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Challenging New York Times’s Suggestion That We Should Stop Worrying and Love Radiation

The 2006 National Academy of Sciences report on Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation (BEIR VII) substantiates Liner No Threshhold LNT, as did the 2021 NRC decision to deny a 2015 request to get rid of LNT.

Karl Grossman, July 15, 2026 https://fair.org/home/challenging-nyts-suggestion-that-we-should-stop-worrying-and-love-radiation/

Alfred Meyer, long active in Physicians for Social Responsibility and former co-chair of its Radiation and Health Committee, challenged an article in the July 3 New York Times, headlined “US to Overhaul Radiation Safety Rules to Spur Nuclear Expansion.”

In a July 6 letter to the article’s author, Brad Plumer, Meyer wrote:

When I read the New York Times business page, I assume that there is a high level of investigative journalism being presented so that the news I read will present thorough and well-researched information about the topic at hand. This is not the case with this article.

Plumer began his piece by paraphrasing the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s proposal on July 1 to overhaul its safety rules for radiation exposure at nuclear power plants. As he put it, the commission was concerned by the cost of the regulations and their tendency to “go beyond what is needed to protect human health.”

The NRC’s proposal asserted that current regulations often incur additional costs “without a measurable safety benefit”—for example, Plumer supplied, when regulators install additional equipment at plants in order to push radiation exposure “far below the legal limits.” Maximum dose limits, the agency said, are already set “well below levels associated with known health effects.”

This was meant to corroborate Plumer’s characterization about costliness, but Meyer noted the lack of substantiation:

You provide no rationale, evidence or citations for these claims, making simple conclusions about a very complex topic. How do you know that human health is indeed being protected, or as you imply, being over-protected? What examples can you provide of radiation exposure being “far below the legal limits”?

Trying to ‘simplify things’

Meyer focused on Plumer’s denial of “measurable safety benefits” from nuclear regulations, the premise of the central question Plumer posed in his piece: How much protection against low levels of radiation is worthwhile? Meyer took issue with Plumer’s framing:

For decades, many researchers and regulators have tried to simplify things by adopting what’s known as the “linear no-threshold model,” which says that the effects of radiation scale down linearly with the dose, and that even tiny amounts of radiation can have small negative effects.

Calling the Linear No Threshold (LNT) model an attempt to “simplify things,” Meyer noted, is “a rather pejorative comment in light of the significant scientific evidence at hand”:

The 2006 National Academy of Sciences report on Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation (BEIR VII) substantiates LNT, as did the 2021 NRC decision to deny a 2015 request to get rid of LNT.

Plumer “never mentions the history and current state of study and knowledge of the health effects of exposure to low levels of ionizing radiation,” Meyer said, pointing to 80 years of research:

The atomic photographer Robert Del Tredici includes a lengthy endnote in his 1985 book At Work in the Field of the Bomb, which recounts Karl Z. Morgan, the father of health physics—aka the study of the health effects of radiation—discussing how the effects of low-level radiation were well-researched in the late 1940s and were found to be significant. As Morgan’s medical perspectives raised public health questions about further expansion of the nuclear enterprise, they were minimized and ignored.

One of Plumer’s unquestioned and unexplored assertions especially stood out:

Experts agree that high doses of radiation are dangerous and can cause various types of cancer. But there’s much more disagreement about the effects of lower doses of radiation, such as the amounts that workers at nuclear power plants might receive in the course of their jobs. Different studies have found that low doses can be harmful, neutral or even beneficial.

The idea that low doses of radiation may be “even beneficial” refers to “radiation hormesis”—a widely dismissed claim of some nuclear promoters that exposure to radiation exercises the immune system and thus is healthy.

‘History of atomic press censorship’

“This piece,” said Meyer,

serves to promote the current government policies to greatly expand nuclear activities—it is not investigative journalism that thoroughly considers the topics at hand to give the public the information necessary for informed decision-making.

Meyer added: “The New York Times has an uncomfortable history of atomic press censorship.” Meyer cited as “a prime example” William Laurence, who, he noted, helped craft the official military line on Hiroshima while still ostensibly a Times journalist. Laurence was a  Times science writer who also worked for the Manhattan Project, for which he drafted press releases and other government statements.

Back at the Times after the war, for years Laurence glorified nuclear technology. As author Beverly Deepe Keever wrote in her book News Zero: The New York Times and the Bomb, Laurence “served as a scribe writing government propaganda” to obscure the deadly and harmful effects of radiation.

More recently, Matthew Wald, who spent 38 years at the Times with a beat including the nuclear industry, left the paper in 2014 and the following year joined the Nuclear Energy Institute, the nuclear industry’s Washington-based trade group, as a policy analyst and communications consultant.

“Is history repeating itself, or can the New York Times cover the whole story here?” Meyer wrote. “The future of our genome is at stake.”

Meyer signed his letter as the treasurer of Physicians for Social Responsibility New York. He was also formerly the chapter’s president, the executive director of PSR Wisconsin, a longtime member of PSR’s national board, and the program director of the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability. He has not yet received a response from Plumer.

ACTION ALERT: You can send a message to the New York Times at letters@nytimes.com or via Bluesky: @NYTimes.com. Please remember that respectful communication is the most effective. Feel free to leave a copy of your message in the comments thread here.

Research Assistance: Emily Marie Spencer

July 20, 2026 Posted by | radiation, USA | Leave a comment

Liberals Have Relaxed About Trump Because They Trust Him To Keep The Wars Going

Caitlin Johnstone, Jul 16, 2026, https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/liberals-have-relaxed-about-trump?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=207158487&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

Have you noticed how the liberal establishment hasn’t been nearly as emotional and outraged about Trump’s second term as they were about his first? Now that he’s the president who bombed Iran, the entire western political/media class is cool with him.

The term “Trump Derangement Syndrome” has always been used by the MAGA crowd as a blanket pejorative to protect the president from criticism, but during Trump’s first term it wasn’t entirely unfair. You’d see Democrats shrieking their lungs out over Trump doing things that other US presidents did all the time like cozying up with dictators and tyrants. They’d lose their minds over relatively sane things like Trump talking about moving troops out of Syria. The whole Russiagate thing was liberals going bat shit over a crazy conspiracy theory that caused them to push for the escalations against Russia which ultimately gave rise to the war in Ukraine.

We’re not seeing any of that in Trump’s second term. That extra layer of screeching emotionality simply isn’t there. There are no Russiagates or emotional support Maddows this time around. Democrats hate Trump, but they hate him about as much as they’d hate any Republican president. The emotional response to his second presidency is wildly, wildly different from the first.

Which is nuts, because he’s quantifiably far worse this time around. His domestic policies are much more tyrannical. He’s as evil a warmonger as the White House has ever seen. He’s so corrupt that he’s just openly admitting to being bought and owned by Zionist oligarchs while making his family a fortune using the power of his office. Now that he doesn’t have to worry about re-election, he’s being completely nakedly monstrous.

And what’s creepy is that’s why the liberal establishment is so much more mellow about him. They’re no longer worried that he’s going to promote “isolationist” foreign policy and roll back the US war machine. He went to war with Iran, so they like him now. Because they know he’s fully compliant.

I’ve had many a Trump supporter tell me that all the anti-Trump vitriol we saw from the imperial political/media class was evidence that he really was fighting the Deep State and draining the swamp, but that was never what was actually happening. As I have been arguing since Trump’s first term, the oligarchs and empire managers never opposed Trump because they believed he was opposed to them. Rather, they simply viewed him as a poor steward of the empire. They didn’t trust him to keep the imperial gears turning in the way they must turn to maintain the status quo.

Clearly that has changed. They trust him now. They know he will keep the bombs dropping, keep the capitalism chugging along, and keep the power centers where they are.

They view him as one of their own now. When he finally dies, he will be lovingly eulogized by all the same liberal institutions which called him a second Hitler during his first term. He did enough to reassure them that the presidency of the United States had not been accidentally awarded to a decent human being.

July 20, 2026 Posted by | politics, USA | Leave a comment

‘Extreme risk’: AUKUS warnings as Garrett’s inquiry docks in Adelaide

16 July 26. https://www.indailysa.com.au/news/just-in/2026/07/16/extreme-risk-aukus-warnings-as-garretts-inquiry-docks-in-adelaide

“Extreme” economic risk and nuclear waste disposal concerns for the $368 billion AUKUS submarine project are being heard at an independent inquiry in Adelaide today.

The risk associated with the Federal Government’s $368 billion AUKUS nuclear submarine project are being criticised by former federal senator and self-described ‘transparency warrior’ Rex Patrick this morning at an independent inquiry held in Adelaide today.

And transparency warnings were raised over the government’s plans for nuclear waste from submarines built at Osborne in South Australia, Patrick saying he was fighting in the Federal Court for information to be made public.

Meanwhile, former South Australian Liberal MP Christopher Pyne, who was Minister for Defence from 2018 until his retirement in 2019, said he “thought twice about appearing” at the inquiry led by famed Australian musician and former federal Environment Minister Peter Garrett.

Pyne said he bit the bullet because he believed in the “battle of ideas”.

The independent inquiry into the defence agreement between Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States was established earlier this year to scrutinise the deal.

It is being led by former Labor MP and Midnight Oil front man Peter Garrett, with public hearings taking place across the country, including in Adelaide today and tomorrow.

Other commissioners included First Nations leader Karina Lester, former West Australian Premier Carmen Lawrence, former Chief of the Australian Defence Force Chris Barrie and co-CEO of the Australia Institute Leanne Minshull. A final report was expected on October 30.

“Adelaide is at the epicentre of the AUKUS project,” Garrett told reporters at a press conference before the inquiry started.

“Whether it’s questions on the safe, long-term storage of radioactive waste, whether it’s the impact on communities in Adelaide and around Osborne, whether it’s the question of opportunity cost for the Adelaide economy.

“It is a matter of some regret that the AUKUS decision – the biggest-ever decision by any Australian government to spend public money on submarines, some not even built – was made with minimal public debate.”

The inquiry has been supported by trade unions and non-profit organisations to address questions over whether risks – economic and political – were being managed appropriately, Patrick telling the inquiry the country was taking on a “hugely risky program”.

“From an absolute cost perspective, it is unaffordable and it is bankrupting,” he said.

“There’s also an opportunity cost. You know – $360 billion – if you think about what you can spend with that amount of money… we wouldn’t be worrying about fuel security, we wouldn’t be worrying about industrial resilience.”

He added that nuclear waste storage was “a problem that needs to be solved”, noting he was fighting in the Federal Court for the release of documents around where the government was planning to store waste from the nuclear submarines.

“I’m not asking for the release of documents that relate to how fast a submarine might go, how many weapons it might have… I’m asking for information that is incidental to this project but really important to it: Where are you going to put the waste associated with this?” Patrick said.

Pyne gave evidence ahead of Patrick, and emphasised the importance of the AUKUS project in terms of national defence against China, saying the uplift in defence capability would be imperative “if we find ourselves on our own in the worst case scenario”.

He described AUKUS as “unstoppable” and said it would deliver a permanent boost for defence spending, an upgrade to Australia’s bases and facilities, an investment in STEM and trade skills, and would be a permanent change to Australia’s national security.

The inquiry was set to continue until this evening, with other speakers including anti-nuclear campaigner David Noonan and SA Greens MLC Melanie Selwood.

The Greens today released new findings from a survey of 343 South Australians, showing 83.7 per cent of respondents were “mostly concerned” about AUKUS.

Seventy-one per cent said AUKUS would make Australia less secure, and 74.5 per cent said they did not see “clear benefits” from the defence pact.

AUKUS was set to be a boon for the South Australian economy and jobs creation, with the nuclear submarine shipbuilding yard set to be constructed at Osborne at a cost of at least $30 billion.

Both the state and federal governments said they hoped the project would create 10,000 jobs in design and construction as well as up to 1000 apprentices per year at an on-site training facility, with the first newly built submarines expected to be delivered to the Australian Navy in the 2040s.

Enough steel to make 17 Eiffel Towers as well as 710,000 cubic metres of structural concrete will be used in the construction of the 420-metre-long fabrication hall.

However it has already weathered several hiccups.

In June, Federal Defence Minister Richard Marles announced Australia would only buy three second-hand nuclear-powered submarines instead of the promised mix of new and used US vessels.

This plan was expected to happen before Australia eventually built its own submarines using US nuclear-propulsion technology and parts made in Britain.

The second-hand subs announcement comes after the US has struggled to make enough Virginia-class submarines for its own use, leading some American lawmakers to question how it could also build enough of the boats to meet Australia’s needs.

Australia faces a critical window to receive the submarines before its existing, 1980s-designed Collins-class vessels are retired from service.

July 20, 2026 Posted by | AUSTRALIA, politics | Leave a comment

No, Israel Does Not Have ‘A Right To Exist’

there is no such right in international law. None. 

the International Court of Justice has repeatedly found that Israel has no right to claim self-defense in its attacks on occupied Palestinian territories. (In essence, you cannot break into someone’s house and then claim a right to self-defense when they resist you). 

 Unlike the Zionist claim that “Israel has a right to exist,” my assertion is rooted in international law. Of course, given Israel’s propensity for violating such laws, it’s no surprise they’re still claiming a right that has no basis in reality.

Mondoweiss, By Craig Mokhiber  July 14, 2026 

News that, in the midst of the genocide in Palestine, the German parliament was this week advancing legislation that would criminalize speech that denies that Israel has a “right to exist,” with penalties of up to five years in prison, came as a surprise to virtually no one. 

This is, after all, the same Germany that perpetrated genocide first in Namibia and then in Europe, and is now actively and enthusiastically participating in the ongoing genocide in Palestine while brutally repressing all who dare speak out against it inside Germany. 

Indeed, alongside Israel and the U.S., the German state today has the dubious distinction of being among those most captured by Zionist interests and most corrupted by Zionist ideology. 

The German state even has an official policy (Staatsräson) dedicating the German state to the continued existence of the Israeli regime, and a formal declaration of Israel’s “right to exist” is required to acquire German citizenship. (No such declaration of Germany’s right to exist is required). 

But the statement that the Israeli regime has no right to exist is not only a legally protected opinion. It is also demonstrably true, as a matter of both fact and law. 

Of course, the statement that Israel “has a right to exist” has always been nonsense, unrooted as it is in either law or fact. 

But this Zionist claim rings familiar to the ear of people in the West because it has been so often repeated as a pillar of Zionist propaganda, echoed by Western politicians benefiting from Israel lobby bribes, and by Israel-aligned media corporations dutifully buttressing the impunity of the regime. 

Ask yourself if you have ever heard a similar refrain asserting Italy’s right to exist, or Canada’s — or Germany’s, for that matter? And yet the claim is constantly made that the Israeli regime (and only the Israeli regime) somehow has such a right. 

The most obvious conclusion is that the regime and its proxies in the West are so deeply insecure about the legitimacy of the state, given the lawless and bloody history of its founding and expansion, that they have deemed it necessary to impose an enforced (and fictional) orthodoxy, rooted in an idea of Israeli exceptionalism and state-sponsored impunity.

But there is no such right in international law. None. 

Inconvenient facts

Indeed, when I first entered the corridors of the United Nations in the 1980s, many states then existed that no longer existed when I left in 2023. Did the USSR, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, East Germany, Tanganyika, Zanzibar, and the United Arab Republic have a “right to exist?” No. And neither does Israel. 

States come and go, but none of them has a “right to exist.” As a factual matter, this is undeniable. 

And yet, some still actively parrot the baseless Zionist fabrication that the Israeli regime somehow possesses it, others accept it without question, some (like Germany) even seek to compel others to declare it, and still others prohibit any attempts to challenge the lie. 

There is no “right to exist” for states under international law. Thus, Israel cannot claim such a right. 

Of course, states do have some rights. For example, states normally have a right to sovereign equality, to territorial integrity, and to self-defense under Article 51 of the UN Charter. But even these rights normally afforded to states are subject to conditions and qualifications, many of which would exclude Israel’s claim to them. 

For example, the International Court of Justice has repeatedly found that Israel has no right to claim self-defense in its attacks on occupied Palestinian territories. (In essence, you cannot break into someone’s house and then claim a right to self-defense when they resist you). 

Its 1949 “Green Line” with Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank, and Gaza, is not an international border, but rather an armistice line merely meant to separate forces. The regime cannot claim it as a lawful border. 

Moreover, given that the prohibition of the acquisition of territory by force is a jus cogens norm (the highest, peremptory rules) of international law and a binding obligation under the UN Charter, it cannot claim any of that land as part of its lawful territory. ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

Even a cursory examination of international law reveals that, to the contrary, the Israeli regime should not exist.

The international community of states has obligations to cease recognition of the regime, to isolate it, and to work for its dismantlement and for the liberation of the Palestinian people from the regime. 

Clearly, no one would today argue that Nazi Germany, or Apartheid South Africa, or Vichy France, or Khmer Rouge Kampuchea had a “right to exist.” Nor would we entertain claims for eternal colonial regimes in Algeria, India, Namibia, or Kenya. For the same reasons, no legal (or moral) argument could justify a right to exist for Zionist Israel. 

To the contrary, international law requires that, where breaches of peremptory norms of international law are integral to the creation, expansion, and sustaining of a state (as was the case in apartheid Namibia and Rhodesia), such entities should not be recognized or accepted as legitimate states and should in no way be assisted. 

Israel’s record is clear. It was founded on the breach of two peremptory (jus cogens) norms: the right to self-determination of the people of the land, and the rule on the non-acquisition of territory by force, as well as on the two highest crimes in international law: genocide and aggression.   

Since then, it has refused the return of refugees and their compensation, and has continuously expanded its unlawful evictions, land theft, and colonization. 

The United Nations and every major international human rights organization have concluded that the Israeli regime is guilty of apartheid and racial segregation, unlawful occupation, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. 

The regime is now on trial for genocide at the ICJ, charges that the Court has found plausible enough to issue a series of preliminary orders (all of which the regime has ignored). 

And the same Court has found the regime guilty of unlawful occupation, the forced denial of self-determination, the unlawful acquisition of territory by force, war crimes, apartheid, and racial segregation. 

And the International Criminal Court has indicted the regime’s leaders for crimes against humanity. 

For the full eighty years of its existence, the Israeli regime has held the distinction of being in breach of the highest number of UN resolutions and ICJ decisions of any country on the planet. 

Today, the regime is unlawfully occupying Palestine, Lebanon, and Syria, attacking Lebanon, Syria, Iran, Yemen, and beyond, and perpetrating genocide in Palestine. 

It has carried out assassinations across the region and has admitted to (indeed, bragged about) transnational terrorist attacks with booby-trapped pagers in Lebanon

Judged against the imperatives of international law, Israel is, in the strictest sense of the term, a rogue regime, illegitimate in its founding, and devoid of all legitimacy in its conduct ever since. 

To declare that such a regime has a “right to exist” is an affront to generations of its victims, to international law, and to human decency itself. And the threat that it poses extends far beyond Palestine.

The Israeli regime is driven by a deeply racist and fundamentally violent ideology. It is armed with advanced technologies of surveillance and death, holds powerful conventional weaponry, and possesses stockpiles of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons. 

It has declared policies mandating the mass murder of civilians (the Dahiya Doctrine), the killing of its own citizens (the Hannibal Directive), and the potential nuclear destruction of the world (the Samson Option). 

Its spies are active in countries around the globe, and its proxies are actively engaged in corrupting governments and institutions across the West. 

Does such a regime have a “right to exist?” No. 

In fact, dismantling such a regime and its replacement with a free Palestine with equal rights for all is not only a legal requirement, but also an existential imperative for all of humanity.  https://mondoweiss.net/2026/07/no-israel-does-not-have-a-right-to-exist-quite-the-contrary-actually/

July 20, 2026 Posted by | Legal | Leave a comment

Iran Accuses Kushner, Witkoff of Pursuing Profits Over Peace in Diplomatic Talks

Drop Site reported that Iran warned Vice President JD Vance that “the pair were more interested in exploiting insider knowledge of the negotiations to profit in financial markets than they were in reaching a deal.”

Jake Johnson, Common Dreams, Jul 16, 2026

Iranian officials reportedly warned US Vice President JD Vance late last month that two officials leading the Trump administration’s diplomatic efforts in the Middle East—special envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner—were trying to profit from their proximity to critical negotiations rather than working to secure a lasting peace agreement.

According to Drop Site, which cited an unnamed Iranian official, “Iran conveyed to Vance that the pair were more interested in exploiting insider knowledge of the negotiations to profit in financial markets than they were in reaching a deal.” The Iranian side also “expressed concern about repeated leaks from Kushner to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.”

Iranian officials reportedly warned US Vice President JD Vance late last month that two officials leading the Trump administration’s diplomatic efforts in the Middle East—special envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner—were trying to profit from their proximity to critical negotiations rather than working to secure a lasting peace agreement.

According to Drop Site, which cited an unnamed Iranian official, “Iran conveyed to Vance that the pair were more interested in exploiting insider knowledge of the negotiations to profit in financial markets than they were in reaching a deal.” The Iranian side also “expressed concern about repeated leaks from Kushner to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.”

Iranians estimated that people with inside information have raked in $9 billion in profits stemming from financial market moves related to the US-Israeli war on Iran, which sparked significant volatility in energy and equity prices.

On several occasions during the war, massive trading volumes have closely preceded major conflict-related announcements by US President Donald Trump. (Kushner is Trump’s son-in-law, and Witkoff is a close personal friend of the president.)

Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, speaker of the Iranian Parliament and the country’s top negotiator, accused the Trump administration in March of peddling “fake news” to “manipulate the financial and oil markets and escape the quagmire in which the US and Israel are trapped.”……………………………………………..

“The public has no reason to trust Jared Kushner’s integrity as a government official to put their interests above his financial benefit,” Donald Sherman, president of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said after Trump formally named Kushner a special peace envoy in February.

Less than a month later, The New York Times reported that Kushner was trying to raise at least $5 billion in funding for his private equity firm, Affinity Partners, from Middle East governments. Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund is the largest investor in Affinity.

Witkoff, a real estate investor, has also faced scrutiny for potentially massive conflicts of interest.

Rep. Greg Stanton (D-Ariz.) noted during a House hearing last month that Witkoff “co-founded the cryptocurrency venture firm World Liberty Financial, alongside President Trump and President Trump’s children.”……………………………………. https://www.commondreams.org/news/kushner-witkoff-profit-iran-war

July 20, 2026 Posted by | Iran, secrets,lies and civil liberties, USA | Leave a comment

The West Won’t Punish The Settlements. Its Two-State Solution Was Always a Sham.

Western elites cannot imagine a world without Israel as their military thug in the oil-rich Middle East any more than you can imagine life without your arm.

If Israel wants the settlements to continue expelling Palestinians off their lands until there are no Palestinians left on those lands, then the West is not going to naysay it.

 July 15, 2026, Jonathan Cook Substack, https://jonathancook.substack.com/p/the-west-wont-punish-the-settlements

For decades, the EU has devised ever more convoluted ways to avoid penalising Israel’s illegal settlements, even as they devour a two-state solution it claims is the only path to regional peace

If I asked you to cut off your arm, would you do it?

What if I pointed out that that your arm regularly punched a neighbour in the face so violently that it broke their nose and teeth, and left them unconscious? Would you cut your arm off then?

I’m guessing the answer to both questions is a firm, “No.”

Which is exactly why the European Union, Britain and the United States have precisely no intention of severing their support for Israel’s illegal Jewish settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, however violent the Jewish colonisers who live on stolen Palestinian land prove to be.

For decades, settler militias – backed by Israeli soldiers – have beaten up Palestinians, shot them, poisoned their wells, chopped down their olive groves, torched their homes, all in an attempt to ethnically cleanse them from their historic homeland.

The relentless expansion of these illegal settlements has left any hope of a two-state solution in tatters. The West Bank is now an archipelago of Palestinian villages and towns isolated from one another by marauding violent settlers, apartheid roads only for Jews, steel and concrete barriers, and army checkpoints.

All of this has happened in full view of western states over many decades. The International Court of Justice, the world’s highest court, ruled back in 2004 – nearly a quarter of a century ago – that these Jewish settlements violated international law and needed to be dismantled.

It reiterated that demand in a decision two years ago in which it identified Israel as an apartheid state ruling over Palestinians. It warned states to “take steps to prevent trade or investment relations that assists in the maintenance of the illegal situation created by Israel in the occupied Palestinian territory”.

And yet the West has done nothing meaningful year after year as the settlements have stolen more land from Palestinians, made their lives there ever more miserable, and trashed any chance of the West’s supposed ambition of two states living alongside each other.

Remember this when Israel’s apologists tell you to wait for the same court’s definitive ruling – in a year or two, or maybe three – on what it deemed in early 2024 to be a “plausible” genocide in Gaza, just three months into Israel’s mass slaughter there.

Not only will any such ruling be far too late to make any difference to the victims of the genocide, but the US, Britain and Europe will do precisely no more to punish Israel for this crime of crimes – one we can see for ourselves without an ICJ ruling – than they have done in punishing Israel for the settlements.

Punching fist

Why? Because most western states no more wish to impose a penalty on Israel for its crimes than you would want to amputate a healthy arm.

If they refuse to lift a finger to stop a live-streamed genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, why on earth would anyone imagine they are ready to do anything to stop Israel’s violent settlers ethnically cleansing the West Bank?

The settlements are as deeply integrated into Israel as your arm is attached to your shoulder. And in turn, Israel is as much the punching fist of the imperial West’s war machine as the City of London – and its former tax-haven colonies – are the beating heart of the imperial West’s financial machine.

Western elites cannot imagine a world without Israel as their military thug in the oil-rich Middle East any more than you can imagine life without your arm.

That explains why no one really believed that EU foreign ministers, meeting once again this week to discuss banning settlement products – the bare minimum they have long been obligated to do under international law – would reach an agreement.

More than 100 legal scholars had earlier written to the European Commission’s top trade and foreign policy officials stressing the EU’s “international legal obligation”.

But as everyone predicted, EU ministers kicked the can down the road – until at least October, when they agreed to more talks about talks.

The EU has been delaying meaningful action on dealing with the settlements since at least 2004, when the ICJ ruled them illegal.

A year after that ruling, the EU issued a Technical Agreement that removed preferential trade tariffs of the kind Israeli goods enjoy from any items produced in the illegal settlements. Israel agreed only because there were so many loopholes and workarounds it had no practical effect whatsoever.

It was another seven years – in 2012 – before the EU started to express concern about these loopholes, including the fact that Israel was routinely mislabelling settlement products as “Made in Israel”.

Fast forward another three years and the EU finally got around to pretending to be closing the loopholes. In November 2015, 11 years after the ICJ ruling, the EU issued an “interpretative notice” requiring labels on settlement goods to state: “Product from the West Bank (Israeli settlement).”

Again, Israel simply ignored the notice and continued mislabelling products, or blended them with products made in Israel, making it hard to determine the provenance.

Pure pantomime

Remember, these lengthy, meaningless battles were not about banning settlement products or even imposing punitive tariffs. They were simply about labelling them correctly.

To this day, the overwhelming majority of consumers across the EU have no idea, even if items are correctly labelled, which they almost never are, that they are buying products supporting Israel’s violent campaign to ethnically cleanse Palestinians from their homeland.

It was because of this utter farce that civil society organisations started to noisily accuse the EU of complicity in Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and demand instead the outright banning of all settlement products.

These critics have now been banging their heads against a brick wall for over a decade. They have still achieved nothing, as this week’s EU meeting once again confirms.

Even were they to win a victory a year or two hence on banning settlement products, Israel would still be able to use the same workarounds it has been for the past 22 years to avoid any meaningful impact. European consumers would still be directly subsidising the violence of Jewish settler militias and the expulsion of Palestinians from their homes.

All of this has been pure theatre – or more accurately, pantomime – to suggest that some kind of administrative process is in hand, that legal avenues are being pursued, that Israel will one day pay a price for its decades-old programme of ethnically cleansing Palestinians.

And yet nothing ever actually happens. The most the EU is prepared to do is throw a sop to its critics by imposing symbolic sanctions on a couple of dozen of the most violent settlers – out of a total settler population of nearly 700,000.

Those settlers did not end up in the West Bank and East Jerusalem by accident. Most were encouraged there by the Israeli state with offers of cheap housing, lower mortgage rates and higher funding of educational and other municipal services.

Note too that this abject failure relates to Israel’s explicit goal in expanding its settlements: to eviscerate the two-state solution the West says it craves as the only way to bring peace to the region.

The fact is Europe, Britain and the US have no interest in the two-state solution. If they did, they would have used the ICJ ruling in 2004 as grounds to ban settlement products, give that ban real teeth, and threaten Israel with a loss of all preferential trade with the West until it abided by international law and removed all obstacles to Palestinian statehood, including the settlements.

They did none of this because that was never their intention.

Their only concern is keeping Israel – their pit bull in the Middle East – fed and watered.

If Israel wants the settlements to continue expelling Palestinians off their lands until there are no Palestinians left on those lands, then the West is not going to naysay it.

Just as if Israel wants to continue deliberately targeting Palestinian children in Gaza for death, as a United Nations inquiry recently determined, then the West will turn a blind eye to that too.

If Israel’s soldiers and Jewish settler militias want to take a US Congressperson hostage in the West Bank, as they briefly did to Democrat politician Ro Khanna last week, no western leader is going to make a fuss about it.

Israel may be a rogue state but it is a rogue state made entirely in the western elite’s image. The West’s only real concern is in ensuring its own publics don’t realise, as they watch a genocidal state disappear the Palestinians, that they are looking into the mirror.

July 20, 2026 Posted by | Israel, politics international | Leave a comment

TELL Nuclear Regulatory Commission: Don’t weaken radiation standards

July 16, 2026, https://beyondnuclear.org/tell-nrc-dont-weaken-radiation-standards/

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission draft proposed rule (PR), allowing more radiation exposure at the industry’s discretion, has been published in the Federal Register. Deadline for comments is August 31, 2026. The PR would allow greater exposures “just to save the nuclear power industry money,” says Ed Lyman, Union of Concerned Scientists. But it is also to appease Trump’s tech billionaire donors who want AI data centers.

Please comment before the deadline. You can be guided by talking points Beyond Nuclear has created, and NRC questions in the PR, to organize and create your comments. Please also watch the Coalition to Stop Radioactive Pollution’s webinar and join the Protect Better Campaign. Push back against this radiation trainwreck and health onslaught by commenting and sharing this information on social media.

Sign up for the Protect Better Campaign.

Make a video about your, and your community’s, thoughts and experiences with radioactive pollution.

Stay in touch with us for details on an upcoming NRC public meeting on this PR.

Watch a video walking you through the comment process.

See a list of press stories/interviews on this issue.

July 20, 2026 Posted by | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Corporations Lead U.S. Militarization of Space

The corporations involved could be making peaceful, beneficial goods and services

Christian, Jul 16, 2026, https://thebusinessofwar.substack.com/p/mapping-corporate-domination-in-us?publication_id=1769284&post_id=194285481&isFreemail=true&r=3alev&triedRedirect=true&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

As seen in the map [on original], these space corporations could pivot to:

  • manufacturing satellites that monitor weather, climate, crops, and ocean temperature and currents
  • manufacturing satellites that help people navigate and explore (not guide bombs and artillery to kill people and destroy homes, which GPS does)
  • manufacturing communications satellites
  • designing electronics for public infrastructure
  • crafting sensors for public safety
  • developing hardware and software to track space junk
  • developing ways to gather space junk
  • fabricating composite materials for public transportation
  • defending the planet against near-earth objects (NEO)
  • helping governments and scientific bodies to peacefully explore the cosmos
  • demilitarizing space
  • researching and developing non-polluting propulsion for space launch
  • conducting basic research of the electromagnetic spectrum
  • educating the public about mathematics, physics, and engineering
  • doing so much more!

Industrial conversion itself is a straightforward process. It just takes political will.

Methodology

I scoured fiscal 2025 U.S. military contracting announcements in order to find all announcements pertaining to space. My study focused on the contracts issued by a relevant military unit (e.g., Space Systems Command at Los Angeles Air Force Base) or involving military operations to, in, or from space. I excluded contracts issued by the Missile Defense Agency, which contracts with industry to recognize and intercept ballistic missiles.

I use the term “contract” in this study to include contracts, contract modifications, and contract options.

The categories on the map are not firm boundaries. Many corporations sell goods and services across multiple categories (e.g., IT, ground infrastructure, consulting).

Corporate locations are organized and color-coded based on their main focus. For example, Boeing manufactures satellites in El Segundo, California, but also makes some space networking and control technology for use on the ground. I colored it black, representing satellite manufacturing, the location’s primary focus.

USAspending.gov and corporate websites (including SpaceFoundation.org) also provided information for the map.

July 20, 2026 Posted by | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Australian resistance to the war machine -500 march towards Pine Gap this morning demanding closure of the facility

Monday 20 July 2026, Mparntwe Alice Springs, Arrernte Country 

Hundreds from across the country have joined a rally on the road to Pine Gap this morning demanding the closure of the controversial military facility. The action closes out the Close Pine Gap Sacred Land Back Convergence 2026 organised by Mparntwe for Falastin and Anti Militarism Action Network, the biggest convergence of its kind since 1987. 

The Hayes family – Traditional Owners of Kuyunba, the sacred land that Pine Gap occupies – lead the rally, with a list of four demands: 

  1. Return of Kuyunba  
  2. The closure of Pine Gap 
  3. Compensation for the years Kuyunba has been occupied 
  4. Compensation to the families in Gaza for the lives lost there 

These actions have been echoed by rallies across the country.

The action follows two days of learning and discussion about militarism and colonialism. Experts from around the country addressed the violent reality and risks of Pine Gap. 

“If ever there was a message to end the world, it would come through Pine Gap. We would be the handmaidens of that,” said Senator David Shoebridge on the weekend, adding, “US bases have never made us safe, but right now they are especially making us a target.”

Felicity, Wyonna and Jacquita Hayes, Arrernte Apmereke-artweye Traditional Custodians, said earlier to supporters: 

“We want people to support us to close down Pine Gap. We want them to know it’s a sacred site. We don’t want to be feeling guilty all the time when bad things are happening overseas to little ones. We’re not the ones controlling that facility, but we feel guilty that it’s coming from our land.”

July 20, 2026 Posted by | AUSTRALIA, opposition to nuclear | Leave a comment