nuclear-news

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

International tribunal finds Israel guilty of genocide, ecocide, and the forced starvation of the Palestinians in Gaza.

Mondoweiss, By Marianne Dhenin  November 27, 2025

The International People’s Tribunal on Palestine held in Barcelona presented striking evidence of Israel’s forced starvation of the Palestinian people and the deliberate destruction of food security in Gaza.

The International People’s Tribunal on Palestine convened on November 22 and 23 in Barcelona. The event brought together organizers, human rights advocates, and legal experts and offered a platform for survivors of the ongoing assault on Gaza to present evidence of Israel’s international crimes. After two days of testimony, jurors returned their verdict: Israel, the United States, and other Western powers are guilty of the crimes of genocide, ecocide, and the forced starvation of the Palestinian people.

“The mass killings, deliberate starvation, systematic destruction of civilian infrastructure, environmental devastation, and the targeting of hospitals, shelters, schools, and places of refuge were carried out as a matter of state policy, and with full knowledge of their fatal consequences,” said head juror Ceren Uysal, reading from the verdict as the tribunal closed.

Hosted by the International League of Peoples’ Struggle, International People’s Front, and People’s Coalition of Food Sovereignty (PCFS), the tribunal offered a quasi-judicial platform for advocates and survivors of Israel’s ongoing genocide to present evidence and legal arguments related to the crimes committed against the Palestinian people. It follows in a tradition of popular forums seeking justice and accountability where institutions have failed to provide it, including previous tribunals on recent crimes in Gaza.

It came as Israel continues to commit violence in Palestine. Israel has violated the U.S.-brokered ceasefire in effect since October 10, 2025, at least 497 times, killing more than 340 people, according to the Gaza Government Media Office. On November 17, the United Nations Security Council endorsed President Donald Trump’s plan for an international force that he will lead to oversee the continued occupation of Gaza, drawing condemnation from legal experts and rights groups, who argue the plan violates Palestine’s right to self-determination and will fail to protect Palestinians.

Against this backdrop, the International People’s Tribunal repudiated the status quo. It offered striking evidence for Israel’s guilt, particularly for the forced starvation of the Palestinian people and the undermining of their food security. “The strategy of using food as a weapon has been going on for a long time in Palestine and Lebanon, but now it is intensified,” Razan Zuayter, PCFS global co-chairperson, told Mondoweiss. Zuayter also chairs the Arab Group for the Protection of Nature (APN), which endorsed the tribunal.

Over the course of the two-day event, more than a dozen witnesses made this case. Farmers testified that Israeli forces had razed their lands, uprooting trees, killing livestock, and blackening the soil. One witness, who testified anonymously for fear of reprisal, described an attack Israeli forces committed on their land in May 2024. “A group of bulldozers and tanks attacked our area and destroyed a set of chicken farms for meat and egg production,” they said. “The stench of death and foul odors spread throughout the place, forcing us to flee.”

Musheir El Farra wept on the stand on November 23, recounting Israeli attacks on his hometown of Khan Younis that killed more than 200 members of his extended family. …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. https://mondoweiss.net/2025/11/international-tribunal-finds-israel-guilty-of-genocide-ecocide-and-the-forced-starvation-of-the-palestinians-in-gaza/

December 5, 2025 Posted by | Atrocities, Gaza, Israel, Legal | Leave a comment

No Quarter: The White House’s New ‘War’ Lets the President Kill First — and Pardon Drug Lords Later

 December 2, 2025, By: Joshua Scheer, https://scheerpost.com/2025/12/02/no-quarter-the-white-houses-new-war-lets-the-president-kill-first-and-pardon-drug-lords-later/

With the president claiming that we are in an armed conflict with the cartels — and with the AP reporting from a memo it obtained from the administration — the bar is being set incredibly low so that any president can create an “enemy” out of anyone.

Here is some of what the memo said from the AP: “The President determined that the United States is in a non-international armed conflict with these designated terrorist organizations… The United States has now reached a critical point where we must use force in self-defense and defense of others against the ongoing attacks by these designated terrorist organizations.”

The AP also reported the backlash from a number of people, including Michael Schmitt, a former Air Force lawyer and professor emeritus at the U.S. Naval War College, with him saying, “I can’t imagine anyone, no matter what the circumstance, believing it is appropriate to kill people who are clinging to a boat in the water,” and Schmitt added, “That is clearly unlawful.” He also noted that “it has been clear for well over a century that you may not declare what’s called ‘no quarter’ — take no survivors, kill everyone.”

Because of this, right now in Washington the call is for a war-crimes investigation. With the hypocrisy on full display, no matter your political leanings, it is a joke that our President props up a narco-trafficking, unapologetic strongman and yet is willing to go to war with a country he disagrees with politically. The drug war is not needed — its cost, both human and financial, is obscene — and it is much cheaper and more humane to treat drugs as addiction and disease.

But drugs, in this case, are just a pretext for bombing your rivals and enemies. In 2015, we spent 25 billion on the war on drugs, and that was ten years ago; to keep our healthcare subsidies it would have cost 32 billion. This doesn’t seem like a real choice; we just love a good war.

One of those calling for investigation is Virginia Senator Tim Kaine saying on CBS Face the Nation Sunday, “If that reporting is true, it’s a clear violation of the DoD’s own laws of war, as well as international laws about the way you treat people who are in that circumstance,”

He also spoke about his time in Central America and asked the same important question: What’s this really about — the oil? He went on to discuss the hypocritical pardoning actual drug kingpins:

And, needless to say, the offensive duplicitous double standard on full display pardoning of drug kingpin Juan Orlando Hernández proves that this administration only cares about “armed conflicts” with its chosen enemies. It certainly doesn’t care about the threat posed by massive drug traffickers such as this man — whom they have now effectively allowed back into the business. As Hernández himself once said: “[Let’s] stuff the drugs right up the noses of the gringos.”

I will add here, but not diverge: Kaine brought up the fact that oil is a motivating factor. Here is a member of Congress explaining that point, as reported by Common Dreams:

US Rep. María Salazar (R-Fla.) said there were three reasons why “we need to go in” to the South American country. The first, she said, is that “Venezuela, for the American oil companies, will be a field day.”

Progressives on the Hill point out that we have heard this before regarding our invasion of Iraq, which at the time we were told would cost $50 billion and be paid for by oil profits — yet, as of a report from Harvard, it has become a $3 trillion war.

To swing back to today and the current war crimes the White House is standing by the strike. “Admiral Bradley worked well within his authority and the law to ensure the boat was destroyed and the threat to the United States of America was eliminated,” Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Monday.

“This administration has designated these narco-terrorists as foreign terrorist organizations,” she continued. “The president has the right to take them out if they are threatening the United States of America, if they are bringing illegal narcotics that are killing our citizens at a record rate, which is what they are doing.”

You can watch her whole press conference here:

Leavitt also said that Hegseth had discussions with members of Congress who were concerned about both the strike and the potential war-crime implications. However, he quickly pivoted to posting memes about the situation — one of which I’ve included below. Needless to say, this behavior is typical of this administration: do whatever they want, defend the action, try to calm people down, and then do whatever they want again.

This “leader” needs to be at a tribunal to answer for killing survivors of this attack — there’s not much more to say. It’s clear that $1 trillion for the military is far too much. We have to ask these questions because if we keep flooding the military with money, we have to justify it — and that justification can lead to actions like this, killing whomever is deemed an enemy. Honestly, we are living in 1984. We’ve been heading down this road for a while, but it has never been so clear.

I remember this quote from the show the west wing discussing war crimes and tribunals and such, “All wars are crimes“

December 5, 2025 Posted by | USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

No solutions for nuclear waste – no new nuclear power plants!

Greenpeace Switzerland, November 30, 2025

To date, there is no long-term safe solution for the storage of nuclear waste anywhere in the world. This is shown in a new study commissioned by Greenpeace Switzerland. It makes clear that the option planned in Switzerland—burying the nuclear waste in a clay layer north of the cantons of Zurich and Aargau—is fraught with numerous uncertainties. 

Here are three reasons why Switzerland must phase out nuclear power as quickly as possible and reduce the production of highly radioactive waste.

1. Burying nuclear waste is not a solution

The Greenpeace study summarizes the findings of over 800 scientific papers on the deep geological disposal of highly radioactive nuclear waste from the last 15 years. It reveals several new problems that are still poorly understood even by experts. These include phenomena such as the mutual weakening of various safety barriers, as well as processes (such as heat and radiation exposure, colloids, cracks, etc.) that could accelerate the spread of radioactive materials in the soil and groundwater.

Overall, it is clear that none of the “solutions” discussed so far for the deep geological disposal of these highly radioactive materials – neither in clay nor in granite formations – can guarantee that the radioactivity will remain safely contained in the long term. This finding is particularly worrying given that the Federal Council is considering a return to nuclear energy.

2. Swiss deep geological repository does not meet safety requirements

The report questions the safety of the planned deep geological repository. The National Cooperative for the Disposal of Radioactive Waste (Nagra) intends to store the highly radioactive waste in thick-walled steel containers, which are to be embedded in an Opalinus Clay layer at a depth of approximately 900 meters. The repository is designed to contain the radioactivity for one million years.

However, the study shows that certain processes could undermine the safety of the repository after only 1,000 or 2,000 years. Given these uncertainties, the optimism of the project’s proponents seems disconcerting. 

The Federal Council also seems keen to present the public with a final plan as quickly as possible – for political and financial reasons. In other words, the problem should be resolved as quickly as possible in order to revive nuclear energy in Switzerland. 

This is dangerous: We must not make any hasty decisions.

3. The safest way: No new waste – therefore no nuclear power

The reality is that Switzerland currently lacks a safe solution for the long-term storage of high-level radioactive waste. Continuing to pursue the planned deep geological repository in the Northern Lägern region, despite so many doubts, is not a good idea.

Furthermore, there is no disposal strategy whatsoever for a potential new reactor – a point that neither the Federal Council nor the proponents of nuclear energy ever openly address.

Given this situation, we must stop the production of highly radioactive waste as quickly as possible and prevent the problem from worsening through new nuclear power plants. Therefore, please sign our petition: https://www.greenpeace.ch/de/handeln/atomkraft-nie-wieder/

December 5, 2025 Posted by | Events, Switzerland | Leave a comment

Trump’s buried complicity in lost US proxy war against Russia.

Walt Zlotow, West Suburban Peace Coalition Glen Ellyn IL 2 Dec 25

Trump boasted he’d end the war destroying Ukraine in one day if re-elected. He claimed it was all Biden’s war that Trump had nothing to do with. If only Trump had been reelected in 2020, he claims, there would have been no war gutting Ukraine as a functioning state with tens of millions fled, dead, deserted, injured. The US wouldn’t have squandered over $180 billion to achieve this dubious Biden achievement.   

Trump, like every world leader, gets to make history but not rewrite history. Joe Biden was president when Russia launched its Special Military Operation to liberate the Donbas Ukrainians from destruction by Kyiv and keep NATO missiles off Russia’s borders. Biden essentially triggered that totally unnecessary war now in the final stages of Ukraine’s collapse. Biden also sabotaged the peace deal nearly achieved two month in that would have ended the war with no new lost Ukrainian territory. 

That will get Biden history’s everlasting condemnation.   But Trump also deserves history’s condemnation for ramping up the conditions that led to war under successor Biden. During his first term from 2017 to 2021 Trump kept alive long standing US dream of bringing Ukraine into NATO, a red line Russia warned America not to cross for over a decade prior. Trump authorized repeated NATO military exercises in Ukraine, which effectively made Ukraine a de facto NATO member. Trump allowed new NATO bases in Poland and Romania, adding to Russian angst over NATO encroachment.

Trump reversed a sensible Obama policy of not arming the Kyiv government to complete its destruction of Donbas Ukrainian separatists. In his 4 years Trump oversaw a fourfold increase of Kyiv military might.   Had Trump simply reversed senseless US expansion of NATO beginning under Bill Clinton in 1999, and forced Germany, France and UK to honor the Minsk Agreements granting regional autonomy to Donbas Ukrainians, Biden may not have had the conditions or momentum to provoke the February 2022 Russian invasion.   

Trump pretends he’s the White Knight bringing peace to a Ukraine wrecked solely by Biden’s perfidy. He should own up to his first term complicity and make peace to atone for his own sins destroying Ukraine as well as those of Joe Biden.

December 5, 2025 Posted by | Ukraine, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

USA’s Risky Nuclear Policies

Alan J. Kuperman, Ph.D., Associate Professor, LBJ School of Public AffairsCoordinator, Nuclear Proliferation Prevention Project (www.NPPP.org)University of Texas at Austin, 2 Dec 2025

At least six recent policy changes threaten to increase proliferation risk:

Uranium enrichment. The US had opposed spread of this technology for half a century because any facility for peaceful enrichment of reactor fuel could also produce highly enriched uranium for nuclear weapons. But now the White House is exploring uranium enrichment in at least two countries – Saudi Arabia and South Korea – that previously have expressed desire for nuclear weapons. 

Reprocessing waste. The US also had opposed this technology for half a century because it enables purification of plutonium for nuclear weapons. Now the White House “supports” South Korea starting to reprocess and is subsidizing US commercialization of this technology by a company seeking to export “on a global scale.”

“Fast” nuclear reactors. The US also is subsidizing commercial development of this exotic technology that originally was invented to maximize production of weapons-grade plutonium. It makes no sense for nuclear energy, since all prior efforts by countries to commercialize this technology have failed for 50 years – due to exorbitant cost and frequent fires.

HALEU fuel. Radically departing from all existing US nuclear powerplants, which use fuel that is unsuitable for weapons, the US government now is promoting HALEU fuel – both for domestic and exported reactors – which scientists warn could readily be used to make bulky but effective nuclear weapons.

Online refueling. A traditional barrier to proliferation has been that fuel could not be removed from nuclear powerplants while they were operating, so inspectors could simply focus on refueling operations every year or two during shutdowns. However, the US government now is promoting reactors with online refueling, which enable fuel to be removed at any time, making it hard or impossible to detect diversion.

Reduced security. The US government also is seeking to cut costs for smaller reactors by reducing or eliminating defenses against attack, such as exclusion zones and armed guards, which is especially dangerous for plants fueled by HALEU or plutonium – both suitable for nuclear weapons.

A Wiser Path

The responsible growth of nuclear energy requires a more prudent course, based on time-tested policies and technologies. Enrichment should be limited to existing producers, which would not only inhibit proliferation but also reduce costs via economies of scale. Reprocessing should be opposed outright, since all versions enable purification of plutonium for weapons, according to six US national laboratories. Fast reactors should be avoided because they foster proliferation, raise costs, and create unique safety risks. HALEU fuel should be capped below 10 percent enrichment, not the current 20 percent, to block a relatively easy path to the bomb. Online refueling should be avoided so inspectors have better chance to detect and thereby deter diversions. Security standards should be sustained or upgraded, which would favor bigger reactors that also produce less expensive electricity. In short, the future of nuclear energy should largely resemble its recent past, which could promote security and affordability better than misguided new policies.

Fighting the Good Fight

This year, NPPP and a few others have tried to sound the alarm. In July, I helped organize a letter to Congress from experts including ex-officials under five US presidents, calling for a halt to policies that “could unintentionally threaten the economic viability of nuclear energy and increase risks of nuclear weapons spreading to adversaries.” I also published an article in Scientific American, after the bombing of Iran, arguing that, “It is far preferable to prevent the spread of nuclear-weapon-usable technologies in the first place.” 

Regrettably, these sporadic efforts have hardly made a dent against the onslaught of disinformation, campaign contributions, and cronyism from purveyors of bomb-prone nuclear technology. Any hope of success requires a much larger, more coordinated, and better funded campaign – but charitable foundations so far have dismissed such proposals. I intend to keep trying, so please let me know if you can offer suggestions or financial support.

Paul Leventhal Fellows
Finally, a reminder that the NPPP continues to nurture the next generation of nuclear security professionals by awarding an annual Leventhal Fellowship for graduate students that intern at an organization dedicated to preventing the spread of weapons of mass destruction. 

Alan J. Kuperman, Ph.D., Associate Professor, LBJ School of Public AffairsCoordinator, Nuclear Proliferation Prevention Project (www.NPPP.org)University of Texas at Austin

December 5, 2025 Posted by | safety, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Trump and Rubio’s Venezuela Play: Regime Change Under the Guise of the Drug War.

December 2, 2025, By: Joshua Scheer, https://scheerpost.com/2025/12/02/trump-and-rubios-venezuela-play-regime-change-under-the-guise-of-the-drug-war/

There is a running theme today, but it is vital to understand that what is happening in Venezuela is unacceptable. I have added reporting from Venezuelanalysis.com about the Venezuelan government, which has strongly condemned Donald Trump’s declaration that its airspace is “closed in its entirety,” calling the move a “colonialist threat” and an illegal, unjustified interference in national sovereignty. Caracas emphasized that it will not accept orders or threats from a foreign power.

For more on this war in Venezuela, I’m sharing this from The American Prospect, which discusses Rubio’s intentions in the country:

“But Rubio, long a proponent of Venezuelan regime change, didn’t want things to end there. Appeasing his home state’s exile ring is a rather parochial origin story for an international incursion, but it happens to be true.

Trump was reportedly not buying the pitch until Rubio related it to something the president’s terminally 1980s brain recognizes: the war on drugs. Vaporizing alleged drug boats through summary executions, including what appears to be a patently illegal order for a second strike, has a visceral appeal for Trump. The inconvenient problem is that almost no fentanyl is produced in Venezuela, but fortunately for Rubio, Trump doesn’t read past the first page of the briefing book — and also doesn’t read that page either.”

Adding to the situation on the ground, The Guardian reports that during a phone call with Maduro, Trump said: “You can save yourself and those closest to you, but you must leave the country now.” Trump reportedly made this statement to a leader he has branded a narco-terrorist and baselessly accused of emptying his country’s prisons to send its most violent criminals to the U.S.

Needless to say, the only way this seems to go away is to somehow appease the president maybe a bribe, he certainly appears to respond to that. Otherwise, we need to stop this charade, and we’ll keep posting stories about it until it’s over.

December 5, 2025 Posted by | SOUTH AMERICA, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Iran reiterates demand for US accountability for its role in Israeli aggression in June.

The US joined the 12-day long Israeli aggression against Iran in June, targeting three of its nuclear sites in Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan

November 29, 2025 by Abdul Rahman, https://peoplesdispatch.org/2025/11/29/iran-reiterates-demand-for-us-accountability-for-its-role-in-israeli-aggression-in-june/

Iran’s permanent representative to the United Nations, Amir Saeid Iravani, on Thursday November 27, wrote a letter to the UN Security Council announcing Iran’s intentions to seek US accountability for its role in Israeli aggression on Iran in June this year.

“The Islamic Republic of Iran once again reiterates its call on the UN Secretary General and the Security Council to take appropriate measures, consistent with their responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security, to ensure accountability of both the US and the Israeli regime for” their grave violations of international laws, the letter reportedly says.

Iran has already written two such letters to the UN secretary general and the UN Security Council in the past as well. Thursday’s letter follows public recognition by the US Air Force on Wednesday of their role in Israeli aggression on Iran in June.

On June 22, during the 12-day Israeli war against Iran, US fighter jets accompanied B-2 bombers in the so-called Operation Midnight Hammer and bombed three Iranian nuclear sites of Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan.

Though the US claimed the attack damaged Iran’s nuclear capacities, it was widely reported that the attack failed to achieve its real objective.

Iran has denied it ever wants to develop nuclear weapons. However, it asserts its right to have nuclear enrichment as a signatory of the Nuclear non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

The US-Israeli attacks were in complete violation of Iranian sovereignty under the provisions of the UN Charter, International humanitarian law, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) protocols and the NPT, Iran has claimed.

The Israeli and US acts of aggression were “directed against the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Islamic Republic of Iran, in blatant violation of article 2 (4) of the UN Charter. This aggression included deliberate attacks against civilians and civilian objects” Iran claims and demands accountability and compensation for the same.

“The US is under an obligation to make full reparation for the injuries caused by the said violations against Iran and its citizens, including any material moral damage. This includes an obligation to make restitution and compensate for the damage caused thereby, under established international law,” Iravani’s letter says.

June war

Apart from financial compensation Iran has also sought “individual criminal responsibility of any US officials and individuals in grave breaches of international humanitarian law, including for the crime of aggression,” during the June war.

On June 13, Israel began a bombing campaign against several Iranian cities and nuclear facilities accusing it of developing nuclear weapons. The Israeli strikes which went on for 12 days, killed over a thousand people including some of the country’s prominent scientists and top military officials.

Iran denied Israeli allegations and retaliated to its aggression with long range missiles causing damage in Tel Aviv and several other cities. Scores of Israelis were also killed in Iranian retaliations.

The US joined the Israeli bombings in Iran. On June 22, its B-2 bombers targeted three of Iran’s nuclear sites in an attempt to destroy its alleged capacity to build nuclear bombs.

In a discussion in the Security Council on June 22, the US defended its attacks on Iranian nuclear sites claiming it was part of its “mutual security arrangements” with Israel.

However, Iran rejected the US claims calling the attacks a violation of its territorial integrity and US obligations under the UN Charter and other international law. It announced its right to retaliate against and seek remuneration from the US.

Iran retaliated to the US strikes by launching strikes on its military base in Qatar a day after.

A ceasefire was announced by the president Donald Trump on Monday, June 23, and officially agreed upon on June 24, which marked the end of military hostilities.

On several occasions since June, Iran has criticized the UN Security Council for its selective criticisms and its failure to uphold its basic duty to maintain world peace and security.

Iran has noted how when it comes to Israel and the US, the UN fails to hold them accountable for their repeated violations of its charter and other international laws.

December 5, 2025 Posted by | Iran, politics international | Leave a comment

Hinkley Point C contractor issued notice after ‘significant fire safety shortfalls’

The potential for harm and risk of serious injury was identified

A fire enforcement notice has been served on a Hinkley Point C
contractor after “significant fire safety shortfalls” were identified at
the nuclear construction site. Following a focused fire safety
intervention, Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) inspectors identified
that Bylor JV (Laing O’Rourke and Bouygues Travaux Publics) had failed to
implement appropriate arrangements for the effective planning,
organisation, control, monitoring and review of preventive and protective
measures.

 Somerset Live 2nd Dec 2025, https://www.somersetlive.co.uk/news/somerset-news/hinkley-point-c-contractor-issued-10681094

December 4, 2025 Posted by | safety, UK | Leave a comment

Trump’s Peace With NATO Reinforces Its Purpose: US-Led Global Hegemony

Trump’s hardball tactics have extorted greater allied cooperation and reasserted US domination over the organization.

By Jonathan Ng , Truthout. November 29, 2025, https://truthout.org/articles/trumps-peace-with-nato-reinforces-its-purpose-us-led-global-hegemony/?utm_source=Truthout&utm_campaign=d2f1ccd0ed-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2025_11_29_05_59&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_bbb541a1db-d2f1ccd0ed-650192793

This October, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth dominated the NATO ministerial meeting in Brussels, while pressuring Europeans to assume an even heavier share of the defense burden. Referring to his peers as “ministers of war,” Hegseth demanded that member states purchase additional U.S. arms for Ukraine. “All countries need to translate goals into guns,” he hammered home. “That’s all that matters: hard power.”

Following Hegseth’s lead, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte is now directing a campaign to secure arms purchase commitments. Rutte emphasizes that he is “proud” of the alliance’s ongoing assistance to Ukraine, noting that Russia has “lost 1 million people — dead or seriously wounded.”

Hegseth’s strongarm tactics and fundraising drive showcase the power dynamics that underlie NATO policymaking. In recent years, the organization has portrayed itself as an alliance of democracies confronting unprovoked aggression in Ukraine and China’s meteoric rise. Yet fundamentally, NATO is a U.S.-dominated forum, rather than a symposium of equals — a reality that Rutte’s relentlessly patient handling of the Trump administration makes clear.

Since 1949, members have exploited the alliance to solidify American global leadership, coordinate interventionism, and contain rivals that challenge Western influence. Rather than promote peace, NATO continues to pose one of the greatest threats to international stability by fueling armed conflicts in Ukraine and across the world.

NATO’s Fascists

NATO often portrays itself as a principled alliance of democracies confronting authoritarian rivals. But historically, the organization has collaborated with far-right intellectuals and statesmen, in order to maintain its military-industrial edge and geopolitical power. Following World War II, U.S. officials protected Wernher von Braun and around 1,500 other Nazi scientists from prosecution, while integrating them into the alliance’s scientific establishment. Eventually, the German General Adolf Heusinger, whose men butchered Jews and tossed children into wells, became a senior NATO commander.

For decades, Spain’s fascist strongman, Francisco Franco, was also an essential alliance partner. Between 1951 and 1953, the United States negotiated the Pact of Madrid, securing access to Spanish military bases and turning the country into a staging ground for NATO operations.

During negotiations, Washington appeared outwardly critical of Franco, while assuring his blood-soaked regime that it prioritized cooperation — a balancing act that insiders labeled a “comedy.” Privately, the U.S. embassy dismissed moral reservations, suggesting that officials approach relations “from a practical, even selfish, point of view,” since collaboration “could pay dividends in our own interest.” After concluding the pact, U.S. authorities praised Spain, a country studded with mass graves, for its “defense of the free world.” And Spanish bases became NATO launchpads in the escalating Cold War.

That came at a cost. In 1966, one of the U.S. Strategic Air Command’s B-52 bombers crashed above Palomares, releasing four hydrogen bombs over the seaside town. Residents remember a scalding wind and enormous fireball bursting over the horizon. “We thought that it was the end of the world,” one explained. The U.S. government promised to clean up the radioactive waste, but instead left the region riddled with plutonium particles. For the Spanish left, Palomares was the victim of NATO, an organization increasingly inseparable from the Franco dictatorship.

Continue reading →

December 4, 2025 Posted by | EUROPE, politics international, USA | Leave a comment

Did Davey’s EDF Hinkley deal scupper tax payer?

Is EDF about to pocket extra cash due to strike price from decade ago?

 The Telegraph reports that Hinkley Point C will slap £1bn a year onto UK
energy bills the moment it starts generating. The cash will flow straight
from households to EDF under a subsidy deal locked in more than a decade
ago.

A second £1bn hit will land through the nuclear levy that bankrolls
Sizewell C in Suffolk. Campaigners are already calling the combination a
“nuclear tax on households” as ministers push ahead with the biggest
expansion of nuclear power in a generation.

Treasury and OBR documents
released after Rachel Reeves’s Budget spell out how the money will move.
CfD receipts are forecast to hit £4.6bn in 2030-31 with £1bn of that
handed to Hinkley C in its first year of operation. The root cause is the
2013 strike price agreed between EDF and Sir Ed Davey. It guarantees
£92.50/MWh for Hinkley’s output, now worth £133 with inflation and
expected to reach around £150 by the time the plant opens in 2030. If
wholesale prices hover near £80/MWh as they do today EDF can claim roughly£70/MWh from consumers and businesses to make up the difference.

 Energy Live News 1st Dec 2025. https://www.energylivenews.com/2025/12/01/did-daveys-edf-hinkley-deal-scupper-tax-payer/

December 4, 2025 Posted by | business and costs, UK | Leave a comment

A Ceasefire in Name Only: Gaza’s Prolonged Purgatory

2 December 2025 Dr Binoy Kampmark, https://theaimn.net/a-ceasefire-in-name-only-gazas-prolonged-purgatory/

A ceasefire can be a strange thing. The assumption, generally speaking, is that the parties to it restrain themselves for a period of time, ordering their forces and disciplining their charges from straying. But straying happens, transgressions inevitable. Some are genuine enough: silly misunderstandings, hot headed confusion, a fear that the other side has broken it. Room for error, and a degree of death and injury, is crudely permitted.

In the case of the Israel-Hamas ceasefire, transgressions have become the lingua franca of the parties, though Israel remains, by far, the perpetrator par excellence. The latter’s departures from the agreement have been so vicious as to prompt the observation that they are pursuing a mutilated reading of the agreement, essentially a “reduce fire.” The deaths of 347 Palestinians in Gaza since October 10, including 136 children, do not point to cooling restraint.

On October 28, at least 104 Palestinians were slaughtered in a single day. This might have suggested a breach so serious as to suggest a repudiation. Not so, claimed Qatari Prime Minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdul Rahman Al Thani. “Fortunately,” he told a US audience, “I think the main parties – both of them [Israel and Hamas] – are acknowledging that the ceasefire should hold and they should stick to the agreement.”

What is becoming apparent is that the ceasefire has led to a state of affairs where Israeli forces have been permitted enormous latitude in the way it inflicts violence on local Gazans. The UN Women’s Chief of Humanitarian Action, Sofia Calltorp, reveals how Gazan women told her “again and again: there may be a ceasefire, but the war is not over. The attacks are fewer, but the killings continue.” Agnès Callmard, Secretary General of Amnesty International, goes so far as to declare that the ceasefire has created “a dangerous illusion that life in Gaza is returning to normal.” What has in fact happened is a mere reduction of “the scale of [Israel’s] attacks” and the meagre allowance of humanitarian aid into the Strip.

In a briefing note released on November 27, the organisation is adamant that “Israeli authorities are still committing genocide against Palestinians in the occupied Gaza Strip, by continuing to deliberately inflict conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction.” Expulsions continue, prosecutions of alleged atrocities and war crimes by Israeli forces non-existent. The means to build the crucial infrastructure required to sustain life is being hampered, while unexploded ordnance, contaminated rubble and sewage, remain unaddressed.

Structural realities have also intruded. The Israeli Defense Forces remain in control of over 58% of Gaza. According to a clutch of special rapporteurs and experts in the employ of the United Nations, including Francesca Albanese, Ben Saul and Irene Khan, 40 active Israeli sites continue to operate “beyond the agreed withdrawal line, in clear breach of the ceasefire terms.” They also warn that the UN Security Council resolution authorising the deployment of an International Stabilisation Force (ISF), with Egypt and Israel coordinating border matters alongside a spanking new Palestinian trained police force “risks replicating – if not aggravating – the model of security coordination that has entrenched Israel’s settler-colonial apartheid regime in the West Bank.”

Humanitarian assistance remains at a painful trickle, an obscene state of affairs given the levelling devastation wrought by the war (85% of water and sanitation facilities were damaged or destroyed; likewise 92% of homes). The charity Oxfam does not spare any details in what is needed: “The most pressing needs include food and healthcare and shelter, as well as water, sanitation and hygiene services (WASH) including menstrual products and waste management services.” While some food and goods have become more available in local markets, they remain prohibitively expensive for Gaza’s residents.

Between October 10 and 21, seventeen international non-government organisations had essential aid shipments for Gaza, including water, food, tents, and medical supplies, blocked, with Israeli authorities claiming they were not authorised to do so. Some 99 requests by international NGOs to deliver aid were rejected, along with six requests from UN agencies. “This includes,” stated Oxfam last month, “agencies that continue to have long-standing INGO registration with Palestinian and Israeli authorities and are legally permitted to operate by the latter while new registration processes are ongoing.”

A system of brutality, practised, insistent, even casual, has been entrenched against those in Gaza and, increasingly, the West Bank. The summary execution of two men in Jenin by Israeli soldiers after their surrender was lauded by Israel’s National Security Minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, who thought the killings the very thing “expected of them.” Implicit is the suggestion that Palestinians are required to behave in specific, tolerated ways: humbly submit to their apparently generous oppressors, suffer ceaseless purgatorial deprivation and accept a ceasefire in name only.

December 4, 2025 Posted by | Atrocities, Gaza, Israel | Leave a comment

Ah, Good Old War Propaganda

Reporters come to understand that there are certain lines they need to color within if they want to get articles published and continue advancing their careers, so they either learn to toe the imperial line or they disappear from the mass media industry.

Caitlin Johnstone, Dec 02, 2025, https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/ah-good-old-war-propaganda?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=180465025&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

Just as the news breaks that Trump has issued Maduro an ultimatum to leave Venezuela immediately if he wants to escape with his life, the Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal has published an amazingly brazen war propaganda piece titled “How Venezuelan Gangs and African Jihadists Are Flooding Europe With Cocaine.”

“Venezuela has become a major launchpad for huge volumes of cocaine shipped to West Africa, where jihadists are helping traffic it to Europe in record quantities,” the article begins, going out of its way to note that “the Trump administration’s pressure campaign against Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro — who it asserts is heavily involved in drug smuggling — has brought global attention to the country’s role in the drug trade.”

The propaganda piece is plainly aimed at Europeans as well as Americans, emphasizing Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s quip last month that the Europeans “should be thanking us” for blowing up alleged drug boats coming from Venezuela because he says some of those drugs are winding up in Europe.

It’s got everything. Whipping up international support for a regime change war. Fearmongering about “jihadists”. The evil, scary dictator. The whole war propaganda sales package.

The mass media do this every time the US empire gets war-horny. And the Murdoch press are always the most egregious offenders.

Reminds me of an old tweet by a man named Malcolm Price:

“I remember in the run-up to the Iraq War a friend I had known all my life suddenly said to me, ‘We must do something about this monster in Iraq.’ I said, ‘When did you first think that?’ He answered honestly, ‘A month ago’.”

Price’s friend had been swept up in the imperial war propaganda campaign that had recently begun, just like countless millions of others. Month after month after month western consciousness was hammered with false narratives about weapons of mass destruction, forced associations of Saddam Hussein with 9/11, and stories about how much better things will be for the people of Iraq once that evil tyrant is gone.

Normally it never would have occurred to the average westerner that a country on the other side of the planet should be invaded and its leader replaced with a puppet regime. That’s not the sort of thing that would have organically entered someone’s mind. It needed to be placed there.

The most common misconception about the free press of the western world is that it exists. All the west’s most influential and far-reaching news media publications are here not to report factual stories about current events, but to manufacture consent for the pre-existing agendas of the US-centralized western empire.

They report many true things, to be sure, and if you acquire some media literacy you can actually learn how to glean a lot of useful information from the imperial press without losing your mind to the spin machine. But reporting true things is not their purpose. Their purpose is to manipulate public psychology at mass scale for the benefit of the empire they serve.

This doesn’t happen through some kind of centralized Ministry of Truth where sinister social engineers secretly conspire to deceive people. It happens because all mainstream press institutions are controlled either by plutocrats or by western governments in the form of state broadcasters like the BBC, both of which have a vested interest in maintaining the imperial status quo. They control who the executives and lead editors of these outlets are, and those leaders shape the hiring and editing processes of the publication or broadcaster. Reporters come to understand that there are certain lines they need to color within if they want to get articles published and continue advancing their careers, so they either learn to toe the imperial line or they disappear from the mass media industry.

If people had a clear understanding of everything that’s really going on in our world, they would tear the empire apart brick by brick. If they could truly see how much evil is being done in their name and really wrap their minds around it, and if they could understand how much wealth the plutocrats are getting out of the imperial status quo compared to how little they themselves benefit from it, there would be immediate revolution. So the oligarchs and empire managers shore up narrative control in the form of media ownership, think tanks, Silicon Valley algorithm manipulation, imperial information ops like Wikipedia, and now increasingly through billionaire-owned AI chatbots to ensure that this never happens.

The entire empire is built on a foundation of lies. The whole power structure is held together by nonstop manipulation of the way westerners think, speak, act, shop, work, and vote. If truth ever finds a way to get a word in edgewise, the entire thing would collapse.

We know this is true because the oligarchs and empire managers pour so much wealth and energy into manipulating our minds. They’re not doing this for fun, they’re doing it because they need to. If they didn’t need to, it wouldn’t be happening.

So what they are doing is intensely creepy and destructive, but it’s also empowering, because it shows us right where their weak spot is. They’re pouring all this energy into controlling the dominant narrative because that’s the weakest point in the armor of the imperial machine.

What we need, then, is a grassroots effort to help truth get a word in. Help people understand that they’ve been propagandized and deceived about the world by western media and by their power-serving education systems every day of their lives, because propaganda only works if you don’t know it’s happening to you. Sow distrust in the imperial media and institutions. Open people’s eyes to the fact that they’re being lied to, and help them learn to see the truth. Anywhere the empire is sowing lies and distortions — whether that’s in Venezuela or Gaza or somewhere else — use that opportunity to help more people unplug their minds from the propaganda matrix.

A better world is possible. The first step in moving toward it is snapping people out of the propaganda-induced coma which dupes them into settling for this dystopian nightmare instead.

December 4, 2025 Posted by | media | Leave a comment

France & UK Still Insist On Sending Troops To Ukraine, In Effort To Sabotage Trump Peace Plan

by Tyler Durden, Tuesday, Dec 02, 2025 ,https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/france-uk-still-insist-sending-troops-ukraine-effort-sabotage-trump-peace-plan

As we reported earlier, the important Miami meeting wherein American and Ukrainian delegations hammered out a revised ceasefire draft for some five hours on Sunday did not have European participation. But this is where the real deal-making is taking place. Trump envoy Steve Witkoff is en route to Moscow, where he’s expected to meet with President Putin on Tuesday, in order to present where things stand on the peace plan.

The Miami meeting reportedly focused on where the new de facto border would be in the east, after the 19-point plan featured significant territorial concessions in the Donbass and Crimea. As for Europe, is still touting a “coalition of the willing” which are vowing ongoing military support to the Zelensky government.

At this moment, France and the United Kingdom especially are continuing to push for the deployment of troops from NATO-member states to Ukraine as part of their version of peace settlement, despite this being very obviously unacceptable to Moscow. 

Last week Politico reported that when US Secretary of State Marco Rubio joined a discussion involving the coalition of the willing via phone call, he made clear to all that the White House wants a peace agreement in place before committing to any long-term security guarantees for Kiev.

But UK Prime Minister Kier Starmer tried to push back, arguing that a “multinational force” would be essential for ensuring Ukraine’s future security.

Bloomberg then followed with a report saying that UK officials have already selected the military units they plan to deploy, based on several reconnaissance trips to Ukraine.

France’s President Emmanuel Macron proposed that such troops could operate in the capital area or western regions of the country, far from the front lines. But this would flagrantly cross all Russia’s red lines. NATO troops on its doorstep was key Putin’s decision-making in launching the ‘special military operation’ in the first place.

It must be recalled that the original US-drafted 28-point peace plan, which leaked to the press and more recently was condensed down to 19 points, included an explicit prohibition on deploying NATO troops to Ukraine.

The European-proposed counter-plan, which was also quickly leaked to the media, greatly softened that stance and laid out that instead of a blanket ban, NATO would not “permanently station troops under its command in Ukraine in peacetime.”

At a moment Trump’s peace plan advances, and with Witkoff on his way to meet with President Putin, hawks in Europe are growing even more hawkish:

Such intentionally vague language leaves open the possibility of NATO troop rotations into Ukraine. The Kremlin has time and again said it would not tolerate this, and such a move would lead to direct war with the West.

Europe’s plan also seeks to leave open a Ukrainian path to NATO, but this is also a sticking point which the US plan leaves out, given it would of course be dead on arrival if presented to Putin.

December 4, 2025 Posted by | France, UK, Ukraine, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Former Heads of CIA, MI5, Mossad and CSIS Profit From Israel’s Genocide

Dimitri Lascaris, Dec 02, 2025, https://reason2resist.substack.com/p/former-heads-of-cia-mi5-mossad-and?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=2811845&post_id=180423423&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

Awz Ventures, a venture capital firm based in Toronto, is a who’s who of Western intelligence chiefs. Few people have heard of Awz before, but its partners and strategic advisors include former senior directors of the CIA, FBI, MI5, CSIS, Mossad, Shin Bet, and Israel’s Unit 8200.

The President of Awz’s Advisory Committee is Stephen Harper, arguably the most pro-Israel Prime Minister in Canada’s history.

Awz has made major investments in Israeli cyber-security firms that have exploited and profited from Israel’s oppression of Palestinians.

In November 2025, Reason2Resist correspondent Rami Yahia visited the Milipol Homeland Security Conference in Paris, France. Posing as a buyer of cybersecurity products, Rami gathered intel on Israeli firms that have close ties to Awz.

In Reason2Resist’s latest livestream, Rami and I discuss the closely guarded secrets that his investigation uncovered. Our report includes previously unpublished video and audio recordings of Rami’s conversations at the Milipol Exhibition with representatives of Israeli cyber-security firms.

December 4, 2025 Posted by | business and costs | Leave a comment

South Australia averages 100 pct wind and solar over week, 90 pct over last 28 days

South Australia – the country’s most advanced renewables grid – has
average more than 100 per cent net renewables (compared to state demand)
over the past week, and more than 90 per cent renewables over the last 28
days. It is not the first time that South Australia has reached 100 per
cent renewables – it has done so previously over the Christmas/New Year
period – but it marks a significant milestone, given that its mix of
renewables is made up entirely of variable wind and solar, and with no
hydro or even biomass to speak of.

 Renew Economy 2nd Dec 2025, https://reneweconomy.com.au/south-australia-averages-100-pct-wind-and-solar-over-week-90-pct-over-last-28-days/

December 4, 2025 Posted by | AUSTRALIA, renewable | Leave a comment

« Previous Entries     Next Entries »