Fox News Just Helped Netanyahu Spread The Lie That Iran Tried To Assassinate Trump
Caitlin Johnstone, Jun 16, 2025
Benjamin Netanyahu was given a platform to spout lies and war propaganda on Fox News in an interview with a groveling Bret Baier, who not only allowed the Israeli prime minister’s lies to cruise by unchecked but actually invited him to expand upon them.
Netanyahu promoted countless incendiary falsehoods and unsubstantiated claims throughout the interview, including the assertion that Iran was working on producing nuclear weapons and intended to give them to Yemen’s Houthis to facilitate global terrorism, and that Iran was working on intercontinental ballistic missiles to nuke the east coast of the United States as well.
Perhaps the most ridiculous and brazenly propagandistic claim advanced by Netanyahu was that Iran had twice attempted to assassinate the president of the United States.
“These are people who chant ‘Death to America.’ They’ve tried to assassinate President Trump twice,” said the prime minister.
Rather than push back on this claim or point out that there’s been no reported evidence that any such thing has occurred, Baier instead offered Netanyahu the opportunity to drive the narrative home further with claims of secret intelligence about these alleged assassination plots.
“You just said Iran tried to assassinate President Trump twice,” Baier said. “Do you have intel that the assassination attempts on President Trump were directly from Iran?”
“Through proxies, yes, through their intel, yes, they want to kill him,” Netanyahu asserted.
Netanyahu had previously made this claim on his own platform in a statement on Friday wishing President Trump a happy birthday, and now he’s carrying it into the mainstream news media of the United States.
Netanyahu’s claim has already been repeated in outlets like The New York Post, Washington Examiner, Breitbart, and The Independent. So it’s in the blood stream now. The information ecosystem of US politics has already been infected with the virus.
It says so much about how comfortable Israel is with lying and how eager the western media are to help promote those lies that Netanyahu could go on Fox News and just casually assert that Iran “tried to assassinate President Trump twice,” only to have the Murdoch muppet host invite him to expound upon this assertion rather than challenging the Israeli prime minister’s evidence-free claim.
Netanyahu was fully aware that he was lying, and Baier was fully aware that Netanyahu was lying. They collaborated to push this lie before Fox News’ aging audience without the faintest whisper of journalistic ethics anywhere to be heard, knowing that this one baseless assertion would help turn their Trump-sympathizing viewers toward supporting a US attack on Iran.
If you weren’t around for the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq, this is what it was like. Brazen lies with a fully complicit media, with the most frenetic war propaganda circulated by the Murdoch press.
Rupert Murdoch is intimately intertwined with Israel’s political elite and has a financial stake in Israeli energy which depends on Israel’s ongoing military occupation of the Golan Heights. Murdoch largely has the assistance of the US government to thank for his mass media empire. He personally funded the political career of Benjamin Netanyahu, who in 2002 told the US Congress that “There is no question whatsoever that Saddam [Hussein] is seeking, is working, is advancing towards to the development of nuclear weapons,” and that “If you take out Saddam, Saddam’s regime, I guarantee you that it will have enormous positive reverberations on the region.”
The US does not have a free press, and neither do any of its allies in the western world. Under the western power alliance the mass media operate as the propaganda services of the US-centralized empire, and the public is fed whatever narratives serve the information interests of that empire.
The lies about Iran are just getting started. There will be more. Don’t buy into any part of this scam. https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/fox-news-just-helped-netanyahu-spread?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=166039398&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
From Media Darling to Persona Non Grata: Greta Thunberg’s Journey
Alan Macleod, 7 June 25, https://www.mintpressnews.com/greta-thunberg-canceled-capitalism-israel/289936/
Once the favored child of the establishment, Greta Thunberg has been dropped by the global elite. A MintPress News study finds that coverage of Thunberg in The New York Times and Washington Post has dwindled from hundreds of articles per year to barely a handful, precisely as she widens her focus from the environment to the capitalist system that is causing climate breakdown, and the Israeli attack on Gaza, which the Swedish activist has labeled a “genocide.”
Her message of the urgent need to address the impending climate crisis was one that was palatable to authorities, who attempted to co-opt her with access and accolades. In 2019, despite being only 16 years old, she won the Swedish Woman of the Year award and was named by Forbes magazine as one of the world’s 100 most powerful women. Time magazine even awarded her its prestigious Person of the Year, for, in their words, “sounding the alarm about humanity’s predatory relationship with the only home we have,” “bringing to a fragmented world a voice that transcends backgrounds and borders,” and for “showing us all what it might look like when a new generation leads.”
While conservatives were hostile to her from the start, more liberal institutions showered her with attention and praise. The New York Times, for example, described her as “a modern-day Cassandra for the age of climate change,” and noted that her work had “inspired huge children’s demonstrations” across the planet.
Yet Thunberg refused to be turned into a mascot for the elites, and the co-optation failed. As a result, coverage of her in elite media outlets has plummeted to almost nothing, even as she continues to fight for global causes and risks her life trying to break the illegal blockade of Gaza.
This phenomenon can be seen by studying the coverage of Thunberg in The New York Times and The Washington Post. Shooting to public attention in 2018, Thunberg and her activities were, at first, given copious coverage in both newspapers, amounting to hundreds of articles per year in each outlet. Yet this has dwindled to virtually nothing by 2025, with only three Times and two Post articles even mentioning Thunberg, and only one in each covering her in any detail beyond a passing reference.
The data was compiled by searching for the term “Greta Thunberg” in the New York Times archive and Dow Jones Factiva news database, a tool that records the content from more than 32,000 U.S. and international media outlets.
Dr. Jill Stein, a three-time presidential candidate for the United States Green Party, was not surprised by the findings. “It comes with the territory when you go from inside the box to outside the box, and it is a real sign of integrity when the media stops covering you,” she told MintPress; “Greta has been canceled, like many of the best activists I know of.”
The precipitous drop in corporate media interest closely correlates with Thunberg’s increasingly radical stances. In 2022, she identified capitalism as a prime cause of climate collapse and explained the need for a comprehensive global revolution, stating that:
What we refer to as ‘normal’ is an extreme system built on the exploitation of people and the planet. It is a system defined by colonialism, imperialism, oppression, and genocide by the so-called global North to accumulate wealth that still shapes our current world order.”
At the same public event, she dismissed the United Nations Climate Change Conferences as a waste of time, and merely an opportunity for “people in power… to [use] greenwashing, lying and cheating.”
She has also gone out of her way to support workers’ struggles against their bosses. Last year, she visited the GKN auto parts factory in Florence, Italy, a site that striking workers have occupied. “Climate justice = workers’ rights,” she explained, noting that,
[E]very necessity to choose between the struggle for labour and the struggle for climate justice is abolished. The territory defends the factory, the factory defends the territory. The fight to get to the end of the month is the same fight against the end of the world.”
She has spoken out against the Moroccan occupation of Western Sahara, in support of striking Indian farmers, and against the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Undoubtedly, however, it is her solidarity with the Palestinian people and their cause that has earned her the most flak. In 2021, she shared a social media post accusing Israel of carrying out war crimes, adding that it was “Devastating to follow the developments in Jerusalem and Gaza,” adding the hashtag #SaveSheikhJarrah to her post. In the wake of the October 7 attack and the Israeli bombardment that followed it, she called for an immediate ceasefire and for freedom and justice for Palestine. And last year, she was arrested while protesting Israel’s inclusion in the Eurovision Song Contest.
For these actions, she has been vocally condemned by many of the same outlets that, only a few years previously, had celebrated and promoted her. Just days after her calls for a ceasefire, Forbes magazine ran a story headlined “Greta Thunberg’s stand with Gaza is a problem for the climate change movement,” which claimed that sharing “controversial opinions that only serve to alienate entire demographics” does not “advance an environmental cause,” and “only weakens her ability to advocate and harms the overall climate change movement.” Another Forbes article described her career arc as a “tragedy” and claimed that she was driven by an all-encompassing “hatred of Israel” and a determination to “destroy the Jewish state.” Meanwhile, influential German publication Der Spiegel, which had awarded her its “Person of the Year” in 2019, branded her an “antisemite.”
For Stein, Thunberg’s media excommunication cannot simply be explained by the notion that the exploits of a 22-year-old organizer are less newsworthy than those of a precocious teenager. Rather, it was her public stances against capitalism, imperialism, and Israel’s actions in Gaza that angered them.
“Each of those [stances] were a step-down in the eyes of mainstream media and the oligarchy they defend,” she said. “You could see the pushback against her starting when she began to speak about climate, social and economic justice. But when she began to take a stand on Gaza, that was the last straw, and you didn’t see her getting mainstream media coverage after that,” she added.
Thunberg sees the fight for a greener world as inseparable from the struggle for political and economic freedom. “For me, there is no way of distinguishing the two,” she said, adding:
We cannot have climate justice without social justice. The reason why I am a climate activist is not because I want to protect trees. I’m a climate activist because I care about human and planetary well-being, and those are extremely interlinked.”
Dimitri Lascaris, a lawyer and former Green Party of Canada leadership candidate who has sailed on multiple “freedom flotillas” attempting to break the Gaza blockade, said that the shunning of Thunberg also represents “an indictment of the environmental movement.” As Lascaris told MintPress:
Before Greta took an incredibly courageous stand for the victims of Israel’s genocidal regime, she was the darling of the movement, but many of those same ‘environmentalists’ who lionized her have fallen silent as she risks her life to draw attention to the suffering of Palestinians. Environmental justice and human rights are inextricably linked. If you will not stand with Greta now, then you have no right to call yourself an ‘environmental activist.’”
Dangerous Waters
In addition to her political trajectory, Thunberg is currently on a physical journey, sailing on an aid ship to Gaza in an attempt to break the Israeli blockade. She is one of 12 public figures to board the Madleen at the Sicilian port of Catania, which is scheduled to reach the densely populated strip on June 7. Others include “Game of Thrones” actor Liam Cunningham and French politician Rima Hassan.
The ship is carrying urgently-needed supplies, including flour, rice, and other staples, as well as baby formula, feminine hygiene products, medical supplies, crutches, prosthetic limbs, and water desalination kits. The Madleen is a small vessel, and the aid is but a drop in the ocean of what authorities say is needed. Organizers, however, emphasize the symbolic importance of breaking the blockade from the outside. “We are doing this because no matter what odds we are against, we have to keep trying, because the moment we stop trying is when we lose our humanity,” Thunberg explained. The volunteers and crew are sailing unarmed and have been trained in non-violence.
Corporate media have largely ignored the Madleen’s voyage. The New York Times, for example, has not covered it at all, while the Washington Post has dedicated a single article to it. Other outlets, however, have bitterly denounced the operation. “Greta Thunberg’s narcissism has escalated to terrifying levels,” ran the headline in Britain’s daily, The Telegraph, which labeled it a “self-serving stunt masquerading as a daring act of charity.”
Some commentators have displayed even more hostility to the mission. U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham, for instance, stated that the hopes “Greta and her friends can swim,” openly suggesting the aid ship should be attacked.
Israel has stated it will block the Madleen from entering Gazan waters, and its drones are already circling the ship. In May, the Israeli military attacked another boat attempting to deliver lifesaving aid to Palestine, firing missiles at the vessel just outside Maltese waters. The incident was largely ignored in the Western press.
Stein was impressed by Thunberg’s bravery, telling MintPress:
It is heroic, it is inspirational, and it is galvanizing to have this example of her and the others on the Freedom Flotilla. Their incredibly courageous, compassionate humanitarian example is the polar opposite of this horrific genocide. They are risking their lives and they know it… But they refuse to accept a genocide, or to be powerless in the face of it.”
The lack of press attention likely does not surprise Thunberg, who identified Western corporate media as active participants in the slaughter. “Our governments, our institutions, our companies are supporting this genocide… It is our tax money. It is our media who are continuing to dehumanize Palestinians,” she said. “On behalf of the international community, the so-called Western world, I am so sorry that we have betrayed you by not supporting you enough,” she added.
The manner in which the ruling class has collectively dumped Thunberg is far from an isolated incident. Elite liberal forces have historically attempted to defang and dilute radical challenges to the status quo, such as Black Lives Matter, the LGBT liberation movement, and the Occupy Wall Street protests, offering their leaders access and privileges. If this strategy fails, figures and movements are shunned, rebuked, or attacked. While Martin Luther King focused his attention on racist Southern sheriffs, he was treated with respect. But after his anti-war “Beyond Vietnam” speech, where he trained his guns on the “triple evils of racism, extreme materialism and militarism,” he became public enemy number one, and was ignored, denounced, and, ultimately, assassinated.
Thunberg shows no sign of backing down. “We are standing up for justice, sustainability, liberation for everyone. There can be no climate justice without social justice,” she said. That is precisely the kind of talk that got her ejected from elite polite society in the first place.
NYT Goes Silent on Greta Thunberg’s Gaza Voyage
this is all part of the Palestine exception, where liberal groups and outlets might show concern for humanitarian crises around the world, but lower their outrage or stay completely silent on the subject of Palestine.
Ari Paul, 6 June 25
When Swedish activist Greta Thunberg was fighting for climate justice in her home country and the world stage, the New York Times gave her top billing. She co-authored an op-ed (8/19/21), and was the subject of a long interview (10/30/20).
Acclaimed film director Darren Aronofsky wrote a piece for the Times (12/2/19) headlined “Greta Thunberg Is the Icon the Planet Desperately Needs.” Seeing a photo of her at 15, staging her first environmental protest, he said: “Here was the image—one of hope, commitment and action—I needed to see. An image that could spark a movement.” Her work was highlighted constantly in the Paper of Record (e.g., New York Times, 2/18/19, 8/29/19, 9/18/19, 1/21/20, 4/9/21, 11/4/21, 6/30/23).
Now Thunberg is sailing to Gaza with a group of 11 other activists in what AP (6/2/25) called an “effort to bring in some aid and raise ‘international awareness’ over the ongoing humanitarian crisis.” The Israeli blockade of Gaza and the ongoing military strikes on the devastated territory is leading to a massive starvation crisis (UN News, 6/1/25; FAIR.org, 4/25/25).
No fawning coverage of Thunberg’s activism from the Times this time. No Hollywood big shot saying that he hoped her trip would “spark a movement.”
‘Professional tantrum-thrower’
The right-wing press is upset about Thunberg’s voyage and Palestine advocacy, of course. The Israeli military “says it is ‘prepared’ to raid the ship, as it has done with previous freedom flotilla efforts,” reported the Daily Mail (6/4/25), adding IDF spokesperson Gen. Effie Defrin’s remark: “We have gained experience in recent years, and we will act accordingly.” Israeli security sources have reportedly vowed to stop the vessel before it gets to Gaza (Jerusalem Post, 6/4/25, 6/5/25).
The British Spectator‘s Julie Burchill (6/4/25) said:
When we consider child stars through the ages, the girls generally age better than the boys; Judy Garland, Elizabeth Taylor, Billie Piper all made the seamless switch from winsome cuties to gifted entertainers. The same cannot be said of Greta Thunberg, though she’s certainly remained consistently irritating. Neither a singer nor a thespian, she is a professional tantrum-thrower, more comparable to the fictional horrors Violet Elizabeth Bott and Veruca Salt than the trio of troupers listed above.
“Hope Greta and her friends can swim!” said Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina (X, 6/1/25), a ghoulish statement suggesting that an attack on the ship was imminent. The Council on American-Islamic Relations (6/2/25) called the message a “grotesque social media post suggesting a possible Israeli state terrorism attack on peaceful international activists aboard a humanitarian aid ship bound for Gaza.”
The pro-Israel media criticism website HonestReporting (6/4/25) called Thunberg’s participation in the aid mission an “anti-Israel publicity stunt.” “Greta Thunberg’s beliefs are as shallow as her need for attention,” said Fox News host Greg Gutfeld (6/3/25). Rita Panahi of Australia’s Sky News (6/4/25) called Thunberg a “doom goblin.”
These comments aren’t just mean-spirited but ominous, considering that the group’s previous mission was aborted when their ship suffered a drone attack (Reuters, 5/6/25), and an aid flotilla to Gaza 15 years ago ended up with Israeli special forces killing ten activists (Al Jazeera, 5/30/20).
From star to nonentity
And yet while the New York Times (5/2/25) covered the aborted mission and Thunberg’s involvement, it has not yet reported on the current mission and Thunberg’s role. As noted earlier, AP (6/2/25) covered the launch of the current mission, with Thunberg aboard, which was re-run in the Washington Post (6/2/25). She has done interviews with other media from the boat (Democracy Now!, 6/4/25).
How could she have gone from a star in the Times‘ pages to such a nonentity? Given how much attention she received in the Times for leading a movement for climate justice, one might think that her dedication to the strife in Gaza might warrant some attention, too.
For activists and journalists who have covered the press response to the crisis in Gaza, this is all part of the Palestine exception, where liberal groups and outlets might show concern for humanitarian crises around the world, but lower their outrage or stay completely silent on the subject of Palestine.
FAIR (5/22/25) recently noted another example of this phenomenon at the Times. An op-ed by its publisher, A.G. Sulzberger (5/13/25), decried attacks on the freedom of the press around the world, but omitted that the biggest killer of journalists in the world today is the Israeli government……………………………………………………………………………………….
Accurso and Thunberg’s advocacy for Palestinian civilians is dangerous to those cheerleading the slaughter in Gaza, because their status as clear-eyed and big-hearted people give public legitimacy to the Palestinian cause. The Times invoking the Palestinian exception against them is a part of a larger effort to keep public opinion from turning against Israeli militarism. https://fair.org/home/nyt-goes-silent-on-greta-thunbergs-gaza-voyage/
The Hidden Story: Israeli ‘Aid’ Is Part of Genocide Plan
Western corporate media have somehow found it difficult to report in straightforward fashion that the food-distribution massacres have left Palestinians with a rather bleak choice: either die of starvation or die trying to obtain food aid.
Belén Fernández, June 6, 2025
Israeli tanks opened fire last Sunday on a crowd of thousands of starving Palestinians at an aid distribution center in the city of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip. The victims had gathered in hopes of finding food for themselves and their families, following a nearly three-month total Israeli blockade of the territory. At least 31 people were killed; one Palestinian was also killed by Israeli fire the same day at another distribution site in central Gaza.
On Monday, June 2, three more Palestinians lost their lives to Israeli projectiles while trying to procure food, and on Tuesday there were 27 fatalities at the aid hub in Rafah. This brought the total number of Palestinian deaths at the newly implemented hubs to more than 100 in just a week.
‘Not possible to implement’
Mass killing in the guise of food distribution is occurring under the supervision of the so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a sketchy-as-hell organization registered in Switzerland and Delaware. It boasts the participation of former US military and intelligence officers, as well as solid Israeli endorsement and armed US security contractors escorting food deliveries.
Jake Wood—the ex-US Marine sniper who had taken up the post of GHF executive director—recently resigned after reasoning that “it is not possible to implement this plan while also strictly adhering to the humanitarian principles of humanity, neutrality, impartiality and independence.”
Indeed, the GHF, which has temporarily suspended operations to conduct damage control, has managed to align its activities entirely with the genocidal vision of the state of Israel, whose military has killed more than 54,600 Palestinians in Gaza since October 2023. In May, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu determined that “minimal” aid should be let into Gaza, lest mass starvation force the US to scale back its support for genocide (which is somehow less problematic than enforced famine).
By entrusting the delivery of this “minimal” aid to the brand-new GHF, rather than the United Nations and other groups that have decades of experience doing such things, the Israelis have in fact been able to call the shots in terms of strategic placement of the aid hubs. Only four are currently in place for a starving population of 2 million, requiring many Palestinians to walk long distances—those that are able to walk, that is—across Israeli military lines.
The hubs are mainly in southern Gaza, which is conveniently where Israel has schemed to concentrate the surviving Palestinian population, in order to then expel them in accordance with US President Donald Trump’s dream of a brand-new Palestinian-free “Riviera of the Middle East” in the Gaza Strip. Even as he authorized the resumption of aid, Netanyahu reiterated his vow to “take control” of all of Gaza. As UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini has observed, “Aid distribution has become a death trap.”
Leading with denials
And yet despite all of this, Western corporate media have somehow found it difficult to report in straightforward fashion that the food-distribution massacres have left Palestinians with a rather bleak choice: either die of starvation or die trying to obtain food aid.
So it is that we end up with, for example, the Washington Post’s Tuesday dispatch (6/2/25) from Jerusalem, headlined “Israel Says It Fired ‘Warning Shots’ Near Aid Site; Health Officials Say 27 Dead,” which charitably gave Israel the privilege of refuting what the health officials have said before they even say it. The article quoted the Israeli army as claiming that its soldiers had fired at suspects “who advanced toward the troops in such a way that posed a threat.” It also quoted the following statement from the GHF:
While the aid distribution was conducted safely and without incident at our site today, we understand that [Israeli army] is investigating whether a number of civilians were injured after moving beyond the designated safe corridor and into a closed military zone.
Anyway, that’s what happens when you put your aid distribution site in the middle of an Israeli military zone.
Then there was the BBC report (5/31/25) on Sunday’s massacre, headlined “Israel Denies Firing at Civilians After Hamas-Run Ministry Says 31 Killed in Gaza Aid Center Attack,” which went on to underscore that the ministry in question was the “Hamas-run health ministry.” Given Hamas’s role as the governing authority in the Gaza Strip, this is sort of like specifying that the US Department of Health & Human Services is “run by the US government”—except that, in Gaza’s case, the “Hamas-run” qualifier is meant to cast doubt on the ministry’s claims. Never mind that said ministry’s death counts have over time consistently “held up to UN scrutiny, independent investigations and even Israel’s tallies,” as the Associated Press (11/6/23) has previously acknowledged.
On Tuesday, though, the AP (6/3/25) chimed in with its own headline, “Gaza Officials Say Israeli Forces Killed 27 Heading to Aid Site. Israel Says It Fired Near Suspects.” The text of the article details how Gaza’s Health Ministry, which is “led by medical professionals but reports to the Hamas-run government,” has calculated that the majority of the more than 54,000 Palestinian fatalities in Israel’s current war on Gaza are women and children, but hasn’t said “how many of the dead were civilians or combatants.”
Meanwhile, Reuters (6/1/25) reported that an Israeli attack near a GHF-run aid distribution point had “killed at least 30 people in Rafah, Palestinian news agency WAFA and Hamas-affiliated media said on Sunday.” In a separate article on Sunday’s massacre, the news wire (6/1/25) wrote that
the Hamas-controlled Gaza health ministry said 31 people were killed with a single gunshot wound to the head or chest from Israeli fire as they were gathered in the Al-Alam district aid distribution area in Rafah.
The latter dispatch was headlined “Gaza Ministry Says Israel Kills More Than 30 Aid Seekers, Israel Denies.”
‘No shortage’
There is pretty much no end to the crafty sidelining by Western corporate media of truthful assertions by “Hamas-run” entities—and the simultaneous provision of ample space to the Israeli military to continue its established tradition of propagating outright lies. Recall that time not so long ago that Israeli officials insisted that there was “no shortage” of aid in the Gaza Strip, despite a full-blown blockade, and the glee directly expressed by various Israeli ministers about not letting an iota of food, or anything else necessary for survival, into the besieged enclave (FAIR.org, 4/25/25)
It is furthermore perplexing why there is even a perceived need to cast doubt on massacres of 31 or 27 or three individuals, in the context of a genocide that has killed more than 54,600 people in 20 months—a war in which Israel has exhibited no qualms in slaughtering starving people, as in the February 2024 incident when at least 112 Palestinians were massacred while queuing for flour southwest of Gaza City (FAIR.org, 3/22/24). Against a backdrop of such wanton slaughter, what are 100 more Palestinian deaths to Israel? Indiscriminate mass killing is, after all, the objective here.
Just as GHF is now engaged in micro-level damage control operations vis-à-vis their militarized distribution of food in Gaza, Israel, too, appears to be in a similar mode, since it’s a whole lot simpler—and helpfully distracting—to bicker over dozens of casualties rather than, you know, a whole genocide.
And the Western establishment media are, as ever, standing by to lend a helping hand. Perhaps we should start calling them the “Israel-affiliated media.”
Nuclear Power will ruin France
Nuclear power will ruin France , by Laure Nouahlat, published by Seuil , May 16, 2025, 224 p., 13.50 euros.
Neither the French population, nor any parliamentarian or senator had their say, as if nuclear power were democratically held above ground.
Reporterre 16th May 2025,
https://reporterre.net/Le-nucleaire-va-ruiner-la-France
Despite the staggering cost of all-nuclear power, France is stuck in this impasse. Here are the excerpts from the investigative book ”
Nuclear Power Will Ruin France
.” Laure Noualhat dissects the mechanisms of this waste.
Is nuclear revival reasonable ? According to Emmanuel Macron and many others, the nuclear ” holy grail “ would be the only solution to slow climate change and preserve our comfort. While the government is making savings at every turn, the sector seems to benefit from an unlimited budget.
It was announced Monday that the Cigéo nuclear waste disposal facility in Bure will cost up to €37.5 billion. To revive the industry, the bill will climb to at least €80 billion. As delays mount, these amounts are continually revised upwards. All this while EDF is already heavily in debt.
Where will the tens of billions of euros for these new EPRs be found ? And the necessary investments in the existing fleet ? It will be the State, that is, the taxpayer, who will pay.
This is what journalist Laure Noualhat demonstrates in her relentless investigative book, Nuclear Power Will Ruin France . The result of six months of investigation, it is published today in the Seuil- Reporterre collection and will be accompanied by a documentary broadcast on YouTube in early June. Through this extensive work, Reporterre is tackling a crucial issue for the future of the country, largely absent from public debate. Because these choices are made in total secrecy, Reporterre is shedding light on a subject that concerns us all.
Here are the previews of “ Nuclear Power Will Ruin France ”:
What were you doing on February 10, 2022 ? For the small world of energy, it was a memorable day. On that day, presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron stood behind a lectern under the immense tin roof of the General Electric plant in Belfort. His voice echoed like a cathedral. Behind him, GE teams had positioned a gigantic Arabelle turbine, 300 tons of gleaming steel lit as if it were an industrial museum piece.
A group of masked employees, all wearing the same electric blue construction jackets, listens learnedly to the president. Four years earlier, these women and men were part of Alstom’s energy division, the industrial flagship that former Economy Minister Emmanuel Macron had conscientiously dismantled during his time at the Ministry of Finance.
No matter, on this Thursday, February 10, the now President has just announced the ” rebirth “ of French nuclear power, boasted of national ” sovereignty “ and praised the merits of ” planning “ to address the challenges of the moment: reducing our CO2 emissions by 55 % by 2050, ensuring France’s industrial development, and controlling the French people’s energy bill.
No law regulates presidential will
Regardless of the background—environmental, energy, nuclear, activist, industrial, or political—this speech hit the mark and is historic. With its delivery, President-candidate Macron has just rescued France from decades of uncertainty by relaunching the mass construction of nuclear reactors. Since its approval in 2003 by the National Assembly, the Flamanville EPR project has been mired in endless setbacks. In 2012, President Hollande chose a contrary path by enshrining in law the reduction of nuclear power’s share to 50 % of the electricity mix by 2025 (compared to 65-70 %) and to 30 % by 2030. In short, the socialist planned a slow phase-out of nuclear power, allowing for the preparation of the decommissioning of the oldest reactors, the ramp-up of renewables, and an unprecedented effort toward energy efficiency.
In February 2017, candidate Macron – a former minister under Hollande – took up this promise.
”
I will maintain the framework of the energy transition law. I am therefore maintaining the 50
% target,
“ he confided to the
WWF during a Facebook Live broadcast watched by 170,000 people and interviewed by… Pascal Canfin, who will join the President’s list for the 2019 European elections.
Five years later, facing General Electric employees, the Jupiterian president performed an about-face. Six
EPR2s will emerge, he promises, built in pairs on three sites: in Penly in Normandy, in Gravelines in the North, and in Bugey in the Ain. And eight more will be under consideration. Neither the French population, nor any parliamentarian or senator had their say, as if nuclear power were democratically held above ground. Since this announcement, the program of the six EPR2s
has still not been validated by any legal decision, much less by an ”
energy and climate programming law
” (
PPE ), which should have been revised for the occasion.
To date, in 2025, no law governs the presidential will shaped by long years of lobbying (by associations such as Xavier Moreno’s Cérémé or Bernard Accoyer’s Nuclear Heritage & Climate, but also Voies du nucléaire or the French Nuclear Energy Society) since his arrival in power.
A colossal cost
Knocking down walls or hiding the misery, insulating here or repainting there, moving the pipes, changing the door… it’s difficult to ask a tradesman for a quote for work if you don’t know what you’re going to do. It’s the same with nuclear reactors.
As these lines are being written, in March 2025, three years after the Belfort speech, no one knows how much the EPR2 will cost . This is normal: their detailed design has not been completed despite the 10.5 million hours of engineering already devoted to the project.
In February 2022, the government had put forward a construction cost of 51.7 billion (2020 euros). In 2023,
EDF made two updates to the costing, noted by the Court of Auditors in its report on the
EPR sector in January 2025:
”
The overnight construction cost [as if the reactor were completed in a single night] of three pairs of
EPR2s rose from 51.7 to 67.4 billion euros [2020 euros], an increase of 30
% under unchanged economic conditions and excluding the effect of inflation.
“ In 2023 euros, the bill reaches 80 billion. For comparison, this figure of 80 billion already represents four times the annual deficit of the Social Security…
John Hersey
Did you know John Hersey had to circumvent military restrictions just to step foot in post-atomic Hiroshima? The young journalist’s 1946 pilgrimage to the still-smoldering city would become one of the most consequential acts of subterfuge in journalism history – and forever change how the world understood nuclear war.
As American occupation forces tightly controlled access to the decimated city, Hersey navigated checkpoints and bureaucracy with quiet determination. The rubble was still warm when he arrived, the air thick with the scent of charred wood and something more sinister – what survivors called “the atomic smell.” While military reports focused on blast radii and structural damage, Hersey carried no measuring tools. His instruments were a notebook, boundless empathy, and an unshakable belief that history should be recorded in human heartbeats rather than casualty counts.
What he found defied comprehension. A watchmaker’s shop where dozens of timepieces all stopped at 8:15. Shadows of vaporized office workers permanently etched onto concrete walls. A group of schoolgirls whose patterned kimonos had burned into their skin, the fabric’s flower designs now grotesque scars. Hersey moved through this nightmare landscape like a ghost, collecting stories with revolutionary patience. He would sit for hours with survivors in their makeshift lean-tos, letting long silences coax out memories too terrible to voice.
The genius of his approach lay in the ordinary details: a clerk who survived because he’d bent down to tie his shoe; a doctor who mistook the mushroom cloud for “a magnesium flare”; a mother who recognized her drowned child only by the yarn of a handmade sweater. These weren’t the sweeping narratives of generals or politicians – they were fragile human moments that made the unimaginable real.
Hersey’s reporting methods were as radical as his mission. He physically retraced survivors’ steps through the ruins, noting where each had been standing when the world ended. He recorded not just their words but their trembling hands, the way their voices broke decades later describing the taste of radioactive rain. Most astonishingly, he did it all while American soldiers played baseball nearby, their casual normalcy a surreal counterpoint to the surrounding devastation.
The result, of course, was Hiroshima – a work that stripped war reporting of its abstractions and forced readers to confront nuclear destruction one agonizing personal story at a time. But behind its publication lies this extraordinary truth: that one stubborn reporter’s unauthorized pilgrimage gave voice to history’s first atomic survivors when their own government preferred silence. Hersey proved that sometimes the most powerful journalism requires not just bearing witness, but first having the courage to slip past the guards.
The Western Media Brought Gaza To This Point
Caitlin Johnstone, May 22, 2025, https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/the-western-media-brought-gaza-to?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=164129601&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjoyNTU2MjE3LCJwb3N0X2lkIjoxNjQxMjk2MDEsImlhdCI6MTc0Nzg3OTg5NywiZXhwIjoxNzUwNDcxODk3LCJpc3MiOiJwdWItODIxMjQiLCJzdWIiOiJwb3N0LXJlYWN0aW9uIn0.1yOnX9gkFtJ60ygxFyWvcUWnljfPG0wyJfU6MjZ5nLU&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
Benjamin Netanyahu is now explicitly saying that the complete ethnic cleansing of Gaza is a precondition to ending the slaughter in the besieged Palestinian territory.
“Responding to those who are pushing for an end to war in Gaza, Netanyahu says he ‘is ready to end the war, under clear conditions that will ensure the safety of Israel — all the hostages come home, Hamas lays down its arms, steps down from power, its leadership is exiled from the Strip… Gaza is totally disarmed, and we carry out the Trump plan. A plan that is so correct and so revolutionary.’
“This represents the first time the US president’s plan for moving Gaza civilians out of the Strip has been presented as an Israeli demand for ending the war.”
Trump’s stated plan for Gaza is to remove “all” Palestinians from the enclave and never allow them to return. Netanyahu is here saying that the ethnic cleansing of Gaza is Israel’s ultimate military objective.
Which has been obvious from the very beginning. On the 20th of October 2023, a mere 13 days after October 7, I myself posted the following:
“Israel’s being so obvious about wanting to do another land grab. The solution to every problem is to move Gazans off the land they’re on to somewhere else. It’s like a guy at a nightclub pushing you and pushing you to drink a drink he handed you; at a certain point you realize he’s probably not really interested in making sure you have enough to drink.”
It’s been so transparently obvious this entire time that Israel’s entire objective is to remove Palestinians from a Palestinian territory so their land can be used for Israel’s own purposes — but you’d never have known it from looking at the western press.
For the last year and a half the western media have been brazenly lying to the public by framing this as a “war with Hamas” instead of the naked ethnic cleansing operation it clearly is. They’ve been manufacturing consent for this murderous land grab by babbling about hostages, terrorism and October 7 when Israel’s mass atrocity in Gaza has never, ever been about any of those things. It has only ever been about taking Palestinian land away from Palestinians — an agenda Israel has been pursuing for decades.
If the western press had been doing actual journalism, Israel would never have been able to bring Gaza to this point. Because the western press have instead been administering propaganda this entire time, Gaza is now an uninhabitable pile of rubble full of desperate, starving people, allowing Israel and the Trump administration to argue that the humanitarian thing to do is to evacuate them all immediately.
The western media’s refusal to acknowledge this — combined with a year and a half of wildly biased headlines, indisputably slanted coverage, and extensively documented top-down pressure in mass media institutions to cover Israel’s onslaught in a positive light — stifled much of the public opposition to this genocidal land grab that we would likely have seen otherwise. This journalistic malpractice allowed Israel’s western backers to support this mass atrocity with impunity, which in turn allowed Israel to act with impunity.
None of this would be possible if the west had an actual free press whose job is to create an informed populace. But we do not have an actual free press whose job is to create an informed populace — we have imperial propaganda services disguised as news.
Now that Israel has pulled back the curtain and acknowledged what we are looking at here, some in the western press have begun pivoting to wag their fingers at Netanyahu in order to preserve their image. And fine, whatever, we need as much help as we can get. But never forget what these monsters did to help create this nightmare in Gaza.
We’re all pretending to be mad at Israel now that 14,000 babies are starving to death
At least we’re proving we’re serious about our opposition to genocide though. So serious, in fact, that the RAF is conducting surveillance flights and helping Israel select targets to bomb with the F-35s we helped build. Makes you proud to be British, doesn’t it?
This is about saving our reputations and avoiding arrest…
Laura and Normal Island News, May 21, 2025, https://www.normalisland.co.uk/p/were-all-pretending-to-be-mad-at?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=1407757&post_id=164073303&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=ln98x&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
As a journalist in the mainstream media, I have proudly defended Israel for the last 19 months, but now that everyone is realising how bad they are (and more ICC arrest warrants are coming), I would like to express my genuine anger at the killers I encouraged.
While I took no issue with the bombing of apartment buildings and hospitals and schools and universities and food distribution centres and aid vehicles and tents and even my fellow journalists, I have suddenly my found my conscience, which is a real thing that definitely exists.
The mass murder of civilians was fine while we could get away with blaming everything on Hamas, but now that Israel is starving 14,000 babies to death and openly boasting about it and saying not even the west can stop us, I’m shitting myself to be honest. I’m worried the International Criminal Court might see Normal Island News in the same light as Radio Rwanda.
I feel particularly bad for you, my obsessed readers, who face the real prospect of no more Normal Island News unless I act. If anyone knows a quick way to purge the internet of everything I’ve ever written it would be most appreciated.
I’m not alone in shitting myself because not only is almost every western journalist finding their conscience at the very last moment, but we’ve even seen Lammy and Starmer pretend to be mad at Israel in parliament. I say “pretend”, but they genuinely are mad, just not about the babies. They’re mad that Israel is making them look really fucking bad.
The foreign secretary has shrewdly noticed Israel has been blocking food for 11 weeks and Gaza’s babies look like skeletons. He has even noticed the genocidal words of Israeli ministers like Smotrich and Ben Gvir, but I’m unclear if he has noticed all the buildings have been destroyed and Gaza has the largest cohort of child amputees in history.
When discussing Netanyahu’s plans to take over Gaza and minimise food distribution, Lammy told MPs: “We must call this what it is. It is extremism… It is monstrous. I condemn it in the strongest possible terms.” He insisted the extremists have a right to defend themselves though and said he believes in their cause. Warms your heart, doesn’t it?
Sadly, Lammy’s olive branch was not enough to appease Israel whose spokesperson insisted Britain has an “anti-Israel obsession” and still thinks it is a colonial power. Obviously, Israel is the only colonial power in this equation.
Sadly, we’re all getting smeared now, apart from Priti Patel who is the only person in parliament still backing Israel. Turns out, Priti is as stupid as she is evil because she said she didn’t want to let Hamas win by feeding babies. She seemed blissfully unaware she could end up in jail for this. When the time comes, I will be more than happy to throw Priti under a bus to save my own skin.
As you can imagine, the Westminster WhatsApp group has been in panic mode so we’ve knocked together a cover story. The short version is that everything is Jeremy Corbyn’s fault. The long version is that we were so ashamed by the Labour antisemitism scandal (that we fabricated) that we felt the need to support Israel, no matter what. Our genocide support was our way of saying sorry about all those lefties who knew Israel was genocidal before it was cool.
Since 2015, the Corbynistas had accused Israel of being a genocidal state that would not stop until all the Palestinians were gone. It was antisemitic of them to be correct about Israel, every step of the way, long before the rest of us caught up.
Please understand it was our sense of national shame (combined with generous lobbying and threats from Mossad) that made us cheer for genocide for 19 straight months. Why did the Corbynistas make us do this? Why?
Thankfully, the prime minister is taking a principled stand against Israel by suspending trade talks. You know how we spent forever insisting BDS was antisemitic? Well, we’re now threatening Israel with sanctions which is a bit embarrassing, isn’t it? It’s gonna be so awkward if taking a stand works now when we’ve spent 19 months insisting nothing we could do would make a difference.
At least we’re proving we’re serious about our opposition to genocide though. So serious, in fact, that the RAF is conducting surveillance flights and helping Israel select targets to bomb with the F-35s we helped build. Makes you proud to be British, doesn’t it?
The prime minister said the suffering in Gaza is “utterly intolerable” which is quite the U-turn on that time he said Israel has the right to withhold food, water and medicine. I’m unclear if we’re supposed to be using the “G” word in public so I messaged Starmzy for an update, but I’m not getting a read receipt, presumably because his phone might explode for no apparent reason.
By the way, Spain’s mobile network coincidentally went down right after its government criticised Israel, just like that time its power grid went down right after it criticised Israel, so if the same happens to us, please remember to blame Jeremy Corbyn. If anyone blows up Starmer’s phone it will be him
The media, scientific consensus, and toxic nuclear waste
Not to be outdone by more modern means of propaganda, Nuclear Waste Services has continued the tradition of only providing the audience with the information that suits their argument.
The only way to reduce waste is to reduce the activities that cause it.
There is no other logical way.
News media tends to use ‘scientific consensus’ as if it is the end point of the discussion.
The implication that ‘this is the only way’ serves to quash dissenting voices and validate the overall message of the article.
When government agencies are hard to trust, who do we look to? Scientists. But what job is the concept of scientific consensus doing in the marketing of the GDF?
A Quiet Resistance, 8 May 2025
‘Scientific consensus’ carries a lot of weight in news media discussing the proposed Geological Disposal Facilities (GDFs) (nuclear waste dumps) in West Cumbria.
This consensus is also being used as a persuasion tool in the official literature handed out to communities by Nuclear Waste Services (NWS).
Since most of us aren’t scientists in either the nuclear industry or geodisposal, we have to turn to those who are if we’re to understand what’s going to happen to our community. Alongside the regular newsletters and other marketing from NWS, we usually access those people through articles in the news and on the internet.
But it’s important to keep asking questions about what we’re reading.
‘Scientific consensus’ doesn’t mean the science is settled; articles can contain facts and still be biased.
Biases in news media
The news media are paid for by advertisers. If they publish articles that make arguments against their advertisers’ interests, they lose advertising money. Their advertisers’ interests may not be clear. For example, they may be companies that have money invested in hedge funds, which in turn invest in nuclear power.
News media also come up against political pressure, as The Guardian found out a few years ago, to its long-term detriment.
There’s also the question of audience. News media write to a specific audience, one already sold on the ideas they are promoting, or at the very least, suggestible. Most people are aware of ‘climate change’. If someone authoritative tells them it’s important for us to have a GDF because nuclear energy will help us ‘beat climate change’, they are likely to accept that, unless they have some wider knowledge.
Bias can be edited into an article by keeping the facts, but leaving out certain contexts. They can also cherry pick facts, so that the only ones they use are those which suit their argument.
Biases and misinformation across the internet
Misinformation across the web is an endemic problem now, brought on by too little regulatory oversight, too late. A bitter combination of an advertising free-for-all, empty content for the sake of it, and algorithmic twists that feed on themselves has come together to make an internet that doesn’t run the kind of useful searches it did just 12 years ago.
On top of this, a type of information warfare has been raging, hidden in plain sight from the eyes of everyday people, and the proliferation of GenAI has made the situation much worse. Social media, news media, every place we get our information from has been seeded with doubt.
All of this means that when we read information anywhere, from both respectable and dubious sources, we have to take time to process what we’ve read before we lead with our emotions.
Bias and messaging in public information
Not to be outdone by more modern means of propaganda, Nuclear Waste Services has continued the tradition of only providing the audience with the information that suits their argument.
In the case of the Community Partnership newsletter this month, this includes a soothing word salad introduction from the outgoing Community Partnership Chair explaining that he has resigned, and our local Town Council has withdrawn from the group. There are then several pages on how the Community Investment Fund money has been spent recently.
From that messaging, it is clear they’re seeking to reassure the community – talk quietly, you don’t want them to startle – and remind us that we’re getting plenty of money for the deal.
So, what’s the problem with the scientific consensus on the idea of a geological disposal facility (GDF), more prosaically known as a nuclear waste dump?
What is ‘scientific consensus’?
Scientific consensus refers to an agreement amongst scientists in a specific, very narrow field of study.
In the consideration of a GDF, that field would be geology, and most likely a particular area of geology, such as geodisposal.
Why do we need ‘scientific consensus’?
For most of us, despite our education and our wide understanding of the world, we don’t have intensive scientific training. Even if we do, it may not be in the narrow field in question.
Ethan Siegel at Forbes.com explained this really clearly:
… Unlike in most cases, unless you are a scientist working in the particular field in question, you are probably not even capable of discerning between a conclusion that’s scientifically valid and viable and one that isn’t. Even if you’re a scientist in a somewhat related field! Why? This is mostly due to the fact that a non-expert cannot tell the difference between a robust scientific idea and a caricature of that idea.
Why should we believe ‘scientific consensus’?
Although a consensus is an impossible number to quantify, the argument for a consensus is that a lot of related research is borne out by the agreement, so if it isn’t correct – e.g. if a GDF isn’t a safe and complete solution for nuclear waste – then a lot of other research is also wrong.
That sounds reassuring, but there’s more to it.
What do we have to consider behind the messaging of ‘scientific consensus’?
News media tends to use ‘scientific consensus’ as if it is the end point of the discussion.
The implication that ‘this is the only way’ serves to quash dissenting voices and validate the overall message of the article.
This is also how Nuclear Waste Services is using ‘scientific consensus’. The inference is that there is only one solution, and a GDF is it.
But scientific consensus is not the end position of the science. It’s the starting position from which further investigation can arise.
While that future studying may not set out to prove early scientific reasoning wrong, it should seek to improve or refine our understanding of the science.
And the main problem with scientific investigation?
Take a look at this quote. It’s from the article Development in Progress, from the Consilience Project.
It is also important to consider how existing biases and values ‘prime’ us towards certain starting points when we seek to understand the world through science. Before we formulate questions of design experiments, we often have preconceived notions as to what we imagine as likely to be important to the question at hand.
You’ve got to ask what their starting point is, before you can evaluate the idea.
Or, to put it another way: if you ask a geodisposal specialist what the best way is to deal with a higher activity nuclear waste problem, they’re going to tell you to bury it underground.
What’s the motivation for a GDF? Why the bias? Where’s the starting point of the plan?
Waste is a massive issue for modern Western societies. Everything we do, everything we buy creates waste. The only way to reduce waste is to reduce the activities that cause it.
There is no other logical way.
Government and the nuclear industry are motivated towards using a geological disposal facility to store higher activity nuclear waste because:
- There’s almost seventy years’ worth of higher activity nuclear waste to store
- Nuclear appears to offer a solution to the legal requirements of Net Zero.
The more we use nuclear technology, the more toxic waste we will produce. It’s inevitable without social, political, and industrial change.
The nuclear industry
The nuclear industry’s back is against the wall. It urgently has to put the accruing waste somewhere permanently safe.
Nuclear waste is produced in solid, aqueous, and gaseous forms. If the industry reduces some of the gaseous waste, that means that it increases it in another form, e.g. aqueous. There is no escaping the waste issue without stopping the industry.
There’s a lot of money in nuclear.
The UK Government
The government has to enable the production of electricity, but having effectively phased out coal-fired power stations, it has brought in gas-fuelled hydrogen plants which are arguably just as greenhouse-gas-intensive as coal. Natural gas is still a fossil fuel, it still causes huge emissions, and it still presents supply problems.
For the government, nuclear represents a lower carbon option, with political expediencies, such as being free of Russian fossil fuel pressures (Russian uranium is still unsanctioned and likely part of the ‘diversified’ fuel mixes used in the UK).
There is also a disturbing link between civil nuclear skills and military nuclear skills which doesn’t get much media time:
Other countries tend to be more open about it, with the interdependence acknowledged at presidential level in the US for instance. French president Emmanuel Macron summarises: “without civil nuclear power, no military nuclear power, without military nuclear, no civil nuclear”.
This is largely why nuclear-armed France is pressing the European Union to support nuclear power. This is why non-nuclear-armed Germany has phased out the nuclear technologies it once lead the world in. This is why other nuclear-armed states are so disproportionately fixated by nuclear power.
In 2022, the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) published a Radioactivity Waste Inventory with a timeline for the phasing out of nuclear power by 2136. But in early 2025, the Labour government announced it was keen to rapidly start up the building of Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) across the UK. Going forward from this year, nuclear waste will continue to be produced in the UK beyond the 100-year lifetime of the current GDF project. Waste is inevitable.
Waste isn’t the only issue for nuclear power, either. There is the question of what happens to nuclear power plants in the face of climate catastrophe. Fukushima wasn’t an anomaly, and it wasn’t avoidable. It could be seen as a foreshadowing of future possibilities.
Back to scientific consensus
So, when Nuclear Waste Services and other media proponents talk about scientific consensus being in agreement that a GDF is the best solution available for toxic nuclear waste, what they mean is:
- there is an inexorable accumulation of nuclear waste, both historical and into the future
- there are going to be more GDFs in the future
- they aren’t looking for other methods of storage
- they absolutely will not consider a non-nuclear future
- and they don’t want to argue about it.
And, for some reason, despite a GDF apparently being the safest possible housing for nuclear waste – and despite there being many geologically suitable locations – they don’t want to locate it under Westminster.
Ultimately, despite the focus given to the science, this isn’t about the science.
It’s about burying a waste product that they have no other solution for. Sweeping it under the carpet. And calling it common sense!
Common sense as a message, in an area of study called Semiotics, is a problematic idea. Although it is dressed up as the common, standard, everyday way of thinking, it is often used in marketing and media to promote the ideas of those in power.
As the future beckons, common sense should be saying no to nuclear. Just like with plastic, nuclear has no end and no sure way of getting rid of its byproducts.
For communities that ‘host’ a nuclear waste dump, the GDF solution represents a forever risk with inter-generational risks and costs along the way.
Somehow, West Cumbria always seems to be saddled with nuclear detritus.
The potential collateral damage, seen already across the United States and South America, is similar to that experienced around mining and climate solution industries.
It starts with
- environmental destruction,
- contamination of water sources and land,
- loss of biodiversity,
- loss of human rights,
- loss of health, and
- upheaval of established communities.
These may be experienced just in the construction of a GDF.
Who knows where it ends?
Further information on the proposed GDFs in West Cumbria:
US mainstream media still censoring US enabled Israeli genocide in Gaza
May 18, 2025 AIMN Editorial, By Walt Zlotow, https://theaimn.net/us-mainstream-media-still-censoring-us-enabled-israeli-genocide-in-gaza/
For the past 586 days US mainstream media refuses to condemn US enabling Israeli genocide of 2,300,000 Palestinians in Gaza.
The word genocide never appears in their print or pixels. They barely cover the genocide. But when they do make oblique references to it, simply calling it ‘Israel’s war on Hamas.’
US enabling of Israel’s genocide is bipartisan, with not a single pushback from the 535 congresspersons who, like the genocide enabling Biden and Trump administrations, betray their oath to protect life by promoting peace.
Special Trump Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff brushed off inquiries when the US will stop supporting Israeli genocide saying:
“We’re not the Israeli government. We don’t disagree. The Israeli government is a sovereign government. They can’t tell us what to do, and we can’t tell them what to do.”
Witkoff conveniently omitted that without America’s $20 billion providing over 50,000 tons of genocide weapons, Israel would be powerless to carry out 586 days of genocidal ethnic cleansing of Gaza with no end in sight.
Trump is even more ghoulish in promoting Israel’s genocide. On his Middle East trip Trump said.
“I’d be proud to have the United States have it (Gaza), take it, make it a freedom zone, let see good things happen. Put people in homes where they can be safe.”
Those people in safe homes won’t be Palestinians whom Trump has been lobbying African countries to take in so they don’t have to all be killed off.
With their bombs, planes and drones, Biden and Trump have made the Israeli genocide possible. It is no different than if FDR was supplying the Nazis with Zyklon B gas to complete their genocide 80 years ago.
With mainstream media compliance, the US enabled genocide will continue to its completion so Trump can build his ultimate real estate development on the bodies and destroyed homes of 2,300,000 Palestinians.
But if mainstream media began the first story of every day condemning America and Israel’s genocide body count from bombs and forced starvation, it might just galvanize the 535 congresspersons to acknowledge and resist the genocide they’re ignoring. It might even force the grotesque Trump administration to turn back from inflicting the worst horror on helpless people ever inflicted by the self-proclaimed greatest nation on earth.
Tomorrow is Day 587 of mainstream media genocide denial. Unless they pivot to peace in Gaza, mainstream media moguls will follow the Biden Trump administrations and Congress down the rabbit hole of genocide infamy.
Want to know how the world really ends? Look to TV show Families Like Ours
John Harris, 1 May 25
The Danish drama is piercing in its ordinariness. In the real world, the climate crisis worsens and authoritarians take charge as we calmly look awaySun 11 May 2025 21.35 AESTShare649
The climate crisis has taken a new and frightening turn, and in the expectation of disastrous flooding, the entire landmass of Denmark is about to be evacuated. Effectively, the country will be shutting itself down and sending its 6 million people abroad, where they will have to cope as best they can. Huge numbers of northern Europeans are therefore being turned into refugees: a few might have the wealth and connections to ease their passage from one life to another, but most are about to face the kind of precarious, nightmarish future they always thought of as other people’s burden.
Don’t panic: this is not a news story – or not yet, anyway. It’s the premise of an addictive new drama series titled Families Like Ours, acquired by the BBC and available on iPlayer. I have seen two episodes so far, and been struck by the very incisive way it satirises European attitudes to the politics of asylum. But what has also hit me is its portrayal of something just as modern: how it shows disaster unfolding in the midst of everyday life. At first, watching it brings on a sense of impatience. Why are most of the characters so calm? Where are the apocalyptic floods, wildfires and mass social breakdown? At times, it verges on boring. But then you realise the very clever conceit that defines every moment: it is really a story about how we all live, and what might happen tomorrow, or the day after.
The writer and journalist Dorian Lynskey’s brilliant book Everything Must Go is about the various ways that human beings have imagined the end of the world. “Compared to nuclear war,” he writes, “the climate emergency deprives popular storytellers of their usual toolkit. Global warming may move too fast for the planet but it is too slow for catastrophe fiction.” Even when the worst finally happens, most of us may respond with the kind of quiet mental contortions that are probably better suited to literature than the screen. Making that point, Lynskey quotes a character in Margaret Atwood’s novel The Year of the Flood: “Nobody admitted to knowing. If other people began to discuss it, you tuned them out, because what they were saying was both so obvious and so unthinkable.”
These days, that kind of thinking reflects how people deal with just about every aspect of our ever-more troubled world: if we can avert our eyes from ecological breakdown, then everything else can be either underestimated or ignored. There is a kind of moment, I would wager, that now happens to all of us. We glance at our phones or switch on the radio and are assailed by the awful gravity of everything, and then somehow manage to instantly find our way back to calm and normality. This, of course, is how human beings have always managed to cope, as a matter of basic mental wiring. But in its 21st-century form, it also has very modern elements. Our news feeds reduce everything to white noise and trivia: the result is that developments that ought to be vivid and alarming become so dulled that they look unremarkable.
Where this is leading politically is now as clear as day. In the New Yorker, Andrew Marantz wrote, in the wake of Trump’s re-election, about how democracies slide into authoritarianism. “In a Hollywood disaster movie,” he writes, “when the big one arrives, the characters don’t have to waste time debating whether it’s happening. There is an abrupt, cataclysmic tremor, a deafening roar … In the real world, though, the cataclysm can come in on little cat feet. The tremors can be so muffled and distant that people continually adapt, explaining away the anomalies.” That is true of how we normalise the climate crisis; it also applies to the way that Trump and his fellow authoritarians have successfully normalised their politics.
Marantz goes to Budapest, and meets a Hungarian academic, who marvels at the political feats pulled off by the country’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán. “Before it starts, you say to yourself: ‘I will leave this country immediately if they ever do this or that horrible thing,’” he says. “And then they do that thing, and you stay. Things that would have seemed impossible 10 years ago, five years ago, you may not even notice.” The fact that populists are usually climate deniers is perfect: just as searingly hot summers become mundane, so do the increasingly ambitious plans of would-be dictators – particularly in the absence of jackboots, goose-stepping and so many other old-fashioned accoutrements. Put simply, Orbán/Trump politics is purposely designed to fit with its time – and to most of its supporters (and plenty of onlookers), it looks a lot less terrifying than it actually is.
Much the same story is starting to happen in the UK. On the night of last week’s local elections, I found myself in the thoroughly ordinary environs of Grimsby town hall, watching the victory speech given by Reform UK’s Andrea Jenkyns, who had just been elected as the first mayor of Greater Lincolnshire. For some reason, she wore a spangly outfit that made her look as if she was on her way to a 1970s-themed fancy dress party, which raised a few mirthless laughs. She said it was time for an end to “soft-touch Britain”, and suddenly called for asylum seekers to be forced to live in tents. That is the kind of thing that only fascists used to say, but it now lands in our political discourse with not much more than a faint thump.
Meanwhile, life has to go on. About 20 years ago, I went to an exhibition of works by the French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson – one of which was of a family of four adults picnicking by the Marne, with their food and wine scattered around them, and a rowing-boat moored to the riverbank. When I first looked at it, I wondered what its significance was. But then I saw the date on the adjacent plaque: “1936-38.” We break bread, get drunk and tune out the noise until carrying on like that ceases to be an option: as Families Like Ours suggests, that point may arrive sooner than we think.
Multiple Western Press Outlets Have Suddenly Pivoted Hard Against Israel
So if you’re still supporting Israel after all this time, my advice to you is to make a change while you still can.
Caitlin Johnstone, May 12, 2025, https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/multiple-western-press-outlets-have?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=163390896&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
After a year and a half of genocidal atrocities, the editorial boards of numerous British press outlets have suddenly come out hard against Israel’s onslaught in Gaza.
The first drop of rain came last week from The Financial Times in a piece by the editorial board titled “The west’s shameful silence on Gaza,” which denounces the US and Europe for having “issued barely a word of condemnation” of their ally’s criminality, saying they “should be ashamed of their silence, and stop enabling Netanyahu to act with impunity.”
Then came The Economist with a piece titled “The war in Gaza must end,” which argues that Trump should pressure the Netanyahu regime for a ceasefire, saying that “The only people who benefit from continuing the war are Mr Netanyahu, who keeps his coalition intact, and his far-right allies, who dream of emptying Gaza and rebuilding Jewish settlements there.”
On Saturday came an editorial from The Independent titled “End the deafening silence on Gaza — it is time to speak up,” arguing that British PM Keir Starmer “should be ashamed that he said nothing, especially since Mr Netanyahu has now announced new plans to expand the already devastating bombardment of Gaza,” and saying that “It is time for the world to wake up to what is happening and to demand an end to the suffering of the Palestinians trapped in the enclave.”
On Sunday The Guardian editorial board joined in with a write-up titled “The Guardian view on Israel and Gaza: Trump can stop this horror. The alternative is unthinkable,” saying “The US president has the leverage to force through a ceasefire. If he does not, he will implicitly signal approval of what looks like a plan of total destruction.”
“What is this, if not genocidal?” The Guardian asks. “When will the US and its allies act to stop the horror, if not now?”
To be clear, these are editorials, not op-eds. This means that they are not the expression of one person’s opinion but the stated position of each outlet as a whole. We’ve been seeing the occasional op-ed which is critical of Israel’s actions throughout the Gaza holocaust in the mainstream western press, but to see the actual outlets come out aggressively denouncing Israel and its western backers all at once is a very new development.
Some longtime Israel supporters have unexpectedly begun changing their tune as individuals as well.
Conservative MP Mark Pritchard said at the House of Commons last week that he had supported Israel “at all costs” for decades, but said “I got it wrong” and publicly withdrew that support over Israel’s actions in Gaza.
“For many years — I’ve been in this House twenty years — I have supported Israel pretty much at all costs, quite frankly,” Pritchard said. “But today, I want to say that I got it wrong and I condemn Israel for what it is doing to the Palestinian people in Gaza and indeed in the West Bank, and I’d like to withdraw my support right now for the actions of Israel, what they are doing right now in Gaza.”
“I’m really concerned that this is a moment in history when people look back, where we’ve got it wrong as a country,” Pritchard added.
Pro-Israel pundit Shaiel Ben-Ephraim, who had been aggressively denouncing campus protesters and accusing Israel’s critics of “blood libel” throughout the Gaza holocaust, has now come out and publicly admitted that Israel is committing a genocide which must be opposed.
“It took me a long time to get to this point, but it’s time to face it. Israel is committing genocide in Gaza,” Ephraim tweeted recently. “Between the indiscriminate bombing of hospitals, starvation of the population, plans for ethnic cleansing, slaughter of aid workers and cover ups, there is no escaping it. Israel is trying to eradicate the Palestinian people. We can’t stop it unless we admit it.”
It is odd that it has taken all these people a year and a half to get to this point. I myself have a much lower tolerance for genocide and the mass murder of children. If you’ve been riding the genocide train for nineteen months, it looks a bit weird to suddenly start screaming about how terrible it is and demanding to hit the brakes all of a sudden.
These people have not suddenly evolved a conscience, they’re just smelling what’s in the wind. Once the consensus shifts past a certain point there’s naturally going to be a mad rush to avoid being among the last to stand against it, because you know you’ll be wearing that mark for the rest of your life in public after history has had a clear look at what you did.
This is after all coming at a time when the Trump administration is beginning to rub Netanyahu’s fur the wrong way, recently prompting the Israeli prime minister to say “I think we’ll have to detox from US security assistance” when Washington went over Tel Aviv’s head and negotiated directly with Hamas to secure the release of an American hostage. The US is reportedly leaving Israel out of more and more of its negotiations on international affairs in places like Yemen, Saudi Arabia, and Iran. Something is changing.
So if you’re still supporting Israel after all this time, my advice to you is to make a change while you still can. There’s still time to be the first among scoundrels in the mad rat race to avoid being the last to start acting like you always opposed the Gaza holocaust.
The dark cloud of Murdoch has no silver lining
News Corp, Sky after dark, Fox News … they spew lies and propaganda around the globe, and the evil empire’s tentacles keep wrapping around the fearful and the ignorant.
by Nicole Chvastek, 7 May 2025, https://thepolitics.com.au/the-dark-cloud-of-murdoch-has-no-silver-lining/
As Saturday’s bloodbath washes through the Liberal corridors of no power, the electoral train wreck has turned attention to other overly cocky players: the Murdoch media.
From the moment the poll was called, Rupert Murdoch’s news culture warriors turned up the heat on Labor, exhorting the brilliance of Peter Dutton’s failed nuclear fantasy and his war on migrants, “woke” schools, people who work from home and Welcomes to Country — while tearing down anyone who dared suggest he and his party were not fit for office.
But on election night none of that mattered. None of the confected outrage, the miles of newsprint, the spin and the bullying had made a jot of difference and was more likely to have worked against the Liberals’ interests. Australians it seems have a finely tuned bullshit radar.
Sky pirates
Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young nailed it when she told Radio National on Monday:
“I think what has happened to the Coalition is they spent a bit too much time hangin’ out with Sky News and they forgot to really hear what people were saying. The other big loser is the Murdoch press. They created an echo chamber for themselves.”
Dr Denis Muller of the Centre for Advancing Journalism at the University of Melbourne said the Murdoch media were “agents of disaster” for the Coalition:
“I see the sun beginning to set on Rupert’s influence in Australian politics. News Corp created a bubble in which their journalists and Coalition politicians cocooned themselves, talking to each other on Sky after dark, persuading each other that everything was going to be fine.”
A setting sun? It’s a big call. Australian politicians of all persuasions famously make the trek to Murdoch headquarters after an election for a ritual known as “kissing the ring”, and Anthony Albanese, Richard Marles and Penny Wong were quick to do their duty in 2022.
Strings attached
Eric Beecher, a former News Corp employee, recalls being sued (unsuccessfully) by Lachlan Murdoch who issued a writ for defamation over an opinion piece linking the Murdoch news empire with 2021’s January 6 Capitol riots:
“The day after the defamation writ was issued, a large Commonwealth government car pulled up outside the Holt Street Surry Hills headquarters in Sydney of News Corp. Three people got out of that car to go upstairs and visit Lachlan in his office: the prime minister, the deputy prime minister and the foreign [affairs] minister of Australia. It’s been going on for 100 years and it should stop.”
The reach of puppetmaster Rupert Murdoch into governments and policy making knows no bounds and there have been countless exposés on unethical business practices. But the machine roars on, a powerhouse of global disinformation and propaganda while pretending to be a news-gathering organisation.
In January, Murdoch was photographed reclining in the Oval Office as Donald Trump signed an executive order creating a sovereign wealth fund. Fox News cable spits out Trump propaganda daily and is credited with helping to return the convicted felon and sex predator to office. Murdoch has called Trump “increasingly mad” and yet publicly admitted he knew Fox commentators were lying when they broadcast falsehoods about a “stolen rigged election” in 2020. But hey, it was good for business.
Nuke the enemy
The habitual process of retribution and vendetta from News Corp is bitter and legendary. The Australian Financial Review reports that Malcolm Turnbull and Kevin Rudd blame Murdoch for their political demise. In 1974, Murdoch famously directed his editors to “kill Whitlam” 10 months before Gough Whitlam’s electoral ousting.
Every day, Murdoch’s media rival, the ABC, is a target of sneering “hit jobs”, and any politician or voice that suggests climate change is real or nuclear reactors are a fantasy or billionaires don’t deserve tax breaks are hounded, possibly for life. The Herald Sun still runs revelations about former Labor premier Dan Andrews and sporadic pieces of condemnation over a car accident his wife had 20 years ago. According to Beecher in his book The Men Who Killed The News, Andrews was the only premier who refused to schlep up to News Corp headquarters for the compulsory kissing of the ring.
In Australia, the power base is the print media, overwhelmingly controlled by News Corp with a huge digital presence and backed by Sky News. In 2020, Rudd and Turnbull joined forces to call for a royal commission into Murdoch’s concentrated media holdings. Rudd claimed his media power is “routinely used to attack opponents in business and politics by blending editorial opinion with news reporting”.
Break the News
How is it that such deep, lasting damage to democracy, businesses and people’s lives can be inflicted with precisely zero repercussions? One part of the answer is the acceptance that democracies cannot flourish without a free press. Section 65A of the Trade Practices Act provides a general exemption to most of the media as publishers of news and current affairs from liability for publishing misleading or deceptive material. Former chairman of the ACCC Allan Fels said concerns around Murdoch’s practices are more likely to be addressed by a royal commission, an idea the government and opposition have not supported.
“I don’t have a view on whether he should be reined in. All media mislead to some extent. It’s not the sort of thing consumer protection law addresses.”
Dr Victoria Fielding, senior lecturer in strategic communication at the University of Adelaide, was bolder. She said legislative change was needed to rein in Murdoch excesses. She agrees a healthy democracy needs an independent free press populated by balanced journalists who hold the powerful to account and publish verifiable information — but that’s not what the Murdoch media are:
“If there was some legislation that said if you want to be a commentary organisation you can only have a particular share of the market — like any competition commissioner can do — you break it up. You say: ‘You can no longer be that large.’ It’s distorting our democracy.”
Running scared
The other part of the answer is fear, fear of taking on a monolithic disinformation machine which countless readers think is a news outlet and being publicly torn down and repeatedly shredded by a media gorilla with few scruples and deep pockets.
Remarkably, after cheerleading the Liberals to disaster on May 3, The Australian leapt back up onto its feet to brush off its flesh wound and lecture the Coalition on “missing the warnings”:
“Of all the mistakes that led to this result, one was fatal: the untested assumption that Labor was out of touch and unaligned with the mainstream values of Australians. There can be no other interpretation that that this is fundamentally wrong.”
This from the paper that tells us pretty much every day that Labor is out of touch and unaligned with the mainstream values of Australians.
Culture vultures
Reports of the death of the Murdoch brand in Australia may well be exaggerated. Like any good parasite it is known to stew and grow before attacking the host again. Fielding reminds us that backed by the Murdoch press, Dutton was on track to win the federal election as recently as January — until the catastrophic reality of the Trump presidency became obvious to Australians.
Murdoch has withstood worse setbacks than crashing an election and, like Monty Python’s Black Knight, his culture warriors rebound after each atrocity and, still bleeding, berate their victims for taking the advice.
I’d like to think the tide is turning on news outlets that amplify bullshit while bragging they are society’s moral pulse and insisting their bullshit is good for you. But if the tide is not for turning, you can always join the Liberals, and learn the hard way.
Who defeated the Nazis in World War 2 ? Thank God for Hollywood!
On the 8th May 1945, Germany surrendered unconditionally to the Allies. On the 9th May 2025, Russia is holding a grand commemoration – a “Victory Day” for the 80th anniversary of this event.
How dare they? I know, from my extensive cinema history, that the Americans won World War 2.
Many exciting and entertaining movies have been made, over the decades, glorifying the courage and success of the good soldiers on the good side – several allied nations, notably the British. But my favourites were always from Hollywood. There were so many, and of course, I haven’t seen them all.
From early on, there were movies like The Story of G.I. Joe, Dive Bomber, So Proudly We Hail! and Sahara . And During World War II, Disney made films for every branch of the United States Armed Forces and government.
Hollywood downplayed the efforts and contributions of the other Allies . But some films grudgingly acknowledged the United Kingdom, who kept the hopeless fight alive until the USA joined in and saved the day. Non-European Allies are mostly never even mentioned, especially China, with its pivotal role in the war against Japan. The Soviet-German war on the Eastern Front if mentioned at all, is sometimes portrayed as a sideshow .
Some movies based on real events, such as the film U571 are about real persons who were not American, depicted them as Americans. U571 (2000) is about American submariners. ‘Red Tails’ (2012)is a great exaggeration about American airmen. In some movies, we learn that WWII only began only on December 7, 1941, when the United States entered the war. Some movies are such fun, even if fictional, for example the Americans killing Hitler in Inglourious Basterds.
Many movies are about the overall war effort , but focus on America’s involvement. Some of these films include Saving Private Ryan (1998) Flags of Our Fathers (2006): Band of Brothers (2001). Films on the D Day landings give the impression that the American landing on Omaha Beach was the decisive turning point that led to Allied victory in Europe.
Now, I know that I’m pretty right, in claiming that the Americans won World war 2. In our democratic culture we accept the opinions of the many. The more common view is now that the Americans were the primary reason for the Nazi defeat, with 40-52% in America and Europe saying so. (But Britons think it was the UK).
In 1945, 57% of French citizens believed Moscow “contributed most to the defeat of Germany in 1945” – just 20% named the US, and 12% Britain. By 2015, less than a quarter of respondents recognised the Soviet role, with 54% believing the US to be Nazism’s ultimate vanquisher. Today only 17-28% of Europeans and Americans suggest that the USSR did the bulk of the work in bringing down Hitler.
If you go to Encyclopedia Britannica, or Wikipedia, or many history sites, you are told some extraordinary facts and figures about the role of the Soviet Union in World War 2, and they attribute the defeat of Nazi Germany as being mainly achieved by the Russians, with substantial input from Britain and the USA.
For example – “The Eastern Front was decisive in determining the outcome in the European theatre of operations in World War II, eventually serving as the main reason for the defeat of Nazi Germany The decisive battles were Stalingrad, Kursk, and the Battle of Berlin.”
You find this sort of information – ” The Soviet Union lost at least 26 million in World War II, Considerably more than any other country. Russian casualties were 60 times the number of American casualties…. .. More Russian died at Stalingrad than Americans and Britons died in the whole war.”
D Day 6 June 1944, was a big day in bringing the war towards the end. Approximately 156,000 Allied troops landed in Normandy, France, of which nearly half were from the USA. Additionally, smaller contingents of troops from other allied countries were also involved. So at least the various historical records agree that the USA was strongly involved in the eventual victory, even though they joined in the war effort only in December 1941.
But now, it’s time to correct the records on who defeated the Nazis. Britain and Europe are doing their best, holding VE Day celebrations, in which Russia is excluded. And now, Donald Trump has issued a proclamation designating Thursday as a day for the United States to celebrate its victory in World War II -” we did more than any other Country, by far, in producing a victorious result on World War II”
President Donald Trump is busily correcting historical records, taking over the National Archives, or as he puts it RESTORING TRUTH AND SANITY TO AMERICAN HISTORY
So, between the entertainment culture, the political views of the Western Powers, and finally, no less a history expert than Donald Trump himself, we can hope that all that nonsense about Russia winning WW2 can be put to bed.
Israel Will Even Persecute Palestinians For Simply Talking To Journalists
Caitlin Johnstone, May 05, 2025, https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/israel-will-even-persecute-palestinians?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=162858742&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
Israeli soldiers have been harassing a Palestinian activist who appeared in Louis Theroux’s recent documentary The Settlers to talk about Israel’s apartheid abuses in the occupied West Bank. Issa Amro shared footage of IDF troops raiding his home over the weekend, days after Theroux’s film debuted on the BBC.
Israelis not only murder journalists, attack journalistic institutions and block journalists from entering the Gaza Strip, they also persecute Palestinian civilians who speak with journalists.
If you haven’t yet watched The Settlers, I highly recommend doing so. It’s so damning that I’ve seen people expressing astonishment that it made it past the BBC’s censors, but really, what’s to censor? It’s an hour of Israelis telling a video camera what Israelis think in their own words.
One of the best ways to tell the truth about the real Israel is to just point a camera at these freaks and let them tell it themselves. Theroux’s interviewing style lends itself particularly well to this type of exposure.
A ship trying to bring humanitarian aid to Gaza was drone bombed by Israel near Malta on Friday. Activist Greta Thunberg was preparing to board the ship to travel with it to its destination.
Which is just wild to think about. Things are so fucked up on this timeline that there is a non-zero probability that Israel ends up assassinating Greta Thunberg.
Imagine the western reaction if Iran had bombed a humanitarian aid ship trying to feed starving civilians.
Imagine the reaction if Chinese forces were caught massacring medical workers in ambulances.
Imagine the reaction if Russia bombed an international humanitarian aid convoy in clearly marked vehicles.
It would be all we’d hear about for weeks.
My social media feeds are filling up with footage of skeletal starving children in Gaza. If we had sane and responsible news media in the west, this would be the lead story in every outlet and publication. But we do not have sane and responsible news media. We have propaganda services disguised as news media.
People who continue to support Israel are only able to do so because they actively avoid watching the video footage the rest of us are watching.
If I built a home and then discovered that it could only remain standing if I constantly massacred children, I would simply change my living arrangements.
I would not claim my building “has a right to exist”.
I would not spend years explaining why my child massacres are okay.
I would not spend decades accusing anyone who criticized my child massacres of unfair discrimination against me and my family.
I would simply change my building so that its existence no longer required me to routinely massacre children. If I could not find a way to restructure my building in this way, I would move.
I would not do this because I am a remarkably kind and special person. I would do it because I am not a psychopath.
Only a psychopath would want to continue living in that kind of building. Only a psychopath would want that kind of building to remain standing.
I said the preceding on Twitter yesterday and Israel apologists immediately came in yelling at me for saying evil things about Israel, but what’s funny is that I never mentioned Israel once; I just talked about a building. They only knew I was actually talking about Israel because of all the stuff I said about constantly massacring civilians.
Gets ’em every time.
❖
It’s good that Trump’s “MAGA” base opposes war with Iran so forcefully, but it’s pretty revealing how absent they’ve been on Trump’s butchery in Yemen and Gaza. They’re not opposed to war or mass murder, they’re just opposed to fighting people who are strong enough to fight back.
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