2026 July 26 « nuclear-news

Ukraine: America’s Enduring Proxy War on Russia

Eisenhower’s warning that US policy would be captured by a scientific-technological elite supplies a specific reason the US sustains the Ukraine war: Ukraine has become a unique, live-fire laboratory for AI warfare at scale

Henry Kissinger is famously credited with telling the truth to nations that the US would use and discard: To be an enemy of the United States may be dangerous, but to be a friend is fatal. – Ukraine is dying at American hands.

Jeffrey D. Sachs, Sybil Fares July 22, 2026, https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/us-proxy-war-in-ukraine

In his farewell address of January 1961, Dwight Eisenhower warned Americans against the “acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex,” and the danger that “public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.” Sixty-five years on, Eisenhower’s warnings have been repeatedly and tragically vindicated. American democracy hangs by a thread, while the military-industrial complex, now including Silicon Valley, runs American foreign policy over the objections of the American people.

The aim is American primacy, meaning the unchallenged wealth, power, and prerogatives of American elites, unchecked by any other nation or group of nations. What this means in practice is that Wall Street, military contractors, Silicon Valley, and Big Oil control American foreign policy to maximize elite wealth and access to global resources, supply chains, and strategic choke points. The rest of the world is to fall in line.

The military-industrial complex deploys a toolkit that we summarize as “regime control,” directed at subordinating the rest of the world’s governments to the United States. The instruments used for regime control include the imposition or removal of trade barriers; the access to or denial of technologies; the introduction or removal of economic sanctions; the ownership and manipulation of foreign media; electoral interference of varying extent; political assassinations, color revolutions, CIA-backed coups; the instigation of overseas bank runs and the supply of emergency loans when states submit; the freezing and unfreezing of foreign assets; the targeting of foreign officials with corruption claims, extradition, or kidnapping; and, when none of these suffice for regime control, outright war. The US wars of choice (really, wars for regime control) are perpetual, and lucrative for the war industries, though the deep state typically prefers that other governments cave in without a fight.

Geopolitical Pivots and American Primacy

Zbigniew Brzezinski’s The Grand Chessboard (1997) laid out the goal of regime control with remarkable candor. Eurasia is the board on which America’s global primacy must be secured. To succeed, America should dominate “geopolitical pivots,” meaning states that are unimportant to America per se but useful for weakening another major power. Brzezinski named key geopolitical pivots, the most important of which was Ukraine. He repeatedly proclaimed that Russia without Ukraine ceases to be a great power. He identified Iran as another pivot. Control over Iran secures America’s hold on the Persian Gulf, Mideast oil, and the Caspian region. It is no surprise that US wars rage in both places.

The US does not want security with mutual respect. It wants primacy, which is an altogether different thing.

This is important to understand the decisions of six seemingly different presidents, who all pursued one consistent Ukraine policy. Bill Clinton set out to enlarge NATO to Ukraine and other border states of Russia, counting on Russia being too weak to object. He and subsequent presidents assumed that Russia would ultimately accept its diminished global status, accept the reality of NATO on its borders, and settle into a subordinate role of supplying raw materials to the West within an American-ordered Eurasia.

Clinton launched NATO enlargement in the 1990s, over George Kennan’s warning that it was “the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-Cold-War era” and despite the legally binding assurances given by the US to Mikhail Gorbachev in 1990 that NATO would move “not one inch eastward.” George W. Bush withdrew from the ABM Treaty and, at Bucharest in 2008, committed NATO to membership for Ukraine and Georgia, crossing what William Burns, then ambassador in Moscow and later CIA director, privately called “the brightest of all redlines” for the entire Russian elite.

Barack Obama’s administration backed the 2014 Maidan overthrow of Ukraine’s elected, neutral government (we know this through Victoria Nuland’s intercepted call where she discusses choosing the next prime minister), and then supported the new regime’s bid to join NATO. Donald Trump, in his first term, sent Javelin systems to the US-backed regime in Kyiv to fight the breakaway, Russian-speaking Donbas. Joe Biden brushed aside Russia’s December 2021 draft security treaties without negotiating and scuttled the near-agreement between Russia and Ukraine at Istanbul in the spring of 2022, which would have ended the war. And so the war continues to this day.

Trump’s Vacuous Anti-War Campaign Promises

Donald Trump campaigned in 2024 as the man who would end America’s forever wars. This turned out to be far from the truth.

The year 2025 opened with theater including the Oval Office humiliation of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in February, the taunt that Ukraine had “no cards,” and in March a week-long suspension of US intelligence sharing with Kyiv. That week proved two things. First, this is an American war: Deprived of US intelligence for only a few days, Ukraine’s deep-strike capacity and battlefield awareness visibly degraded. Second, the White House pressure was aimed not at peace with Moscow but at obedience from Kyiv. The US military spigot was reopened, and what followed, behind a proscenium of summits and phone calls, was the most systematic escalation of the American military role since 2022.

In June 2025, Trump signed Executive Order 14307, “Unleashing American Drone Dominance,” directing the rebuilding of the American drone industrial base and instructing that the Pentagon “must be able to procure, integrate, and train using low-cost, high-performing drones.” In July, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth staged a drone demonstration at the Pentagon and stripped away procurement restrictions to “unleash” military drone dominance; the same month, on a call with Zelenskyy, Trump asked, according to the Financial Times’ later reporting, whether Ukraine could strike Moscow if given longer-range weapons.

From midsummer 2025, the US supplied the intelligence for Ukraine’s long-range drone campaign against Russian refineries, pipelines, and power stations, shaping route planning, altitude, timing, and mission decisions; by some officials’ account, setting the target priorities itself. In August came the Alaska summit, suggesting diplomacy, yet at the same time the sale of Extended Range Attack Munitions for Ukraine, with European allies paying. By October, Trump had formally authorized the Pentagon and the intelligence agencies to hand Ukraine targeting data for strikes on Russian energy infrastructure deep inside Russia, a step the Biden administration itself had refused as too escalatory, while Washington pressed NATO allies to do the same and openly debated Tomahawks with the range to reach Moscow. Through it all, CIA Director John Ratcliffe kept the agency’s presence in Ukraine at its highest level, increased funding for its programs there, coordinated Ukrainian strikes on Russian refineries by sharing intelligence on infrastructure vulnerabilities, and patiently guided Trump toward blessing the campaign. The United States, it emerged, had spent billions building Ukraine’s drone program from the start, in an effort backed by the CIA throughout.

Trump lies constantly, and much of it is the improvisation of a vain and careless man. But the consequential lying is systematic, and in one direction: in the service of the military-industrial complex.

The Laboratory

Eisenhower’s warning that US policy would be captured by a scientific-technological elite supplies a specific reason the US sustains the Ukraine war. Ukraine has become a unique, live-fire laboratory for AI warfare at scale: millions of drone sorties, a continuous adaptation race against a peer adversary’s electronic warfare, and thousands of hours of combat data that constitute the most valuable military AI asset on Earth.

At the center of this sits Palantir, born of CIA seed money, running the Pentagon’s Maven targeting enterprise, and threaded through the British security establishment via a revolving door that includes a former MI6 chief among more than 30 UK officials hired or contracted by the company. Its chief executive openly boasts that Palantir software performs “most of the targeting” done by Ukraine. In January 2026 Ukraine’s defense ministry announced that Palantir was building the “Brave1 Dataroom” to feed real battlefield data into the AI brains of interceptor drones; by May, minister and CEO were discussing expanded cooperation in battlefield analysis and military planning, the ministry promising to “transfer the war onto Russian territory.”

Nor is Iran a separate story from the Ukraine saga. Recall that in Brzezinski’s geography the arc from the Persian Gulf through the Caspian is the second great prize, with Iran as its keystone pivot. Ukrainian interceptor teams have deployed to Jordan against Iranian drones; the counter-drone systems proven against Russia are marketed to the Gulf. Two geopolitical pivots, one chessboard, and one ultimate source of these two wars of choice: the military-industrial complex.

Kissinger’s Admonition to Friends of the US

Henry Kissinger is famously credited with telling the truth to nations that the US would use and discard: To be an enemy of the United States may be dangerous, but to be a friend is fatal.

Ukraine is dying at American hands. Thirty years since Brzezinski pointed to Ukraine as the key geopolitical pivot for American primacy, Ukraine has been demographically hollowed and territorially truncated, with its energy grid pounded, its elections suspended, and its politics reduced to corrupted palace intrigues. This month’s rupture in Kyiv shows that in the midst of what Western coverage calls Ukraine’s great comeback, Zelenskyy dissolved his government for the fourth time in the war; dispatched his prime minister toward the Washington embassy to manage the “key partner;” and summarily sacked Mykhailo Fedorov, the popular minister celebrated as the architect of the drone ecosystem. A country truly winning its war does not behave this way.

The deepest cruelty is that Russia sought, repeatedly and for 30 years, a security arrangement with the US in which both countries and their neighborhoods would live in peace, mutual respect, and indivisible security. Yet the US does not want security with mutual respect. It wants primacy, which is an altogether different thing. In the process, it sacrifices Ukraine and Iran to its hubris. Peace in Ukraine requires only that the US relinquish the hubris it has maintained for decades that Russia can be pressured into surrender, and instead accept Ukraine as a neutral bridge between Europe and Russia rather than a geopolitical pivot to be used against Russia. Eisenhower foresaw why acceptance of peace would be so hard: The military-industrial complex does not merely influence policy; it defines it. Until the American people reclaim the democracy from Palantir, BlackRock, SpaceX, Chevron, and their ilk, the battlefield “laboratories” will stay open, and Ukraine will pay the fatal price for American “friendship.”

July 26, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | history, politics international, Reference, Ukraine, USA | Leave a comment

Germany greenlights controversial joint French-Russian nuclear project

Germany’s environment ministry on Wednesday approved a French-Russian project to produce fuel rods used in Russian-designed reactors in the northwestern German town of Lingen. The joint venture project by a subsidiary of French company Framatome and Russia’s state-owned Rosatom sparked fears of Russian spying, but German authorities said they had “no legal possibility to reject” it.

FRANCE 24, 22 July 26

German authorities said Wednesday they were giving the green light to a controversial French-Russian nuclear project which critics fear will enable spying and sabotage by Moscow.

The planned joint venture by a subsidiary of French company Framatome and Russia‘s state-owned nuclear power agency Rosatom is aimed at producing fuel rods used in Russian-designed reactors.

The project would be based at Framatome’s fuel rod assembly facility in the town of Lingen in the state of Lower Saxony.

Framatome’s subsidiary ANF (Advanced Nuclear Fuels) applied for permission for the project in March 2022, just weeks after Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

The state’s environment ministry said in a statement Wednesday it had “decided to approve” the project.

This was despite the state’s environment minister, Christian Meyer, restating his position that “dealings and close co-operation with Putin’s nuclear agency are totally wrong”.

He said however that his ministry had “no legal possibility to reject or put a time limit to the application” in the absence of sanctions on Rosatom.

Rosatom has been exempted from the successive rounds of EU sanctions imposed against Russia after its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

‘Dangerous to security’

Meyer said that one of the conditions of the approval was that Rosatom employees or those from Russian nuclear fuel manufacturer TVEL would only be allowed to enter the site “in very limited cases and accompanied by the relevant inspectorate”.

The ministry also stressed that the approval could be revisited “if new risks are identified”, particularly “in the area of national security”.

Roderich Kiesewetter, a prominent member of Chancellor Friedrich Merz‘s centre-right CDU party, said Wednesday that the federal government should intervene to prevent the project from going ahead.

The decision by Lower Saxony was “dangerous to security and must be reversed,” Kiesewetter told the Politico website…………………………………………………https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20260722-germany-greenlights-controversial-joint-french-russian-nuclear-project

July 26, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | business and costs, Germany | Leave a comment

Court says NRC doesn’t have to factor climate extremes into licensing

July 21, 2026, https://beyondnuclear.org/court-says-nrc-doesnt-have-to-factor-climate-extremes-into-licensing/

In a shocking and disappointing decision — and at a time when Texas is flooding, wildfires are making the air unbreathable and New York City is under a tornado warning — a DC court has ruled against an appeal by Beyond Nuclear and the Sierra Club. The court’s decision effectively allows the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission to ignore future (or even the clearly present) harsher and more violent climate change impacts on the safe operation of nuclear power plants, to which the NRC is presently awarding license extensions out to 60, 80 and even possibly 100 years.

Court decision to allow nuclear regulator to ignore climate impacts on future reactor operations does not serve public safety

Groups vow to continue their challenge to extreme reactor license extensions

A unanimous decision by three US Court Of Appeals judges in the District Of Columbia to deny an appeal based on the risks of climate change on nuclear reactor safety is a shocking disregard for the ever worsening weather conditions that could put reactor communities at grave risk, said Beyond Nuclear today, one of the groups that brought the appeal.

The petition denied by the court was brought by Beyond Nuclear and the Sierra Club, against the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), and the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI), et al. The NRC is federally mandated to protect public safety. The NEI is the lobbying arm and trade group representing the nuclear power industry.

The petitioners argued that the NRC and industry did not adequately consider how aging components and climate change would affect the risk of severe accidents involving reactor-core damage. Of greatest concern is the extension of operating the licenses of the country’s already aging nuclear power plants well beyond the initial 40-year licensing period and the NRC’s refusal to view the more extreme conditions caused by climate change as risk factors to future safe operation.

“We are stunned by the court’s decision, which let the NRC get away with the generalized claim that large conservatisms in their accident risk analyses can cover the unique and site-specific effects of climate change,” said attorney Diane Curran, who argued the case on behalf of Beyond Nuclear and the Sierra Club. “The NRC has never provided a shred of evidence to show that it has, in fact, evaluated the effects of climate change on accident risk — so how could it know that?”

Paul Gunter, director of the reactor oversight project at Beyond Nuclear said, “This decision allows the NRC to consider future safety challenges to nuclear plants caused by worsening climate conditions by looking in the rear-view mirror. What we are already experiencing today with raging wildfires and extreme flooding, sea-level rise and more frequent violent storms due to climate change, sends a warning that evaluating reactor safety based on the worst climate conditions of the past is not only unrealistic but reckless.

“Just this past week we have seen extreme climate change-driven conditions with raging wildfires in Canada that could equally easily happen in the hotter United States and catastrophic flooding in Texas,” Gunter said. “It is shocking that the court accepted the NRC’s argument that under future climate conditions the chances of a severe accident are ‘small.’ Instead of evaluating the real risks, the court decided to adjudicate whether or not the NRC’s environmental review was ‘reasonably explained.’ This does not serve the interests of public safety,” Gunter said.

Beyond Nuclear is carefully evaluating its legal options and will continue to challenge the extreme license extensions at the Oconee (SC), Peach Bottom (PA) and North Anna (VA) nuclear power plants.

“Oconee is of particularly alarming concern because it sits downstream of two earthen rock-filled dams and two million acre feet of water,” Gunter pointed out. “In bringing this case, we were striving to ensure that this community does not become the tragic test case for a failure to guarantee robust safety regulations at our nation’s nuclear plants for the remainder of their operating lives.”

July 26, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | climate change, Legal, USA | Leave a comment

US and Japan clash over meltdown liability in $40bn nuclear power deal

Japan’s participation in a $40bn nuclear power project in the US has hit
a roadblock over fears that its lenders might have to assume liability for
any meltdown on American soil.

Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi agreed during
a visit to Washington in March that Japan would provide funding and
industrial co-operation to build next-generation small modular reactors in
Tennessee and Alabama.

The project was agreed as part of Tokyo’s
commitment to invest $550bn in the US, a promise given in return for lower
US tariffs on Japanese exports under Donald Trump’s “liberation day”
regime. But details of the project are still being thrashed out between
Tokyo and Washington because of concerns on the Japanese side about their
potential liability in a nuclear accident, according to four people
familiar with the discussions.

The US commerce department has offered
verbal reassurance that the state-backed Japan Bank for International
Cooperation and other Japanese institutions would not take on any liability
for a potential nuclear accident, said the people. A person close to
commerce secretary Howard Lutnick said he had personally assured Japan it
would not have any liability in relation to the projects. However, that
promise has not been put in writing in legal terms — a process that could
take months or years of complex regulatory discussion to settle, said the
people.

FT 23rd July 2026, https://www.ft.com/content/4b9d0e1a-c423-4b14-a7fe-d4988e24c7c0

July 26, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | business and costs, Japan, USA | Leave a comment

Two ageing nuclear power stations will stay operational until 2030

EDF said on Wednesday it had decided to extend
the life of the Hartlepool and Heysham 1 plants for an extra two years
after safety inspections of their cores

Hartlepool and Heysham 1 are two of four advanced gas-cooled reactors
(AGRs) that have been generating since the 1980s. The others, Heysham 2 and
Torness, also had their lifespans extended until March 2030 last year. EDF
said those dates remain “under review” and will be subject to further
safety extensions, leaving open the possibility that the plants could run
for even longer.

However, the country still potentially faces a “nuclear
gap” from 2030 if the AGRs come offline. That would leave Sizewell B, in
Suffolk, as the sole remaining plant, before Hinkley Point C in Somerset
and Sizewell C come online later in the 2030s.

How long the remaining four
will continue depends on the condition of their graphite reactor cores, EDF
has previously said. Hairline cracks can occur in the graphite over time,
potentially impeding control rods which must be dropped to lower output –
or shut the reactor down in emergencies. To continue operating, EDF must
prove to regulators that this will not happen and that it could still shut
down the reactors during a “one in 10,000 years” earthquake, much
larger than any the UK has ever experienced.

Telegraph 23rd July 2026 https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2026/07/23/ageing-nuclear-plants-to-be-kept-running-to-keep-lights-on/

July 26, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | safety, UK | Leave a comment

Alarm over bid to keep cracked reactors running by cutting nuclear safety margins

“The bottom line is that continuing to operate these reactors with cracks in the reactor core is gambling with public safety.”

The company that runs Scotland’s ageing nuclear power station wants to weaken safety standards to keep it running for at least four more years. But the nuclear safety watchdog has its doubts.

Rob Edwards, July 23 2026

Moves to keep Scotland’s increasingly cracked reactors at Torness in East Lothian generating electricity until 2030 or 2032 have prompted formal action from the UK government’s nuclear safety watchdog, according to internal files obtained by The Ferret.

The station’s operator, EDF Energy, has been pressing for safety margins to be relaxed so reactors can keep running for as long as possible with hundreds of cracks spreading through their highly radioactive cores.

But the Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) has “concerns” and has demanded that the company justify its understanding of the safety implications. ONR inspectors lacked confidence in some of the company’s measurements, and accused EDF of a “trend of under-predicting cracking”.

ONR has also revealed that the estimated number of cracks in one of the reactors at Torness leapt by more than a third from 585 to 782 in just six months. A further 62 cracks have been found in the second reactor at the site, which only started cracking in May 2025.

Campaigners urged ONR not to be “bullied” by EDF into allowing safety margins to slip. The cracks were “extremely worrying” and keeping Torness running was “gambling with public safety”, they said.

ONR told The Ferret that its inspectors made “independent and proportionate challenges” to EDF’s claims. It stressed that the current number of cracks at Torness did not breach safety margins.

EDF said that “robust challenge” by regulators was essential to a strong nuclear safety culture that prevented accidents. The company’s ambition was to generate electricity from the station “for as long as it is safe and commercially viable to do so.”

Torness nuclear power station, near Dunbar, is 37 years old, having been officially opened in May 1989 by the then Conservative prime minister, Margaret Thatcher. The site had been the target of anti-nuclear protests since 1978.

In 2016 the planned life of the station was extended from 2023 to 2030. In 2021 EDF backtracked on that, saying that Torness would be closing two years earlier in 2028 because of expected cracking.

But in 2024 EDF again changed its mind, and announced that Torness would keep generating electricity until March 2030. According to ONR, EDF had decided to extend the lifetime of the station “to 2030 plus or minus two years”, suggesting that operating to 2032 was also being considered.

Meanwhile, Scotland’s other nuclear power station at Hunterston in North Ayrshire was closed down in January 2022, more than a year earlier than planned. This followed the discovery of an estimated 586 cracks in its two reactors.

The graphite bricks that surround the uranium fuel in reactors, such as those at Torness and Hunterston, crack after being bombarded by radiation for decades. The danger is that this could distort reactor cores, making them more difficult to manage.

ONR previously said that spreading cracks could result in debris inhibiting the cooling of the hot fuel. In some scenarios, this could lead to a reactor meltdown, which could result in the escape of radioactivity to the environment.

In response to a freedom of information request by The Ferret, ONR has released 11 heavily redacted files about its latest moves to regulate cracking at Torness. They reveal that between April 2025 and April 2026 ONR held 23 meetings with EDF, and formally demanded action on safety issues.

There have been prolonged and gritty tussles between ONR and EDF over how to understand the way in which cracks were impacting safety. Some of the technical issues at stake are difficult to understand because key words and phrases have been blacked out.

But it is clear there have been a series of disagreements between the regulator and the company. EDF has been arguing to cut safety margins to allow Torness to operate for longer, while ONR has been challenging EDF’s assumptions, methodologies and conclusions.

ONR raised a formal “regulatory issue” because of potential shortfalls in EDF’s understanding of how cracks are spreading. ONR said it had “concerns over EDF’s ability adequately to predict the number of cracked bricks within the graphite core”.

ONR disputed EDF moves to relax the so-called “damage tolerance boundary”, which limits the operation of Torness. According to one account from ONR, after a series of meetings in 2025 consensus “has not been reached.”

ONR pursued a second regulatory issue in 2025 because it lacked confidence in EDF’s measurements of the width of cracks and resulting fragments. The company accepted that “a number of errors and incorrect assumptions” had been made, but rectified them and the issue was resolved.

“Safety margins cannot be something to be negotiated simply to keep an ageing reactor running.” – Kristopher Leask MSP

After an inspection in September 2025, ONR’s expert graphite panel commented that there was “reason to pause and think”. They said that EDF forecasts “suggested a continuation of the trend of under-predicting cracking”.

One meeting between ONR and EDF in 2025 was about the risk of vital safety systems shutting down because of “snags” caused by cracking. EDF was said to be proposing to increase the number of permissible snags from one to five

The Ferret also used freedom of information law to ask for an update on the number of cracks in the two reactors at Torness. We previously reported that there were an estimated 585 cracks in reactor one in March 2025, and the first crack had been found in reactor two in May 2025.

ONR has now told us that “reactor one was inspected in August 2025 where it was estimated the number of cracked bricks were 782.” It added that after an inspection of reactor two in February 2026 “it was estimated that 62 bricks were cracked”.

The Scottish Campaign to Resist the Atomic Menace (SCRAM) highlighted recent moves by the UK government to relax regulation to make building new nuclear power stations easier. The Ferret reported in May that this had prompted “serious concerns” from the Scottish Government.

“This is an extremely worrying situation,” said SCRAM’s Pete Roche. “There is bound to be huge public concern that the ONR will be bullied by EDF and the UK Government into allowing safety margins to slip.”

He added: “The bottom line is that continuing to operate these reactors with cracks in the reactor core is gambling with public safety.”

July 26, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | safety, UK | Leave a comment

The Israeli crimes against Palestinians did not “start” in October 2023

Israel was born of Zionist terrorism (Irgun, Stern, Lehi) against the original, indigenous, inhabitants of Palestine

Eva Karene Bartlett, Jul 23, 2026, https://evakarenebartlett.substack.com/p/the-israeli-crimes-against-palestinians?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=3046064&post_id=208173581&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

I lived in Gaza for 3 years (and 2 Israeli wars on Gaza) and spent a lot of time with farmers and fishers (who came under Israeli fire near-daily when they simply tried to fish or work their land), also lived in central Gaza, took public transit, and spoke directly with people. International organizations that worked there tended—from what I saw—to be cut off from the reality, living in expensive apartments, dining at one of a handful of expensive restaurants, driving around in their own SUVs…really not interacting meaningfully with people there (I’m sure there were exceptions, but from my experience this was the reality).

I wrote an overview after leaving Gaza, which is relevant today as it outlines the many ways Israel has been slow genociding Gaza over a decade and a half before it began its current, ongoing, horrific genocide—by ensuring Palestinians only just survived: bombing, burning or destroying their agricultural land, firing on farmers: bombing or stealing their fishing boats, firing on or abducting fishers; ensuring the sewage was untreated and pumped into the sea, or overflown into the streets; ensuring the water was almost completely undrinkable; deliberately starving Palestinians by denying the adequate entry of aid (and destroying their food sources, as above); denying exit for urgent medical care; and on and on…

During the December 2008/January 2009 Israeli war on Gaza, I was in Northern Gaza, riding in ambulances, documenting civilians injured and murdered by Israeli bombing, drone strikes, sniping…

During the November 2012 Israeli war on Gaza, I was in Deir al-Balah documenting the destruction and also at al-Aqsa hospital documenting the injured and the murdered.

This page has links to various articles I wrote at the time, also follow up investigations, including documentation of:

-Israel’s widespread use of White Phosphorous on civilians

-Israel’s deliberate sniping and shelling of Palestinian medics, maiming and killing numerous

-Israel’s deliberate sniping or point blank assassination of civilians, including children and infants

-Israel’s deliberate drone striking of civilians, including children

and more.

But before going (by boat) to Gaza in November 2008, in 2007 I spent 8 months in various West Bank communities which were being aggressed, abused, harassed by the Israeli army and by illegal Jewish colonists.

My overview of that time includes:

–Israeli army invasions into Nablus and into nearby villages, during which the Israeli army terrorized Palestinian civilians, shot up their homes, killed, injured and abducted Palestinian civilians (including a medic)

-Documenting some of the hundreds of Israeli checkpoints and roadblocks, and the impact (including deadly) they have on Palestinian civilians trying to move from one point to the next, for work, medical care, study, or other.

-The savagery of illegal Jewish colonists—usually enabled by accompanying Israeli soldiers, including attacks on farmers I was with, attacks on Palestinian civilians whose tents I slept in in Susiya, menacing and threatening Palestinian civilians (including children) in Khalil/Hebron (where illegal Jewish colonists have violently taken over Palestinian homes and occupy the streets, beating civilians, including children

-The brutality of the Apartheid Wall

-The courageous non-violent resistance of Palestinians in communities throughout the West Bank, especially in the village of Bil’in, whose demonstrations I joined nearly a dozen times. There, we immediately came under high velocity tear gas canisters fired at close proximity from invading Israeli soldiers, as well as rubber-coated bullets and even live ammunition (as such unarmed protests in Gaza, the Israeli army usually didn’t bother with tear gas but started immediately firing live ammunition at us, as they did to unarmed Palestinian farmers—elderly, young men and women, children—and myself).

The daily crimes I saw in the West Bank and Gaza continue today and impact every facet of Palestinians lives and existence. Post 2023, people who don’t even follow closely are aware of the ongoing Israeli genocide and land theft of Gaza, though that said the media has largely moved on. The crimes in the West Bank get less coverage, and are fully enabled top down in order for Israel to continue ethnic cleansing of indigenous Palestinians and continued illegal expansion.

July 26, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Atrocities, history, Israel | Leave a comment

Ukraine has a new butcher-in-chief – all the better to feed Ukrainians to the grinder

the comedian-on-the-way-to-the-presidency made one and only one specific promise: that he understood the absolute priority of peace and would do everything to find a negotiated solution with Russia.

Syrsky is gone, but his replacement is a sign that Zelensky as committed as ever to prolonging a losing war at terrible human cost

23 Jul, 2026 , By Tarik Cyril Amar, a historian from Germany working at Koç University, Istanbul, on Russia, Ukraine, and Eastern Europe, the history of World War II, the cultural Cold War, and the politics of memory https://www.rt.com/news/643351-ukraine-drapaty-new-butcher/

The rule of Vladimir Zelensky has been a catastrophe for Ukraine, and that is how it will be remembered once the dust of relentless info war campaigns in his favor – and against his critics – settles.

While the corruption of the Zelensky regime is stupendous, that fact – sad as it is – is not what makes him special, however. Because exorbitant, shameless embezzlement, kickbacks, and fraud have been the Ukrainian establishment’s perverse normal since independence. Zelensky and his cronies are certain to have cashed in like no one before because the West has pumped in money as never before while turning two blind eyes to what happens to it. But in principle, Zelensky has merely done what they all do. Not that that makes it any better.

Zelensky’s truly distinct contribution to Ukraine’s misery has consisted in two other things. His unprecedented ramping-up of authoritarianism – begun long before the escalation of the war in 2022 – and his merciless choice to relentlessly sacrifice his country and its people to serve as cannon fodder in a Western proxy war against Russia.

Zelensky’s responsibility before his country is all the greater because he once either knew better or he lied. During his 2019 election campaign, when he generally “avoided serious interviews and discussions about policy – preferring instead to post light-hearted videos to social media,” as the BBC back then was still ready to report, the comedian-on-the-way-to-the-presidency made one and only one specific promise: that he understood the absolute priority of peace and would do everything to find a negotiated solution with Russia.

And then in the spring of 2022, Zelensky, of course, deliberately missed a golden opportunity to end the large-scale war when it had barely begun. Heeding not Ukraine’s obvious national interest but duplicitous advice from the West’s emissary, then British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Zelensky personally ditched an almost finished peace agreement, locking in years of devastation for his country. In the end, once the war will be fully lost, Kiev is virtually certain to get a deal much worse than what was on offer then.

Now, in the summer of 2026, it may seem as if Zelensky’s grip on Ukraine is finally slipping. A combination of street protests and – inevitable if quiet – Western pressure has forced him into a humiliating climb-down. After the president’s sudden dismissal of the popular – and much-hyped – defense minister Mikhail Fedorov, the protesters had demanded his re-instatement and the sacking of Fedorov’s rival, the military’s commander-in-chief Aleksandr ‘the Butcher’ Syrsky. Zelensky has now fired Syrsky to be replaced by General Mikhail Drapaty, while some new influential position for Fedorov is being discussed.

Boris Johnson, currently a more-than-usual washed-out has-been of British politics, busy trying to catch the public eye, has made meager headlines with blaming the Ukraine War on the Britain’s new foreign secretary, Ed Miliband. How is that supposed to work? Somehow via Syria. Yes, really.

The single most important cause of this perfectly avoidable war was of course the West’s reckless policy of NATO expansion. And the man who helped most directly to make the war go on when it could have ended quickly was Boris Johnson. But sure: “Syria.”
Boris, though, does stand for something, namely just how bizarre much of this developing story is. Here is a regime that, together with its Western supporters and users, has just been running an absurd but pervasive propaganda campaign claiming its drone and missile strikes are winning the war. And yet both the minister of defense and the head of the military have to go. An odd way to celebrate impending victory.

In reality, one thing the Fedorov-Syrsky saga shows is that even Zelensky doesn’t believe in his own boasts of moving the war from “the earth into the sky” and securing victory in that manner. Fedorov did not have to go despite finding a winning “asymmetrical” strategy, as many of the protesters and Western mainstream media claim. He never did. Fedorov did not fall over his alleged struggle against corruption either. He may have antagonized one set of war profiteers, but in Ukraine that only means another network will take a larger cut.

The most likely real reason for Fedorov’s sacking – whether it will be reversed or sort-of-reversed – is that Zelensky fears him as a rising political competitor, as Ukrainska Pravda reports. And while firing the defense minister, Zelensky himself created the cover story that there was no other way to deal with conflicts between Fedorov and Syrsky. In that way, it is Zelensky who made Syrsky, already widely disliked for wasting the lives of Ukrainian soldiers with futile and stubborn tactics, a target for the protesters.

The diehard Zelensky fans at Britain’s Telegraph may try to sell this outcome as “nimble” Zelensky successfully buying time by making Syrsky his fall guy in the same manner that he had already sacrificed his very intimate friend and top fixer Andrey Yermak to dodge the fallout from his own corruption. In reality, Zelensky has lost face again. His authority, brittle in any case, has taken another hit.

For Ukraine, though, none of this is good news. Yes, the de facto dictator Zelensky has suffered a defeat, and the abhorred ‘butcher’ Syrsky has been removed. But he has been replaced by a man who, while almost two decades younger, is very unlikely to be any better. Drapaty, who is treated with the usual kid gloves by Ukrainian and Western mainstream media, may or may not be an efficient commander. What is certain is that he first came to public attention in 2014, when his units brutally cracked down on resistance in the eastern Ukrainian city of Mariupol (before, as often forgotten, losing control of the city). Nothing in his career since then indicates a change of attitude. This is the man in charge of the whole Ukrainian military now.

Zelensky may well know that his own hype about the current air campaign turning the war around is propaganda. Yet clearly that does not mean that the Ukrainian leadership is willing to be serious about a negotiated solution. Emboldened by exceedingly rash Western support, Kiev has not yet given up on continuing a losing war, propped up by brutal forced mobilization, until an end that will be even more bitter than Ukraine’s current wretchedness.

July 26, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics, Ukraine, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Labour mayor candidate vows to push new nuclear with Burnham

News & Star, The Cumberland News, 21st July, By Gareth Cavanagh, Data Reporter

LABOUR’S mayoral candidate has pledged to work with new Prime Minister, Andy Burnham on delivering new nuclear in West Cumbria.

Speaking today, David Allen welcomed the appointment of Mr Burnham, as his party’s leader and Prime Minister.

Mr Allen, Police Fire and Crime Commissioner and a candidate in the Mayor of Cumbria election race, said that he was “delighted” to see Mr Burnham in 10 Downing Street.

Mr Allen said: “Andy has already signalled strong support for nuclear, so I’ll be working with him to help deliver new nuclear at Pioneer Park alongside Josh MacAlister MP.”………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… https://www.newsandstar.co.uk/news/26298408.labour-mayor-candidate-vows-push-new-nuclear-burnham/

July 26, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics, Small Modular Nuclear Reactors, UK | Leave a comment

US signs landmark nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia

Nuclear experts and former officials in Israel – the US’s top ally in the Middle East – have voiced concern that the plan could ultimately lead to Saudi Arabia being able to develop a nuclear weapon – though other experts say that path would likely take decades and spark pushback from the international community.

James FitzGerald and Max Matza

The US and Saudi Arabia have signed a landmark deal that will allow the Gulf kingdom to develop a civilian nuclear programme.

The deal is described as a “peaceful nuclear co-operation agreement” that will provide “great access for American companies in the Saudi nuclear energy program” by the US energy department.

Text from the deal has not been made public, but US media report that it could allow Saudi Arabia to enrich uranium in the future – which can be used as fuel for power plants, but also to make nuclear bombs.

Experts say that would mark a first for the US and could run the risk of future nuclear proliferation in an already unstable region.

Trump’s nuclear deal with Saudis jettisons longstanding US demands

The US Department of Energy said a “bilateral safeguards agreement” had been signed along with the co-operation deal.

“Together, these two agreements lay the legal foundation for a decades-long, multi-billion-dollar partnership that advances several priority economic and strategic objectives, including nuclear nonproliferation,” the statement said.

The Saudi government also released a statement saying the deal “represents an extension of existing co-operation between the two countries in the energy sector”, noting that it comes after the Saudi leader visited Washington last November.

The nuclear issue has been at the centre of the months-long US-Israeli conflict with Iran. The two nations say one of the reasons they attacked Iran in February was to prevent the country from ever developing a nuclear weapon – something that Tehran denies planning to do.

Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, told CBS News in 2018 that his own nation was not planning to acquire a nuclear weapon, but that “without a doubt if Iran developed a nuclear bomb, we will follow suit as soon as possible”.

Wednesday’s announcement came as fighting escalates between the US and Iran. Saudi Arabia, a longtime US ally, hosts several US bases that have been targeted by Iranian attacks. It also comes two days after Iran’s allies in Yemen, the Houthis, announced a “maritime blockade” against the kingdom.

Specific details of the nuclear deal have not been given but earlier media reports suggested that, after undertaking a joint study with the US, Saudi Arabia may be allowed to enrich uranium on its soil to produce fuel at a US-built enrichment facility, instead of relying on imported fuel.

This could be worth billions of dollars to the US, whose companies could be involved in building a facility to produce enriched uranium, which can be used as fuel for power plants but also to make nuclear bombs.

“Rest assured, these agreements uphold the highest standards of nuclear safety and nonproliferation, while relying on the world’s best nuclear technology and scientists, designed right here in the United States,” US Secretary of Energy Chris Wright said.

The energy department said the deal would advance both “US and regional security”, and would strengthen America’s “competitive edge in civil nuclear technology”.

Israeli Economy Minister Nir Barkat said his country “can manage it” if Saudi Arabia had nuclear power for peaceful means.

Israel itself is widely believed to have nuclear weapons, but it neither confirms nor denies that this is the case.

Rosemary Kelanic, the director of the Middle East programme at the US-based Defense Priorities think tank, said it would be “quite shocking” if the US were to allow Saudi Arabia uranium enrichment facilities.

“The US has never done that before. We have never helped another country enrich on their own soil,” she said, adding that this was because “if you can produce your own nuclear fuel, you become a much bigger risk” for building nuclear weapons.

The agreement will now be sent to the US Congress for review.

July 26, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics international, Saudi Arabia, USA | Leave a comment

UK’s old nuclear reactors to be kept going as we wait for Small Modular Nuclear Reactors

Two nuclear power stations will continue to generate electricity for two
more years than previously announced. In the latest of multiple extensions,
operator EDF said Hartlepool Power Station and Heysham 1 in Lancashire
would run until March 2030, two years longer than a previous estimate of
2028.

EDF said it took the decision after a “detailed review” of the
condition of the boilers and the graphite cores as well as supply chain
resilience. Chief executive of the Nuclear Industry Association, Tom
Greatrex, said: “The significance of this cannot be understated, given the
UK’s exposure to volatile gas prices and the need to protect households by
providing baseload power.”

The company also gave an update on hopes to
install the UK’s first Advanced Modular Reactors (AMRs) in Hartlepool,
which developers said would provide a “similar” amount of electricity to
the current plant’s power output. It said an application to enter the
generic design assessment had been submitted in June, describing it as the
“first critical step in the UK licensing progress”.

BBC 22nd July 2026,
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/clyvng9vl66o

July 26, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | safety, Small Modular Nuclear Reactors, UK | Leave a comment

Uncertainty over West Cumbria nuclear waste plan continues

22nd July, By Gareth Cavanagh, Data Reporter

CLARITY on the future of nuclear waste currently stored at Sellafield is eagerly awaited from West Cumbria to Westminster.

The cost of the Geological Disposal
Facility could soar to £54bn and the timeline for depositing legacy waste
into the GDF could be 2150. The UK’s grand ambition to deploy fleets of
SMRs is critically undermined by the uncertainty over disposal of nuclear
waste.

Carlisle News & Star 22nd July 2026, https://www.newsandstar.co.uk/news/26289564.uncertainty-west-cumbria-nuclear-waste-plan-continues/

July 26, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | UK, wastes | Leave a comment

4 August – WEBINAR – Hiroshima & Nagasaki: Nuclear Bombs Never Again

Tuesday, Aug. 4 at 5 pm PT / 8 pm ET.

Aug 5, 2026 10:00 AM in Australia/Melbourne

Join the Nuclear Bombs Never Again webinar on August 4th at 5pm Pacific Time / 8pm Eastern Time / 9am Japan Standard Time.

Cross generational voices at the intersection of Japan-Korea-US policy and militarization will share their lived experiences, nuclear impacts in these contexts, anti-war strategies, and actions you can take to advocate for a world with Nuclear Bombs Never Again. This 75-minute event is co-hosted by WILPF US and Korea Peace Now.

July 26, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Israel spent £50,000 lobbying Reform

Before deputy leader Richard Tice told MPs not to talk about Israeli influence

DANIA AKKAD, 30 June 2026, https://www.declassifieduk.org/israel-spent-50000-lobbying-reform/

Reform UK’s deputy leader said last week that a parliamentary debate into Israeli influence on British politics was “antisemitic in its very motivation and at its core”.

“As such, we should utterly reject it,” argued Richard Tice to a room full of MPs.

What he did not tell them, however, was that he had been on a trip to “the Gaza front line” last September funded by the newly-created Reform Friends of Israel, where he concluded that the Gaza famine was a “blatant lie”.

And that trip is not the only example of pro-Israel pressure groups working with Reform. Just a few short weeks after Tice’s visit, his chief of staff and a motley crew of Reform figures visited Israel in a trip which has received scant media attention.

Their six-day jaunt in November 2025 included a visit to the illegally occupied Golan Heights, which the UK recognises as part of Syria.

They also visited Israel’s police headquarters, which is overseen by far-right national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who is sanctioned by the UK for “repeated incitement of violence against Palestinian civilians”.

This trip was funded by the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, according to newly released Israeli government data seen by Declassified and found by Berlin-based journalist Yossi Bartel.

The records show that the ministry paid Conexión Israel – a company based in Jerusalem that organises high-level country visits – more than £50,000 to facilitate the delegation.

The delegates returned singing Israel’s praises and denouncing British protesters marching against the war in Gaza as antisemitic and “naively propping up a terrorist ideology”.

Dr David Bull, then Reform UK party chairman, said the trip had been “life changing”.

“I now understand the situation that Israel finds itself in and Reform UK will always stand with the Israeli people,” he said.

Andy Kalil, the member of the public who organised the petition that sparked last week’s debate in parliament, said the trip “goes to the heart of why we petitioned for an independent inquiry into pro-Israel influence in UK politics.”

“A trip funded by the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs that exposed participants to the Israeli government’s perspective is clearly a matter of public interest,” he told Declassified.

‘Their fight, our fight’

In addition to Bull, delegates included Lancashire county council leader Stephen Atkinson, London assembly member Alex Wilson, and Reform UK board member Gawain Towler.

Both Atkinson and Wilson declared that their place on the trip cost Israel’s foreign ministry £4,861 each.

Ryan Powell, Tice’s parliamentary chief of staff who recently ran unsuccessfully as a Reform UK candidate in south London, was also on the trip.

As was Rafaella Stefani, another member of Tice’s parliamentary staff. She helped host an event at Reform’s party conference where Israel’s deputy ambassador spoke.

The reason for the visit, according to the parliamentary staff register, was to study Israel’s policing, border security, health service and immigration control.

The group visited several locations targeted during the Hamas-led attacks on 7 October 2023, including the Nir Oz kibbutz in southern Israel and the site of the Nova music festival massacre.

“It sickens me that something like this could ever happen,” said Wilson, who posted a video from where the mass killing took place.

“It also sickens me that back in the UK, week after week, we’ve seen thousands of people marching to give succour to the monsters who did this.”

Bull wrote that the group also met with Tel Aviv’s deputy mayor to discuss “visa overstayers and asylum seekers” and the Israeli National Police operation headquarters “where the very advanced use of technology enables them to act on ALL CRIME”.

Towler questioned how the UK “once a steadfast ally, let relations with Israel collapse into this sorry mess”.

“After all, their fight is, in many ways, our fight. A fight for enlightenment ideals, international norms, democracy and the rest,” he wrote.

Rising power

The cost of the trip represents only a small fraction of an enormous influx of money flowing into Reform UK, particularly from a small group of overseas expats.

The party raised more than £9 million in donations in the first three months of 2026, far more than any other political party and nearly half of total donations raised by all the parties put together.

Most of the funding came from two crypto billionaires: Christopher Harborne, a British-Thai dual national, and Ben Delo, who is relocating to the UK from Hong Kong so he can keep donating to the party after new legislation capped overseas donations from British citizens to £100,000.

The party has also held international fundraisers in wealthy British expatriate communities including in the United Arab Emirates, and has said it will hold ones in Monaco and the US.

Chris Doyle, director of the Council for Arab-British Understanding (Caabu), said the trip was “very typical” of the Israeli government’s approach over decades.

With Reform leading in opinion polls, Israel has clearly assessed that the party “will have a high chance of either forming the next government, being part of that government in a coalition perhaps or being the lead opposition,” Doyle said.

It’s also very much in keeping with the Israeli strategy of reaching out to far-right groups across Europe, in the US and India which “have adopted highly anti-Muslim, Islamophobic positions”, he said.

“This is perfectly standard operating practice to reach out to such groups, build long-term links to try to get them to see the world as one between Israel as a representative of Western civilisation against barbaric Muslim extremists,” he said.

‘Greater scrutiny is needed’

Kalil said he found the strongly pro-Israel public statements from the delegation “very concerning”.

“Delegates were shown sites highlighting Israel’s security concerns, but not the devastation in Gaza. That’s not a balanced fact-finding visit,” he said.

On Monday, Kalil submitted a formal complaint about last week’s debate.

Among his primary concerns, he said in his complaint, was “the repeated characterisation of the petition, its signatories and several MPs who spoke in support of it as antisemitic.”

“The debate did little to address fundamental questions relating to lobbying, political donations, parliamentary visits, transparency or influence,” his complaint said.

“Instead, it demonstrated why many people believe greater scrutiny is necessary.”

He has asked that the government review whether it met the standards expected of such debates and for it to be rerun.

In addition to trips paid for directly by the Israeli government, British politicians including Tice have been taken to Israel by Reform Friends of Israel.

The group is led by Jason Pearlman, who until December was a media adviser to Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog.

Herzog has been found by a UN commission to have incited genocide in Gaza.

Speaking from Israel, he told Declassified that he started a conversation with Reform about turning the party’s ‘Friends of Israel’ group into a “full-time” organisation while he was still working for Herzog.

In addition to trips paid for directly by the Israeli government, British politicians including Tice have been taken to Israel by Reform Friends of Israel.

The group is led by Jason Pearlman, who until December was a media adviser to Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog.

Herzog has been found by a UN commission to have incited genocide in Gaza.

“We did have a dinner with Nigel [Farage] and some key backers,” he said. “We were able to put seed funding together.” Pearlman refused to say who Reform Friends of Israel’s (RFOI) donors were.

The Israeli embassy in London and Richard Tice have been approached.

July 26, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics | Leave a comment

German historian and academic, Tarik Cyril Amar: “It is the West that is using Ukraine as cannon fodder and has been for years”

“They’re spreading this new story that Zelensky is producing, that Ukraine now shifts its war effort from the ground—where it is not successful–to mid range and long range drone and missile strikes against Russia.

The idea is that—and this would be very unusual historically, as every expert knows—that by this particular air campaign alone, Ukraine will turn the tables and defeat Russia. You find this all over the Western public space now.”

let’s just feed more weapons and money into Ukraine, Ukraine will provide the people.

German Historian and Academic, Tarik Cyril Amar on Na-zi Imagery, and Ethnic Cleansing Apologia in Early 2000s Lviv.

Eva Karene Bartlett, Jul 22, 2026, https://evakarenebartlett.substack.com/p/german-historian-and-academic-tarik?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=3046064&post_id=207930798&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

Tarik Cyril Amar [ Tarik Cyril Amar ] lived for five years in Lviv, Ukraine, from 2001 on and off. He speaks fluent Russian and Ukrainian. A historian and author, Tarik has extensive knowledge, and first hand experience, on realities of Ukraine now whitewashed in Western corporate media, in particular the long festering and growing nationalism where Ukrainians nationalists—who committed war crimes, including ethnic cleansing in World War 2—are applauded and celebrated as “national heroes”.

In our conversation, he also spoke of the lead role of his country Germany in expanding and fuelling the proxy war—in which the West has used Ukraine to fight Russia, with no actual regard for the lives of Ukrainians themselves.

“It is the West that is using Ukraine as cannon fodder, and has been for years.”

-Long history of Lviv support of Bandera and OUN

“Even then, Lviv had a reputation as being a particularly patriotic, even nationalist, city. My personal experience at the time was that that was true, and that this tendency was on the rise.

You had demonstrations celebrating the OUN (Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists in WW2). You found it in policies of public commemoration. Lviv has one of the largest monuments to Stepan Bandera in Ukraine, built or inaugurated during my time there.

There was already a very consistent denial of the crimes of Ukrainian nationalists in WW2, the enormous massacres that they conducted systematically against the Poles.

Nazi symbols in Lviv

“You had the symbolism of the Waffen-SS division that the Nazis established in 1943. Lviv was the epicentre of that operation. Their symbolism, their coat of arms, that was there in the public space.

You had the black and red of the OUN, that was prominent. You had attempts at building memorials in public spaces to the “heroism” of the nationalists.

From what I can see now, it must have become much more aggressive.

At the same time, there has been some resistance against forced mobilization in Lviv. On one side, there is this escalation of very strong nationalism that was already there. On the other, clearly the impact of the war is that some people are beginning to resist mobilization, even there.”

-Polish demand for Ukraine to renounce the honouring of Ukrainian “nationalist heroes” doesn’t represent a change of Polish support to the war.

The tension is old, the core of the tension is the systematic Ukrainian nationalist ethnic cleansing of Poles—estimates from 80,000-100,000 killed.

“The killing is a message to make people leave, it’s a genocidal ethnic cleansing. What the Ukrainian nationalists did then, deliberately, systematically, and what the Israelis are doing now in Gaza, its a parallel: Commit genocide and massacres to drive people out. It is one of the things that Ukrainian nationalists will not acknowledge…it’s state policy in Ukraine to lie about this.

The bigger story (regarding the recent Polish demand) is how successive Polish governments have always put the geopolitics of using Ukraine against Russia first. So there are these tensions. From time to time you get a blow up, like now with Zelensky. Has it made a difference in the way that they support Ukraine in this proxy war against Russia? It doesn’t.”

-Germany in the lead in support for Ukraine and the proxy war on Russia

“The war in Ukraine has always had this double aspect. On one side, superficially, it’s a war between Ukraine and Russia. But on the other side, and I think this is more important, it’s a proxy war, in which the West has used Ukraine to fight Russia.

The lead Western power in this proxy war against Russia used to be the United States…Under Trump, while Washington could have made a serious contribution to end the war, that’s not what they’ve done. They’ve essentially Europeanized the war, they’ve washed their hands on the money that they have to spend on it, but are still supporting Ukraine in other ways—with intelligence, black ops, CIA connections, etc—and they’re still giving Ukraine weapons, but they make the Europeans pay for them.

…The final outcome is a Western proxy war against Russia with Germany in the lead. What the German government, industry and arms manufacturers have done, they’ve intensified payments to Ukraine and military industrial cooperation cutting across the two countries: Things for the Ukrainian military industrial complex are being produced in Germany, or Germany companies are producing in Ukraine.

That means that the Russians probably, very likely, are telling us the truth when they’re saying that significant Ukrainian attacks on Russia now can only be carried out because of German assistance.

The Russians can point to very specific things that hurt them and that could not be done by Ukraine without (German assistance).

From Russia’s perspective, there is an argument for striking at the hinterland, where these weapons and these supplies are coming from or which supports them, and that’s actually us (Germany).”

Absurd Western media campaigns about defeating Russia

“German war mongers have been saying for years, publicly, ‘We (Germany) have to enable Ukraine so that they can take the war home to Russia.. We need to give Ukraine the capacity to strike deep into Russia.’

Ukraine is doing that now, and we clearly are heavily involved in having created that capacity, and nurturing it and supporting it.

There is clearly a coordinated media and information war campaign: Wall Street Journal, The Economist, Financial Times…they and the politicians are all doing the same things.

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