times already for protesting in the service of the right to dissent, and who will be outside the court on Friday – said to me this week: “I get that a lot of people don’t actually care about the climate or Palestine, so they aren’t getting upset right now. But when you are trying to speak up for something you care more about, and find you can’t, you will wish you had stood with us.”

Natasha Walter is an author and the founder of Women for Refugee Women. Her new book, Feminism for a World on Fire (Virago) was published in May

June 11, 2026 Posted by | civil liberties, UK | Leave a comment

Protest to be held at Calderbridge nuclear waste meeting

A PROTEST is set to be held in Calderbridge today, as concerned activists
ask why land off the Copeland coast is under consideration for an
underground nuclear waste store. Activists of ‘Lakes Against Nuclear Dump’
(LAND) have told Newsquest Cumbria that they will be protest outside the
Mid-Copeland GDF Partnership meeting at Calderbridge and Ponsonby Village
Hall today. Between 1pm and 3.30pm, the activists will be invited to join
LAND outside the meeting to colour in a giant postcard of an area off the
Copeland coast, which will then be handed to the partnership board.


Community partnerships formed in Mid and South Copeland in 2021 to speak to
residents about the Geological Disposal Facility (GDF), discussing the
potential economic benefits and its role in providing a permanent solution
for the UK’s radioactive waste. Meanwhile, Nuclear Waste Services (NWS) has
been conducting preliminary tests to determine whether the Mid Copeland and
South Copeland search areas contain the correct geology for the underground
nuclear waste store.

After narrowing its search to the area off the coast,
NWS has submitted a report to the Secretary of State for Energy Security
and Net Zero, Ed Milliband. Mr Milliband will hear that the area out to sea
could contain the necessary geology and it will be for him to decide
whether to progress to more detailed investigations. Mid and South Copeland
are now the only areas being considered for a GDF.

Carlisle News & Star 8th June 2026, https://www.newsandstar.co.uk/news/26169800.protest-held-calderbridge-nuclear-waste-meeting/

June 11, 2026 Posted by | Events, UK | Leave a comment

Stewart Lee: Quick – dangerous ideologies are storming the beaches. Has anyone reserved a sun-lounger?

Pete Hegseth is The American Secretary of War. His job title was formerly Secretary Of Defence, before the idea of defending yourself was deemed too ‘woke’ and America decided it was best to give the impression it was happy to throw the first punch in case people on social media thought the entire country was gay.

At a Normandy D-Day commemoration, Pete Hegseth, the American Secretary of War, noted that beaches were stormed in 1944 and are being stormed by ideologies now. The two events share precisely one feature, and that is sand

Jun 9, 2026, https://www.thenerve.news/p/stewart-lee-column-pete-hegseth-normandy-beaches-vance-nowak-lammy?utm_source=www.thenerve.news&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=tuesday-edition-natasha-walter-on-protest-sangita-myska-on-farage-hotlist&_bhlid=2ac5552553b72bf2014174c01923b7a21ce0d2de

Pete Hegseth is The American Secretary of War. His job title was formerly Secretary Of Defence, before the idea of defending yourself was deemed too ‘woke’ and America decided it was best to give the impression it was happy to throw the first punch in case people on social media thought the entire country was gay.

Last week Hegseth stood with his actual Christian nationalist tattoos concealed beneath his actual clothes on an actual Normandy beach to commemorate the start of the liberation of Europe from the Nazis on D Day in 1944. And he stated “sadly, today, different European beaches are stormed by different dangerous ideologies.”  

Whatever comparison Hegseth was trying to make, it was a bit creaky. The Normandy beaches were stormed by the allies, which was a good thing, yes? But Hegseth is saying that today some different things are storming some different beaches, which is bad. Ideally at least one thing in the comparison should be the same as at least one thing in the original example, otherwise it isn’t really a point of comparison. It’s just a whole new idea. 

Oh hang on! It’s beaches, isn’t it. There are beaches in both examples. It sort of works. But Hegseth dislikes so many ideologies – including feminism, environmentalism, secularism, gay rights and general ‘wokeness’ – as well as Islam, it was difficult to be certain at first which ideologies he was concerned about. If all the ideologies Hegseth fears arrive on the metaphorical beach at the same time it’s going to get very crowded. Hopefully the Germans will have staked out a few sun-loungers with their towels before breakfast in case feminism and environmentalism try to get all the best spots. 

Then Hegseth clarifies it. “Boats and men arrive. When will European capitals do something about that invasion, or is it too late? I pray not, and I believe not.”  Well UK net migration is at its lowest level for five years, but clearly it wasn’t appropriate for Hegseth to break off from his Christian Nationalist trajectory to congratulate the Starmer government on making basketcase UK a less attractive destination for the world’s hopeful. 

Some of the crosses scribbled on Hegseth’s body look dangerously like the ones you’re still not allowed to display in Germany. But I’m sure that’s just a coincidence

Uncharacteristically, Hegseth, who relishes the idea that his failed operation in Islamic Iran is a ‘Holy War’, stops short of explicitly saying it is Islam that is the ideology that is arriving. The whole thing is such a mess. If he wanted to tie his comments into the beaches thing it would have been better if he just said “Whenever I am on a beach I like to lie on a sun-lounger and think about how much I hate European liberal democracies.”

Ironically, Hegseth’s ideology isn’t that different to the one we fought back at on the beaches, on the landing grounds, in the fields and in the streets, and in the hills, eighty-two years ago. And some of the crosses scribbled on Hegseth’s body look dangerously like the ones you’re still not allowed to display in Germany since those other Nazis got ousted.  But I’m sure that’s just a coincidence. It’s all so confusing.

Meanwhile, the vice president JD Vance claimed the young white British boy Henry Nowak’s death was caused by the “mass invasion of migrants” and that our “only response” should be “righteous anger”, which presumably is the high-minded American Christian manifestation of Nigel Farage’s rather more brutal “pure cold rage.” 

I think the ideal version of what we are supposed to feel would have been a combination of both men’s ideas, perhaps a “pure cold righteous anger.”  Maybe in future Hegseth and Farage need to coordinate their speeches so people aren’t confused about what feelings they are supposed to have. After all, you don’t want to be exorcising yourself feeling exhausting “pure cold rage” when you should be exhibiting the steely calm of “righteous anger.” Life’s too short.

The only surprising thing about the American government’s attempts to exploit the tragedy of Nowak’s death, against the express wishes of his grieving parents, is that anyone is still naive enough to be surprised by it. Since retaking office the Trump administration has explicitly stated it intends to destabilise Western European liberal governments and work towards replacing them with systems more amenable to its essentially white supremacist vision. And the helpful social media algorithms of the loyal tech lords who support it, either out of ideological belief or self-interested avarice or both, push its propaganda perfectly. Yet people still act like Trump’s stated positions are just postures designed to provoke, instead of statements of actual policy. He has told European Liberal Democracies he wants them gone. And yet we still talk about a special relationship, like a whipped dog that comes back daily for its usual kicking.

It may as well be Trump, Hegseth and Vance rioting on the Southampton streets and throwing punches at the police, as their views, funnelled and amplified by social media like Elon Musk’s Twitter (currently X), are deliberately driving destabilising unrest. Politicians prevaricate about whether the government should have a presence on Musk’s network when in fact they should be working out how to stop it even having access to our citizens. If people want to see pictures of a female Labour MP being chloroformed before being raped can’t they draw their own, instead of getting Musk’s app to do it for them? At the very least Musk is killing creativity.

The final word goes to Chantal Richard, a member of the Langrune en Commun Association, in the area of Normandy Hegseth visited last week. “This individual promotes values that go against democracy, human rights and peace. The fact that Pete Hegseth is challenging all the international organisations that emerged from the second world war isn’t business as usual. He must be called out for who he is, for the values he represents: colonial, warmongering, racist, far-right values. Silence seems to us to be the worst thing we can do on these issues.”

David Lammy, on the other hand, remains ‘friends’ with JD Vance. Idiot.

June 11, 2026 Posted by | PERSONAL STORIES | Leave a comment