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Israel’s AI use in Gaza potentially normalizes civilian killings, obscures blame, exposes Big Tech complicity: Expert

Israel is using AI systems with known inaccuracy risks at ‘almost every stage’ of its military operations, says Heidy Khlaaf, chief AI scientist at AI Now Institute

Mevlut Ozkan   07.04.2025, https://www.aa.com.tr/en/artificial-intelligence/israel-s-ai-use-in-gaza-potentially-normalizes-civilian-killings-obscures-blame-exposes-big-tech-complicity-expert/3526518

– The sheer scale and complexity of AI models makes it ‘impossible to trace their decisions that can hold any individual or military accountable,’ warns Khlaaf, a former systems safety engineer at OpenAI

– ‘Amazon, Google and Microsoft are explicitly working with the IDF to develop or allow them to use their technologies … despite being aware of the risks of AI’s low accuracy rates … and how the IDF intends to use their systems for targeting,’ says expert

ISTANBUL

Israel’s use of artificial intelligence (AI) in its ongoing assault on the Gaza Strip – aided by tech giants such as Google, Microsoft, and Amazon – is fueling concerns over the normalization of mass civilian casualties and raising serious questions about the complicity of these firms in potential war crimes, according to a leading AI expert.

Multiple reports have confirmed that Israel has deployed AI models such as Lavender, Gospel, and Where’s Daddy? to conduct mass surveillance, identify targets, and direct strikes against tens of thousands of individuals in Gaza – often in their own homes – all with minimal human oversight.

Rights groups and experts say these systems have played a critical role in Israel’s incessant and apparently indiscriminate attacks, which have laid to waste massive swaths of the besieged enclave and killed more than 50,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children.

“With the explicit use of AI models that we know lack precision accuracy, we are only going to see the normalization of mass civilian casualties, as we have kind of seen with Gaza,” Heidy Khlaaf, a former systems safety engineer at OpenAI, told Anadolu.

Khlaaf, who is currently a chief AI scientist at AI Now Institute, warned that this trend could establish a dangerous precedent in warfare where military forces deflect responsibility for potential war crimes onto AI systems, while benefiting from the lack of a robust international mechanism to intervene or hold actors accountable.

“This is really a dangerous combination that can lead to military entities not being held accountable for potential war crimes, where they can simply point to an AI system and say, ‘Hey, it’s this algorithm that decided this. It wasn’t me,’” she said.

She stressed that Israel is using AI systems at “almost every stage” of its military operations – from intelligence collection and planning to final target selection.

The AI models, she explained, are trained on a variety of data sources, including satellite imagery, intercepted communications, drone surveillance, and the tracking of individuals or groups.

“They develop multiple AI algorithms that use a statistical or probabilistic calculation from this historical data that they’ve been trained on to predict where future targets may be,” she elaborated.

However, she emphasized that these predictions “do not necessarily reflect reality.”

Khlaaf pointed to recent revelations that commercial large language models (LLMs) like Google’s Gemini and OpenAI’s GPT-4 were used by the Israeli military to translate and transcribe intercepted Palestinian communications, automatically adding individuals to target lists “purely based on keywords.”

She noted that various investigations have confirmed that one of the Israeli military’s operational strategies involves generating large numbers of targets through AI without verifying their accuracy.

The expert underlined that AI models are fundamentally unreliable for tasks requiring high precision, such as targeting in military operations, because they rely on statistical probabilities rather than verified intelligence.

“Unfortunately, assessments have shown that AI models used for targeting can have an accuracy rate as low as 25%,” Khlaaf said.

“So, given this track record of AI’s high error rates, with a force like the IDF (Israel Defense Forces), who is willing to accept a large amount of civilian casualties to take one target out … then this sort of inaccurate automation of target selection is really not far from indiscriminate bombing at scale.”

Automation without accountability

Khlaaf further emphasized that the increasing use of AI in war is setting a dangerous precedent, where accountability is obscured.

“AI is setting this precedent that normalizes inaccurate targeting practices, and because of the sheer scale and complexity of these models, it then becomes impossible to trace their decisions that can hold any individual or military accountable,” she asserted.

Even the so-called “human in the loop” safeguard, often promoted as a fail-safe against AI errors, appears insufficient in the case of the IDF, she added.

Investigations revealed that the humans overseeing Israel’s AI-generated targets operated under “very loose guidance,” casting doubt on whether efforts were even made to minimize civilian casualties, according to Khlaaf.

She warned that the current trajectory could enable militaries to shield themselves from war crime allegations by blaming AI for erroneous targeting.

“If it’s hard to trace … why an AI may have contributed to civilian casualties, then you can very well imagine a case where it’s used heavily exactly to avoid accountability for killing a large amount of civilians,” she said.

‘Amazon, Google and Microsoft explicitly working with IDF’

Khlaaf confirmed that major US-based tech firms are directly involved in supplying AI and cloud computing capabilities to the Israeli military.

“This is not a new trend,” she noted, recalling that Google has been providing AI and cloud services to the Israeli military since 2021 through its $1.2 billion Project Nimbus, alongside Amazon.

Microsoft’s involvement also deepened after October 2023, as Israel relied more on its cloud computing services, AI models, and technical support, she said.

Other companies, including Palantir, have also been linked to Israeli military operations, although details of their roles remain sparse, she added.

Crucially, Khlaaf argued that these partnerships went beyond the sale of general-purpose AI tools.

“It’s important to point out that the IDF isn’t just using off-the-shelf cloud or AI services and taking them and just putting them in military applications,” she explained.

“Amazon, Google and Microsoft are explicitly working with the IDF to develop or allow them to use their technologies for intelligence and targeting, despite being aware of the risks of AI’s low accuracy rates, their failure modes, and how the IDF intends to use their systems for targeting.”

The implications suggest that tech companies were “complicit and directly enabling” Israeli actions, including those that “would be categorized or ruled as unlawful or that amount to war crimes,” Khlaaf said.

“If it has been determined that the IDF is committing specific war crimes, and the tech companies have guided them in committing those war crimes, then yes, that makes them very much complicit,” she added.

‘An enormous gap’

Khlaaf warned that the world is witnessing “the full embrace of automated targeting without due process or accountability,” a phenomenon backed by increasing investments from Israel, the US Department of Defense, and the EU.

“Our legal and technical frameworks are not prepared for this type of AI-based warfare,” she said.

Although existing international law, such as Article 36 of the 1949 Geneva Convention, mandates legal reviews for new weapons, there are currently no binding international regulations specific to AI-driven military technologies.

Additionally, while the US maintains export controls on specific AI-enabling technologies such as GPUs and certain datasets, there is no “wholesale ban on AI military technology specifically,” she noted.

“There’s an enormous gap there that hasn’t really been addressed as of yet,” Khlaaf said.

October 27, 2025 Posted by | Israel, weapons and war | Leave a comment

South Carolina’s state utility says private firm set to restart abandoned $9 billion nuclear project.

After eight years in the elements, all the equipment and the structure of the plant, which was less than halfway finished, will need to be carefully inspected before it can be used. The permits to build and the licenses to operate the nuclear plants will need to be renewed, likely starting from scratch.

The permits to build and the licenses to operate the nuclear plants will need to be renewed, likely starting from scratch,

the agreement appears to let Brookfield walk away if it decide it’s not feasible.

By ASSOCIATED PRESS, 25 October 2025, https://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/ap/article-15225007/South-Carolinas-state-utility-says-private-firm-set-restart-abandoned-9-billion-nuclear-project.html

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) – South Carolina’s state-owned utility is looking to a private company to revive a project to build two nuclear power plants that was abandoned eight years ago, losing more than $9 billion without generating a watt of power.

Santee Cooper’s board agreed Friday to start six weeks of negotiations with Brookfield Asset Management that they hope will lead to a deal that lets the private company build the nuclear plants at the V.C. Summer site near Jenkinsville at their own risk to generate power that they could mostly sell to whom they want, such as energy-gobbling data centers.

Santee Cooper said Brookfield preliminarily agreed to provide the utility with some of the power generated. But that and probably thousands of other details will have to be negotiated. In a twist, Brookfield took over the assets of Westinghouse Electric Co., which had to declare bankruptcy because of difficulties building new nuclear reactors.

Utility officials said the agreement gives hope the state can get something out of a debacle that led to four executives going to prison or home confinement for lying to regulators, shareholders, ratepayers and investigators and left millions of people paying for decades for a project that never produced electricity.

“The risk to the ratepayer is nil. The risk to the taxpayer is nil,” Santee Cooper Board Chairman Peter McCoy said.

There are still too many hurdles for the project to get past to consider this a win right now, said Tom Clements, executive director of the nuclear watchdog group Savannah River Site Watch.

After eight years in the elements, all the equipment and the structure of the plant, which was less than halfway finished, will need to be carefully inspected before it can be used. The permits to build and the licenses to operate the nuclear plants will need to be renewed, likely starting from scratch, Clements said.

“I still believe that the cost, technical and regulatory hurdles are too big to lead to completion of the project,” Clements said, adding the agreement appears to let Brookfield walk away if it decide it’s not feasible.

Santee Cooper heard from 70 bidders and received 15 formal proposals to restart construction of the reactors. Interest in the project has grown as power demand in the U.S. surges with the increase in data centers as artificial intelligence technology develops.

Santee Cooper executives credited President Donald Trump’s executive order in May calling for the U.S. to quadruple the amount of power generated by nuclear plants over the next 25 years for opening the door to the potential agreement.

“You have placed South Carolina in the epicenter of the resurgence of nuclear power in the United States,” Santee Cooper CEO Jimmy Staton said.

Santee Cooper was the minority partner with what was then South Carolina Electric and Gas when construction on the two new nuclear plants started in 2013 at the V.C. Summer site – about 25 miles (40 kilometers) northeast of Columbia – where SCE&G was already operating a reactor.

The project needed to be finished in seven years to get tax credits to keep the project’s cost from overwhelming the utilities, but it ended up behind schedule almost immediately.

Executives lied about the problems to keep money coming in. Taxpayers and ratepayers ended up on the hook because of a state law that allowed the utilities to charge for costs before any power was generated.

Two nuclear reactors built in a similar way in Georgia went $17 billion over budget before they were fully operational in 2023.

October 27, 2025 Posted by | business and costs, USA | Leave a comment

Dounreay waste particle ‘most radioactive’ find for three years

Steven McKenzie, Highlands and Islands reporter and Rachel Grant, BBC Scotland. 23 Oct 25

A fragment of waste found near the decommissioned experimental nuclear power facility in Dounreay in April was the most radioactive to be detected in the past three years, the Highland site’s operator has said.

The fragment, categorised as “significant”, was discovered during monitoring work around the nuclear power plant near Thurso. It is the latest in a long line of particle discoveries in the area.

Dounreay was built in the 1950s as the UK’s centre of fast reactor research, but during the 1960s and 1970s sand-sized particles of irradiated nuclear fuel got into the drainage system.

Work to clear the pollution began in the 1980s, after particles were found washed up on the nearby foreshore.

The facility closed in 1994. The multi-billion pound decommissioning process involves hundreds of workers and is expected to last into the 2070s.

The full decontamination of the site is expected to take more than 300 years.

A Dounreay spokesperson said: “Particles are a legacy of industrial practices dating back to the early 1960s and our commitment today to environmental protection includes their monitoring and removal from the marine environment and transparent reporting of our activities.”

A group of independent experts, who advise the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Sepa) and Dounreay, classify particles by the radioactivity of their caesium-137 content.

The categories are minor, relevant and significant.

Significant means a reading greater than one million becquerels of CS-137.

A becquerel is the standard unit of radioactivity.

The particle was found on the western part of Dounreay’s foreshore on 7 April. Eight other finds reported since then have been categorised as “minor” or “relevant”.

A significant-category particle was last discovered in March 2022.

Thousands of particles of different categories have been removed from beaches, foreshore and seabed at Dounreay.

The site’s operator said monitoring on the site on the north Caithness coast continued to be done on a fortnightly basis.

On occasions it said the scheduled work could be interrupted by bad weather or the presence of protected species of ground-nesting birds……………………………………………………..

What risk is there to the public?

According to official reports, risk to people on local beaches is very low.

Guidance issued by the UK government’s Nuclear Restoration Services says the most at-risk area is not accessible to the public.

The particles found along the coast vary in size and radioactivity with smaller and less active particles generally found on beaches used by the public.

Larger particles have only been found only on the foreshore at Dounreay, which is not used by the public.

The particles found on beaches are believed to come from the disintegration of larger fragments in the seabed near Dounreay. The area is continuously monitored for traces of radioactive materials.

Harvesting of seafood is prohibited within a 2km (1.2 mile) radius of a point near Dounreay. This is where the largest and most hazardous fragments have been detected.

Dounreay’s radioactive history

  • 1954 – A remote site on the north coast of Scotland is chosen as the site of a new type of nuclear reactor. Modern homes were built in Caithness to attract workers to the sparsely populated area.
  • 1957 – A chain reaction which provided sustained and controlled nuclear energy is achieved for the first time.
  • 1959 – A new disposal site for radioactive waste called the Shaft opens. It drops 65.4m (214.5ft) below ground.
  • 1962 – The fast reactor inside the dome is the first in the world to provide electricity to a national grid.
  • 1977 – The original “golf ball” reactor is shut down and waste disposal in the Shaft ends after an explosion.
  • 1994 – Dounreay nuclear power generating facility closes.
  • 1998 – Decommissioning programme is announced.
  • 2008 – Operation to scour the seabed for hazardous material begins and the Shaft shaft is encircled in a boot-shaped ring of grout to prevent contamination.
  • 2020 – Clean-up begins of the highly contaminated Shaft – a three decades-long project.
  • 2333 – Decontamination expected to be complete, making the 148-acre site available for other uses. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cz91nx0lv59o

October 27, 2025 Posted by | radiation, Reference, UK | Leave a comment

Bannon Says Trump Will Run for an Illegal 3rd Term Because ‘He’s a Vehicle of Divine Providence’

Journalist Mehdi Hasan said Trump and his allies “plan to overturn the Constitution and democracy. They’re not hiding it. They’re bragging about it.”

Stephen Prager, Oct 24, 2025, https://www.commondreams.org/news/bannon-trump-third-term-plan

In a frightening interview, one of President Donald Trump’s top allies said there is a “plan” for the president to remain in power after 2028, despite constitutional limits.

Speaking to a pair of interviewers at The Economist, Steve Bannon—Trump’s former chief strategist and one of the most influential voices in the MAGA movement—described a third Trump term as a divinely ordained fait accompli that people must simply accept.

“Well, he’s gonna get a third term, so Trump ‘28,” Bannon said. “Trump is gonna be president in 2028, and people ought to just get accommodated with that.”

Asked about the 22nd Amendment of the US Constitution, which plainly forbids a president from serving more than two terms in office, Bannon proclaimed that “there are many different alternatives” to get around it.

“At the appropriate time, we’ll lay out what the plan is,” he said. “But there’s a plan. And President Trump will be president in ’28.”

Bannon continued: “We have to finish what we started… I know this will drive you guys crazy, but [Trump] is a vehicle of divine providence. He’s an instrument. He’s very imperfect. He’s not churchy. But he is an instrument of divine will.”

“We need him for at least one more term,” Bannon reiterated, “and he’ll get that in ‘28.”

In recent days, Trump has increasingly signaled his intent to run for a third term, selling “Trump 2028” merchandise on his website and displaying it in the Oval Office during negotiations with Democrats over the government shutdown.

His recent demolition of the White House’s East Wing to build a luxury ballroom has also raised alarms that Trump increasingly views himself as its permanent resident rather than a temporary steward.

Bannon was adamant that Trump would not only serve a third term, but that his staying in office would be “by the will of the American people.”

This assumption is out of line with what polls would seem to predict: Trump’s support recently hit a new low in his second term, with just 37% of voters approving of his job performance in the latest Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll, compared to 61% who disapprove.

Bannon’s comments came days after the New York Times reported that Trump’s handpicked election officials have called for him to declare a “national emergency” ahead of the 2026 midterm election, which they say would allow him to assert more control over election laws and impose new rules on state and local elections without approval from Congress.

Max Flugrath of the voting rights group Fair Fight Action, who warned earlier this week of Trump’s plans to “hijack” the next elections, said that by pushing for a third term for the president, “Bannon is basically saying, ’Let’s light the Constitution on fire.‘”

Author and activist Jim Stewartson noted that Bannon “uses the same alchemy as [House Speaker] Mike Johnson and [Defense Secretary] Pete Hegseth to rationalize destroying the Constitution: ’spiritual war.‘”

Johnson has argued that the US government “must be biblically sanctioned” and that the Founders’ idea of the separation of church and state was “a misnomer.” Hegseth, meanwhile, has endorsed a video of a far-right pastor discussing the need to repeal the 19th Amendment, which enshrined the right of women to vote.

Some pointed out that Bannon often manages to create a stir in the media by saying provocative things and claiming to have privileged knowledge about the machinations of Trump’s inner circle. It’s not the first time Bannon has raised the possibility of a third Trump term.

“A question that I’ve never seen fully resolved is to what degree Bannon is just trying to get attention as a media figure and to what degree he’s actually clued in to what’s going on in the White House,” said HeatMap News correspondent Matthew Zeitlin.

However, Bannon was in the know about Trump’s plot to overturn the 2020 election well before it happened. Days before the vote, he was recorded telling right-wing allies that “What Trump’s gonna do is just declare victory… He’s gonna declare victory. But that doesn’t mean he’s a winner. He’s just gonna say he’s a winner.”

Others said that Bannon’s prognosis about a third Trump term is gravely serious, especially given Trump’s other actions during his second term.

“I would love to be wrong, but they keep saying this in public,” said writer John DiLillo. “He’s selling Trump 2028 merch. He’s massively remodeling the White House as if it were his personal residence. I don’t really see why the idea shouldn’t be taken seriously just because it’s ’unconstitutional.‘”

Mehdi Hasan, founder of the media outlet Zeteo, meanwhile, said: “They’re literally shouting it out loud! Their plan to overturn the Constitution and democracy. They’re not hiding it. They’re bragging about it. And the media are just ignoring it, or worse, normalizing it; the biggest story perhaps in modern American history.”

October 27, 2025 Posted by | politics, USA | Leave a comment

Germany destroys two nuclear plant cooling towers as part of nuclear phaseout plan.

Euronews,  25/10/2025,https://www.euronews.com/2025/10/25/germany-destroys-two-nuclear-plant-cooling-towers-as-part-of-nuclear-phaseout-plan

The two towers, equivalent to roughly 56,000 tonnes of concrete, collapsed in a controlled demolition on Saturday. It comes as part of Germany’s nuclear phaseout.

Two cooling towers of the former nuclear power plant in Germay’s Bavarian town of Gundremmingen were brought down in a controlled demolition at noon on Saturday.

The plant had served as an important landmark in the town for nearly six decades, bringing numerous new jobs and boosting the local economy.

As part of the country’s nuclear phaseout and under Germany’s energy transition policy, the Gundremmingen, as well as the Brokdorf, and Grohnde nuclear power plants, had already been decommissioned in December 2021.

The municipality, who had prepared for a large crowd of onlookers, set up a restricted zone around the power plant.

According to energy company RWE, the demolition could be observed from various watch points in the region. Some pubs also offered public “demolition viewing parties”

How the towers will be blown up

There were three explosions in total. The first was carried out to chase away nearby animals and wildlife. The second brought down the first tower, and the third caused the second tower to collapse.

Roughly 56,000 tonnes of concrete collapsed in a matter of seconds. Following Saturday’s demolition, the dismantling of the plant will further continue, local media report, with completion expected by 2040.

October 27, 2025 Posted by | decommission reactor, Germany | Leave a comment

Leaked document reveals Amazon deliberately planned to hide data centers’ full water use.

Amazon deliberately excludes majority of water use from public sustainability reports
Serdar Dincel, Türkiye Today, Sat, 25 Oct 2025

mazon deliberately withheld information about the complete scope of its data centers’ water consumption from the public to protect its corporate image, according to an internal document obtained by the Guardian.

The leaked memo reveals that executives at Amazon Web Services, the company’s cloud computing arm, debated whether to report what they termed “secondary” water use — the water consumed in generating electricity for the company’s data centers — before launching a 2022 sustainability campaign.

Ultimately, leadership opted to publicize only a fraction of the company’s water footprint, citing concerns about “reputational risk” if total consumption figures became public knowledge.

The document, dated one month before AWS unveiled its “Water Positive” initiative in November 2022, shows Amazon consumed 105 billion gallons of water in 2021. That volume would supply approximately 958,000 U.S. households annually, comparable to a city larger than San Francisco.

Company reported fraction of actual consumption in public campaign

Instead of reporting this total, Amazon disclosed only its primary water use — 7.7 billion gallons per year, roughly equivalent to 11,600 Olympic-sized swimming pools — when measuring progress toward sustainability goals.

The Water Positive campaign committed Amazon to “return more water than it uses” by 2030, targeting a reduction in primary use to 4.9 billion gallons. Secondary water consumption was excluded from these calculations…………………………………………….

As the world’s largest data center operator, Amazon is rapidly expanding its artificial intelligence infrastructure despite growing concerns about water resources needed to cool computing facilities. The company has faced mounting criticism for refusing to disclose total water usage, a transparency measure adopted by competitors Microsoft and Google.

Amazon’s Water Positive campaign remains active but continues to exclude secondary water use from its accounting, and the company has not made its overall water consumption public. https://www.turkiyetoday.com/business/amazon-deliberately-excludes-majority-of-water-use-from-public-sustainability-reports-3208989

October 27, 2025 Posted by | water | Leave a comment

Pentagon orders USS Gerald R. Ford into Caribbean, first carrier sent to region

Yahoo News, Nicholas Slayton, Sat, October 25, 2025 

The Pentagon ordered the Gerald R. Ford Carrier Strike Group to sail to the Caribbean, adding one of the Navy’s largest and most potent formations to the major U.S. build-up in the region. The new deployment will add the aircraft carrier’s more than 70 aircraft and multiple destroyers to the array of firepower already sent to the region for a mission the White House insists is aimed at drug traffickers.

Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell confirmed the deployment in a statement, saying the strike group would be “in support of the President’s directive to dismantle Transnational Criminal Organizations (TCOs) and counter narco-terrorism.”

Carrier Strike Group 12 includes the USS Gerald R. Ford, the destroyers USS Bainbridge and USS Mahan and Carrier Air Wing 8. Their arrival makes this fall’s buildup one of the largest deployments of naval power since the start of the Red Sea conflict in late 2023. The strike group’s air contingent includes four squadrons of F/A-18 fighters and one squadron of E/A-18G strike fighters.

Word of the deployment came shortly after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced another airstrike on a civilian vessel in the Caribbean. Hegseth said the strike killed six on board, a tally which would bring the death toll in U.S. strikes on boats in the region to 43 since September, according to White House figures.

Hegseth accused the crew of being members of the gang Tren de Aragua, a group the administration has often linked to the boats with little public evidence. It was the 10th strike in total, and the third one in as many days.

Governments and media in the region have reported that those killed or wounded in U.S. strikes have included citizens from Colombia, Ecuador, and Trinidad and Tobago. At least two sailors have been rescued by U.S. forces after surviving strikes on their boats, including an Ecuadorian man who was released days later when authorities in his country said there was no evidence of a crime to charge him with.

Earlier this year, the Trump administration designated several gangs and drug cartels as “foreign terrorist organizations,” and accused the Venezuelan government of collaborating with them. The White House has advised Congress that the U.S. is in an “armed conflict” with these gangs, but no Congressional authorization for the use of force has been given……………………………………………………. https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/pentagon-orders-uss-gerald-r-183731366.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuc290dC5uZXQv&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAC-xq4OFcery8IiSv68w1zrTr-PmRrn6IBwmoiNxApl6bQszSfDGY6O51M4yAGAU1O90WYXwK-DRaUu0nfau6ncVUnxrYVkwer67gcsHqDulCR8Y2h3pG0HD-S1OJ9NpV1QqBFkaKO0mADBLxw3mgTmEliwGClbGebBO1lPCO-bZ

October 27, 2025 Posted by | USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Trump’s push to uphold Gaza ceasefire is creating a political crisis in Israel.

Israel isn’t a vassal state of the U.S., JD Vance said. But when it comes to the ceasefire in Gaza and annexing the West Bank, Israeli decision-making is deeply intertwined with Washington’s current priorities.

Mondoweiss, By Qassam Muaddi  October 24, 2025 

The succession of U.S. officials arriving in Tel Aviv over the week has fueled consternation in Israeli political circles as Washington ups the pressure on Israel to stick to U.S. President Donald Trump’s Gaza ceasefire plan. Israeli political circles have bristled at having to bend to the American President’s will, as opposition use the opportunity to lambast Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for turning Israel into a “vassal” of the United States.

Virtually all of Trump’s inner circle has made the rounds in Tel Aviv throughout the past week, including U.S. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, Vice President JD Vance, and U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

They were all there, JD Vance said, to monitor the ceasefire, rushing to add: “But not monitoring in the sense of, you know…you monitor a toddler.” But Israeli media referred to the flurry of visits as American “Bibi-sitting.” 

Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz published a caricature on Wednesday portraying Netanyahu as a child playing with toy tanks and airplanes while Witkoff tells him, “Just a little while more, and then off to bed.” Maariv published another cartoon showing Witkoff, Vance, and Kushner closely tailing Netanyahu, who says, “Honestly, I’m just going to the toilet.”

Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid didn’t hold back either. At the opening of the Knesset’s winter session, Lapid slammed Netanyahu for getting Israel into “the most dangerous political crisis in its history,” and for sabotaging past ceasefire deals that could have seen the earlier release of the Israeli captives in Gaza. Lapid also said that Netanyahu had turned Israel into “a vassal state that takes orders concerning its own security.”

Things got even tenser during a press conference with Netanyahu when Vance was asked by a reporter whether Israel was becoming a “protectorate” of the U.S. …………………………………………………

The visits by Vance, Witkoff, Kushner, and Rubio came as the fragile ceasefire in Gaza was about to unravel last Sunday, October 19, following an incident in Rafah in which two Israeli soldiers were killed in an explosion. Israel accused Hamas of breaching the ceasefire and launched a series of strikes across Gaza, killing at least 40 Palestinians. Hamas denied any knowledge of the Rafah incident, with reports that the explosion was caused by an Israeli bulldozer running over an unexploded ordinance, of which the White House was reportedly aware. …………….

Political circles in Israel regarded the halt of Israel’s blitz as a sign that Netanyahu had folded under continuous U.S. pressure to make the ceasefire work. Israel’s hardline National Security Minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, regarded the decision as “shameful” and called on Netanyahu to resume its full-scale onslaught against Gaza.

Now there’s another sticking point that is continuing to fuel U.S.-Israeli tensions: annexation.

West Bank annexation is off the table. Or is it?

In the midst of this wave of criticism, Netanyahu announced his candidacy for the post of Prime Minister in the upcoming November 2026 elections. Netanyahu is currently the longest-serving Prime Minister in Israel’s history, having led a shifting arrangement of right and center-right coalitions for a total of 18 years.

In the middle of JD Vance’s visit, the Israeli Knesset voted in favor of the first reading of a bill that would annex the West Bank. The reaction from the U.S. was unprecedented. 

Before boarding his flight to Tel Aviv earleir this week, Secretary of State Rubio said that the vote was “counterproductive” and “threatening to the peace deal.” Vance went further, calling the vote “weird,” “stupid,” and an “insult,” adding that “the policy of the Trump administration is that the West Bank will not be annexed by Israel.” 

But the hardest U.S. reaction came from Trump himself, who said in an interview with Time magazine that Israel’s annexation of the West Bank “will not happen because I gave my word to the Arab countries,” adding that “Israel would lose all of its support from the United States if that happened.”

The problem is that annexing the West Bank has been Netanyahu’s most important electoral promise since 2019. He has been spearheading a years-long legislative effort to make that annexation a reality, starting with the 2018 Nation-State Law, then with the Knesset resolution to reject a Palestinian state in July 2024, and finally with last July’s Knesset resolution allowing the government to annex the West Bank.

This is particularly inconvenient for Benjamin Netanyahu, as he needs to avoid any major confrontation with Washington at the current moment……………………………………………………..

In his first term, Donald Trump also clashed with a Netanyahu-led government that had pledged to annex parts of the West Bank. Trump halted the annexation process by brokering normalization agreements with several Arab states, most crucially the United Arab Emirates. The importance of the so-called Abraham Accords, for Trump, comes from the fact that the remaining Gulf countries that have yet to normalize relations with Israel — Qatar and Saudi Arabia — are the key to securing regional U.S. economic and political dominance. This is part of the larger U.S. agenda of reasserting American hegemony and confronting the rising influence of China. A part of Trump’s roadmap to get there is by integrating Israel in the Middle East.

After its genocide in Gaza, Israel is facing international isolation, so regional integration should seemingly be an Israeli priority as well. But in this instance, integration would force Israel to at least temporarily pause its plans to assert Jewish sovereignty between the river and the sea, as the Likud’s charter put it. 

Smotrich gave voice to that supremacist dream while speaking at a tech conference on Thursday, saying that Israel would not give up annexation for the sake of normalization: “If Saudi Arabia tells us ‘normalization in exchange for a Palestinian state,’ friends — no thank you. Keep riding camels in the desert in Saudi Arabia, and we will continue to develop.”……………………………………………………….

The ongoing frenzy of political recriminations in Israeli circles is a sign that they’re gearing up for elections and trying to score points against their rivals. What this tells us is that the Israeli political establishment has, at least implicitly, accepted that the war is over for the moment. But the fact that this political theater unfolds in the shadow of unprecedented U.S. pressure suggests how deeply Israeli decision-making is intertwined with Washington’s priorities. https://mondoweiss.net/2025/10/trumps-push-to-uphold-gaza-ceasefire-is-creating-a-political-crisis-in-israel/

October 27, 2025 Posted by | Israel, politics | Leave a comment

As Millions March Against Fascism, NYT Warns Against Progressives

FAIR, Julie Hollar, October 25, 2025

What does this political moment in our country call for? The MAGA president and right-wing Supreme Court are shredding the Constitution at lightning speed, with the full acquiescence of Trump’s merry band of sycophants in Congress. Masked men are kidnapping people off the streets, disappearing them to detention centers across the country, and deporting them to countries our State Department warns travelers not to visit. Meanwhile, protesters against this lawlessness are attacked by federal troops with “less-lethal” weapons.

An estimated 7 million peaceful protesters took to the streets on October 18, in the second-largest demonstration in US history (after the first Earth Day in 1970), demanding accountability and a return to democracy and the rule of law.  In a system of government where citizens can only use the ballot box every two to six years to show how they feel about their electeds, that’s something you’d think would warrant journalistic attention.

Yet at the nation’s paper of record—whose headquarters sat literally a stone’s throw away from the New York City No Kings march route—the protest was deemed not important enough for a front-page story. Two small below-the-fold photos were offered instead (10/19/25), with the accompanying article buried on page 23.

It’s true that the New York Times has a history of downplaying protests (FAIR.org, 9/24/25, 9/12/25, 1/25/24). But it’s also true that it’s only certain kinds of protests that they downplay. When right-wingers under the banner of the Tea Party movement held in 2009 what the Times (9/12/09) described as “the largest rally against President [Barack] Obama since he took office,” they drew a crowd two orders of magnitude smaller than No Kings, but its coverage got the same placement from the paper: front-page photo, article inside. Just one month after the Tea Party rally, a major LGBTQ march of equal or possibly even double the size was not noted on the paper’s front page at all (Extra!, 12/09).

The Times isn’t exactly an outlier in that respect; nearly all corporate media have a long history of downplaying major protests over women’s rights, war, genocide and the climate crisis, while offering much more ink and airtime to right-wing rallies like the Promise Keepers and the Tea Party.

But the Times deserves special attention—partly because it’s seen as the standard-bearing “liberal” newspaper in the country. And as the standard-bearer, it sees its role as establishing the ideological boundaries of the Democratic Party, most notably by drawing the line in the sand on the left that the Democrats must not cross. And this in turn is why, two days after the massive pro-democracy marches, the New York Times editorial board published a forceful message of its own—not against fascism, but against progressivism.

‘The center is the way to win’

In both its news and opinion sections, year after year, the New York Times‘ mantra has been that for electoral success, Democrats have to move to the right, and any electoral losses must be caused by excessive progressivism (Extra!, 7–8/06; FAIR.org, 5/27/15, 7/6/17, 11/14/19, 7/16/21). In a sprawling new iteration of this “move to the center” motto, the paper’s editorial board (10/20/25) announced: “The Partisans Are Wrong: Moving to the Center Is the Way to Win.”

The piece frames itself as talking to “partisans,” but it makes only the faintest nods to Republicans, and the last 2,000 of its 3,000-odd words are directly targeting Democrats. It opens:

American politics today can seem to be dominated by extremes. President Trump is carrying out far-right policies, while some of the country’s highest-profile Democrats identify as democratic socialists. Moderation sometimes feels outdated.

You could probably just stop right there, based on the absurdity of comparing the “extremes” of Trump’s unprecedented authoritarianism to democratic socialist Democrats. New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, the highest-profile of the latter at the moment (and certainly top of mind for the city’s largest newspaper), has focused his campaign on freezing the rent, making city buses free and adding 2% to the tax bills of the wealthiest 1%……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

Captured by elites

The example the Times offers of how moving to the center will make Democrats more “credible” and “effective” in confronting Trump is that “most voters disapprove of Mr. Trump’s immigration policies—and nonetheless trust his party on the issue more than they trust Democrats.” A more “moderate” position on immigration would make Democrats better able to “combat” him on the issue

But when the Times itself calls Biden’s immigration policies “lax”—when they were far more cruel and draconian than any recent president besides Trump—and frames them as the other side of the extremist coin to Trump’s “cruel immigration enforcement,” it shapes that public perception. It’s hardly a surprise that many voters think the Democrats are “too liberal,” when that’s what all of the country’s biggest news outlets have hammered into their heads for decades.

In fact, a recent poll shows that the Times‘ advice is fundamentally self-defeating. The paper is correct that Democrats’ approval ratings are abysmal, and also that some polls show voters say Democrats are “too left wing and too focused on niche issues.” But those polls give respondents prewritten choices, suggesting to them what the appropriate answer might be, which can skew responses. What happens if you ask voters directly what they think about the party, and let them fill in the blanks themselves? A recent poll of Rust Belt (read: swing state) voters did just that, and analyzed the unprompted answers. Here’s what they found (Jacobin, 10/15/25):

Contrary to many analyses that have blamed Democrats for holding extreme positions on social and cultural issues that alienated swing voters, the dominant theme we observed was voters’ anger at the Democratic Party for failing to deliver. Among Democratic and independent respondents, the most common critique of the Democratic Party was its perceived inability to carry out policies that help ordinary people.

………………………. And what happens when you ask them directly about progressive policies? Turns out that, on many issues, voters are much more progressive than the Times would have readers believe. Polls regularly show large majorities in favor of a wealth tax, a $15 or higher minimum wage, and Medicare for All, all key progressive demands that corporate media regularly lambaste.

Anti-democratic power grab

Equally important, the Times‘ argument imagines that a Democratic push to the center can overcome the structural obstacles to competitive elections that this authoritarian movement is rapidly laying down. Trump and his allies are working furiously to undermine election integrity for their own benefit, using a variety of strategies that the Brennan Center for Justice (8/3/25) details:

  • attempting to rewrite election rules to burden voters and usurp control of election systems;
  • targeting or threatening to target election officials and others who keep elections free and fair;
  • supporting people who undermine election administration; and
  • retreating from the federal government’s role of protecting voters and the election process.

GOP-controlled states are ramming through new gerrymandered maps at Trump’s behest to generate more safe seats. And the Voting Rights Act is currently before a Supreme Court that seems eager to eviscerate what little remains of it, which would allow further gerrymandering to give the GOP up to 19 more House seats.

Will it be possible in 2026 for Democrats to win at the ballot box, regardless of ideology? That’s very much up for debate. It certainly appears to be Trump’s goal to make it impossible, no matter how popular Democratic candidates might be.

Yet nowhere in its lengthy tirade against progressives does the Times mention this anti-democratic electoral power grab. It’s a key omission, and it brings us back to the paper’s downplaying of the No Kings protests. The Times in its editorial laments that Trump “threatens American democracy,” but it imagines the ship can be righted by retaking Congress with centrist Democrats.

If the Democrats have shown us anything under Trump 2.0, it’s that seeking to moderate and accommodate—as they did in confirming his extremist cabinet nominees and failing to block his first continuing resolution in the spring—only gives Trump and his enablers more power. Stopping the authoritarian machine is going to require all the levers of democracy that can be pulled—not just at the ballot box, but also on the streets. https://fair.org/home/as-millions-march-against-fascism-nyt-warns-against-progressives/

October 27, 2025 Posted by | media | Leave a comment

Buzz around nuclear shows the hole that [?]green shipping is in.

COMMENT. Note the headline – they’re still pretending that nuclear is “green”

Nuclear shipping is great in theory, but not a serious plan for decarbonisationSMRs are not the done deal their cheerleaders make them out to be

They have advantages over hydrogen, as long as money is no object

On paper, new nuclear for shipping offers great promise. But the fact it is being taken seriously shows how forlorn efforts to replace diesel have become in 2025

 Lloyd’s List 24th Oct 2025, https://www.lloydslist.com/LL1155212/Buzz-around-nuclear-shows-the-hole-that-green-shipping-is-in

October 27, 2025 Posted by | business and costs | Leave a comment

Stabilizing the U.S.-China Rivalry.

RAND think tank, famous for its influential policy papers which have shaped US-Russian relations, has released an eye-opening call for a change of course on China. This comes by way of the latest Trump-China escalations which, it appears, have greatly worried insiders of the ‘deep state’ system; enough so that for once they have begun swallowing their pride and envisioning a calmer, more placating approach toward China so as not to upset the global status quo too much.

Michael J. Mazarr, Amanda Kerrigan, Benjamin Lenain, Oct 14, 2025, https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA4107-1.html?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

The geopolitical rivalry between the United States and China embodies risks of outright military conflict, economic warfare, and political subversion, as well as the danger that tensions between the world’s two leading powers will destroy the potential for achieving a global consensus on such issues as climate and artificial intelligence. Moderating this rivalry therefore emerges as a critical goal, both for the United States and China and for the wider world.

The authors of this report propose that, even in the context of intense competition, it might be possible to find limited mechanisms of stabilization across several specific issue areas. They offer specific recommendations both for general stabilization of the rivalry and for three issue areas: Taiwan, the South China Sea, and competition in science and technology.

Key Findings

Several broad principles can guide efforts to stabilize intense rivalries

  • Each side accepts that some degree of modus vivendi must necessarily be part of the relationship.
  • Each side accepts the essential political legitimacy of the other.
  • In specific issue areas, especially those disputed by the two sides, each side works to develop sets of shared rules, norms, institutions, and other tools that create lasting conditions of a stable modus vivendi within that domain over a specific period (such as three to five years).
  • Each side practices restraint in the development of capabilities explicitly designed to undermine the deterrent and defensive capabilities of the other in ways that would create an existential risk to its homeland.

  • Each side accepts some essential list of characteristics of a shared vision of organizing principles for world politics that can provide at least a baseline for an agreed status quo.
  • There are mechanisms and institutions in place — from long-term personal ties to physical communication links to agreed norms and rules of engagement for crises and risky situations — that help provide a moderating or return-to-stable-equilibrium function.

Recommendations

Six broad-based initiatives can help moderate the intensity of the U.S.-China rivalry

  • Clarify U.S. objectives in the rivalry with language that explicitly rejects absolute versions of victory and accepts the legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party.
  • Reestablish several trusted lines of communication between senior officials.
  • Improve crisis-management practices, links, and agreements between the two sides.
  • Seek specific new agreements — a combination of formal public accords and private understandings — to limit the U.S.-China cyber competition.

  • Declare mutual acceptance of strategic nuclear deterrence and a willingness to forswear technologies and doctrines that would place the other side’s nuclear deterrent at risk.
  • Seek modest cooperative ventures on issues of shared interest or humanitarian concern.

More-specific strategies should guide efforts to stabilize the issues of Taiwan, the South China Sea, and competition in science and technology

  • Stabilizing the Taiwan issue should focus on creating the maximum incentive for Beijing to pursue gradual approaches toward unification.
  • For the South China Sea, combine deterrence of military escalation with intensified multilateral and bilateral diplomacy to create a medium-term route to a peaceful solution as the default international process and expectation.
  • In the U.S.-China science and technology rivalry, manage the worst aspects of emerging technologies for mutual security and the condition of the rivalry, and step back from the most extreme versions of efforts to undermine the other side’s progress.

October 26, 2025 Posted by | China, politics international, USA | Leave a comment

Tomahawks, Raytheon, and Zelensky’s $90 billion shopping list at the White House

Reflecting Volodymyr Zelensky’s confidence that the Trumpster would oblige him, he, Zelensky, actually visited Raytheon, the Tomahawk’s maker, before his session at the White House.

Patrick Lawrence: Desperation Row

By Patrick Lawrence, Consortium News, 20 Oct 25

What a big game Volodymyr Zelensky talked before his latest little while in the Oval Office last Friday. 

The Ukrainian president (who is no longer legitimately the Ukrainian president) arrived for another summit with President Trump with a shopping list of air defense and weapons systems worth $90 billion.

Yes, $90 billion. This compares with $128 billion the United States has already given Ukraine since the Russian intervention began in February 2022, according to a Council on Foreign Relations report dated July 15, 2025.

Playing to Trump’s penchant for keeping everything business, Zelensky said Ukraine would purchase all the new hardware in what he called “a mega deal.” What nonsense. Kiev is flat broke. How could the regime possibly pay for new weapons and matériel?

Would Kiev write Washington a check out of funds Washington has previously sent? Or does Zelensky mean NATO, which is supposed to buy American weaponry to pass on to Ukraine, will finance his shopping list? Zelensky now speaks for the European end of the Atlantic alliance, is it?

The only other thought I have is that the Zelensky regime intends to pay for the new gear with the billions of euros the Europeans promise to send Kiev — the billions, that is, the Europeans now plan to steal from Russia’s frozen assets. But that money is supposed to keep Kiev in pencils and paper clips for a short while longer.

Oh, what tangled webs these people weave. Or propose to weave.

But the hopelessly corrupt Zelensky had more than a 70 percent raise on his mind when he arrived in Washington. The master importunist also wanted an unstated number — let’s just say a lot — of Tomahawk missiles atop this.


Tomahawks, long-range missiles capable of a nuclear payload, go for $2 million to $2.5 million apiece, and by the reporting I have seen the idea was Trump would send these gratis. Reflecting Zelensky’s confidence that the Trumpster would oblige him, he, Zelensky, actually visited Raytheon, the Tomahawk’s maker, before his session at the White House.

This is a crook with nerve: You have to give Volodymyr this much.

More weapons, fewer talks: This was the Kiev regime’s clever-sounding but very stupid formula as Zelensky prepared to shake the bowl once again. Time to start hitting Russian targets relentlessly. It is the only way to get Moscow seriously to negotiate an end to the war. This is the latest line.

In the event, Zelensky’s time in the Oval Office was not as awkward as that mess he made when he first met Trump last February. But it was in that direction. The protocol people seated Vlod so his back was to the journalists covering the event — a subtle but unmistakable dis, this. And when Zelensky briefed media afterward, they made him do so outside the White House.

Trump Axes the Tomahawks

No Tomahawks for Volod, then, at least none now. Trump made this clear before, during and after his time with the Ukrainian mooch. The fate of the rest on Zelensky’s list is unclear, but my guess is Kiev will get what the Europeans buy from U.S. weapons makers and send south across the Polish border.

The decisive moment in this — the decisive two hours, this is to say — came a day before Zelensky’s White House visit, when Trump took a call from Vladimir Putin and spent as many hours talking to the Russian president. By all accounts Trump’s then-pending decision on the Tomahawks question took up a considerable part of the exchange.

Trump’s comments afterward testify to this. “Tomahawk is a vicious, offensive, incredibly destructive weapon,” he said immediately following the call. “Nobody wants Tomahawks shot at them.”

Speaking just as he began talks with Zelensky, Trump remarked, “Hopefully we will be able to get the war over without thinking about Tomahawks.”

The argument is commonly made that Donald Trump thinks and believes what the last person he has spoken to tells him is so. And fair enough: Trump is plainly a man of shallow intellect and has no sound judgment in matters of state.

The easy out for this kind of person is to repeat with faux-conviction the views of anyone whose judgments, whatever they may be, are respected. But to suggest that Putin has an easy time “playing” Trump in this fashion, as do mainstream media and those whose views these media faithfully reflect, is a cynical dodge.

You get cast into the darkness for saying this, but never mind that: Vladimir Putin is a demonstrably accomplished statesman, and he is the only principal in the Ukraine crisis who makes a credible case for an enduring settlement — this not only between Moscow and Kiev but between Russia and the West.


The security of one nation cannot be established at the expense of the security of any other nation: This is basic to sound diplomacy and is the core of Moscow’s case. This is what Putin and those in his national security circle mean when they insist on addressing root causes.

As the late Stephen F. Cohen taught me years ago, Russia’s position vis-à-vis the West is not about spheres of influence, which we can count a 19th century anachronism: It is about spheres of security, and you cannot name a nation that does not shape its foreign policies with this as an objective.

Tomahawks & Perilous Escalation

As to the Tomahawks, Putin, as well-reported, advised Trump that shipping Tomahawks to a regime as irresponsible as Kiev would fundamentally damage any prospect of a restoration in U.S.–Russian relations and force an escalation of the war.

This is so, not least but not only because the Russians would not be able to tell if an incoming missile bore a nuclear warhead. It would take Americans, equally, to operate them as the Ukrainians cannot do so on their own.

Tell me, was it sensible of Putin to urge Trump not to send the Ukrainians Tomahawks, or are we supposed to think of this some other way?

It is very tiresome at this point to read the mainstream press describe the Russian position. “Monotonous” may be my better word.


The Washington Post: Russia manipulates Trump “by continually dangling hopes of peace deal while it ramps up attacks.” And: “Russia rules out a ceasefire so that fighting can continue.” And: “Putin has refused to offer concessions.”

The New York Times: “Russia rebuffs President Trump’s diplomatic push.” And: “… Moscow’s decision to spurn negotiations while ramping up deadly attacks.”

None of this is true, of course — not an f–ing word of it. All this repetitive language is deployed merely to avoid stating Moscow’s true position. It is too sound for that — too much in the cause of a peace to the benefit of all sides.

I do not like the sound of that $90 billion number Zelensky and his people put about before the Oval Office encounter last week. The extravagance of it suggests that the Zelensky regime and the Europeans — and the Euros serve as his North Star now, given they are mutually delusional — intend the war with Russia to go on indefinitely, never mind Ukraine and its Western sponsors lost it a long time back.


Life on Desperation Row, let’s call this.

Trump is now scheduled to meet Putin for another summit in two weeks’ time, this one in Budapest. I see little coming of it.

In my read, the Trumpster may have grasped the validity of the Russian view of the war and its resolution as far back as the Alaska summit in mid–August. There is no knowing this, of course.

The grim reality is that it is unlikely to matter either way: There are too many constituencies with an interest in keeping the Ukraine conflict going.

It is one of those cases wherein it would be a very good thing to be wrong.

October 26, 2025 Posted by | weapons and war | Leave a comment

ED MILIBAND’S NUCLEAR NIGHTMARES

Jonathon Porritt, 22 Oct 25, https://jonathonporritt.com/uk-nuclear-subsidies-desnz-spending/

Meanwhile, in a parallel universe, the legions of nuclear fat cats residing here in the UK are smiling very broadly indeed. It would appear that both Rachel Reeves and Ed Miliband have nothing better to do with our money, as taxpayers, than to go on filling up their subsidy saucers more or less on demand.

Taxpayers really don’t know very much about how DESNZ spends our money. More problematically, not a lot of the UK’s more or less mis-informed energy correspondents are particularly interested in helping taxpayers to understand what’s really going on – for the most part because they’re ‘ideologically captured’, with very little interest in the truth.

A bit harsh? Well, why is it, for instance, that not one of them provides any serious analysis of DESNZ’s annual expenditure? Not least as the details of this (on p.18 of its 2024-2025 Annual Report & Accounts) are completely mind-blowing. To summarise:

DESNZ TOTAL DEPARTMENTAL SPEND

Total departmental spend:     £8.6 billion

Total spend on nuclear power:   £5.1 billion (60%)

Total spend on everything else:  £3.5 billion (40%)

See what I mean? Literally mind-blowing! A few more details on the nuclear side of things:

*Great British Nuclear: £26 million (the more or less useless quango overseeing this fiasco).

*Nuclear Decommissioning Agency : £3 billion (dealing with the legacy of past nuclear programmes).

*Support for Sizewell C power station: £1.67 billion.

*UK Atomic Energy Agency (UKAEA): £400 million (doing bonkers stuff like nuclear fusion).

That’s the size of the nuclear sink hole: roughly £5.1 billion! Leaving roughly £3.5 billion for everything else, including all direct support for renewables, ‘delivering affordable energy’, science, research and ‘capability’, as well as other arm’s length bodies. Moreover, even that low figure is not quite what it seems: roughly £450 million is set aside for another of Ed Miliband’s sink holes, namely Carbon Capture and Storage.

Do you need any more persuading that this is obviously a completely mis-titled Department: instead of DESNZ, it really should be called DNPB&B – the Department of Nuclear Power and Bits & Bobs.

Where the hell are you, Rachel Reeves? For those sick of your hangdog ‘black hole blathering‘, it would be wonderful to think you might instruct just a few of your civil servants to instruct the ever-well-meaning Ed Miliband to undertake an exercise in zero budgeting for FY 25/26. Great British Nuclear could go at a stroke of a pen – no one would notice. The UKAEA’s budget could be halved, leaving it to focus on decommissioning redundant reactors and dealing with nuclear waste. Subsidies for Sizewell C could be massively reduced – although the Department did such a poor deal with various private sector investors that there will be significant compensation to be paid.

Sadly, of course, there is nothing that can be done about the £3 billion set aside, EVERY YEAR, for dealing with the legacy of earlier nuclear programmes – decommissioning, site security, managing nuclear waste and so on. Nuclear campaigners have struggled for years to explain that our ‘nuclear legacy’ is in fact our ‘current nuclear reality’, and that this is a figure which can only grow and grow over the years. The Public Accounts Committee looked recently at the cost of decommissioning many of the facilities at Sellafield, currently assessed at £396 million through to 2070, and couldn’t have made their incredulity any clearer. On top of that, we have the looming additional cost of building a long-term Geological Disposal Facility, for which taxpayers will be paying hundreds of billions of pounds through to the end of this century.

Ask the Treasury or officials at DNPN&B what they believe that total legacy figure will be in FY2030/2031,or FY2040/2041, and you can be absolutely guaranteed to get literally no answer at all.

And yet – AND YET – we go on pouring yet more billions into NEW waste-generating nuclear monstrosities like Hinkley C and now Sizewell C.

It’s nearly 50 years since the highly influential Flowers Report was published in 1976. Its single most important recommendation was as follows:


“There should be no commitment to a large programme of nuclear fission power until it has been demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt that a method exists to ensure the safe containment of long-lived, highly radioactive waste for the indefinite future.”    

We are, truly, led by nuclear donkeys.

Meanwhile, back in the real world, all this never-ending filling-up of the industry’s subsidy saucers has massive opportunity costs for what we should really be doing with precious taxpayers’ money.

As in:

  • getting as enthusiastically as possible behind the potential for tidal power (see yesterday’s blog).
  • getting as enthusiastically as possible behind retrofitting and the green economy (see tomorrow’s blog).

I’ll return to the whole question of just how many billions Rachel Reeves could divert from these nuclear sink holes as we get a little closer to the budget in November.

Managing our ‘Energy Legacy’: £85 million (roughly half the total figure).

October 26, 2025 Posted by | business and costs, politics, UK | Leave a comment

Biden hands off Ukraine war to Trump…who now owns it.

Walt Zlotow, West Suburban Peace Coalition, Glen Ellyn IL, 25 Oct 25

President Biden provoked the Russian invasion of Ukraine for 13 months with reckless NATO expansion before Russia said ‘enough’ and pushed back violently. Biden then spent his last 37 months pouring over $150 billion in military aid which proved worthless in achieving Ukrainian victory. All it did was prolong Ukraine’s suffering with hundreds of thousands dead and wounded in a shattered country.

2024 candidate Trump called out this senseless stupidity for what is was, Biden’s war that Trump wouldn’t have provoked had he won in 2020. He further boasted he’d end it on first day of second term.

Tho Trump largely stopped the direct funding that Biden kept squandering till his last sorrowful day, he’s still selling weapons to the European dead-enders UK, France, Germany and others to gift Ukraine. One day Trump says Ukraine should quit without return of a single lost square mile; next day he claims Ukraine can retrieve it all. One day he ponders sending Ukraine Tomahawk missiles likely to provoke nuclear war; next day he tells Ukraine President Zelensky, who flew 4,867 miles to beg for them…’Faggedaboudit.’

Trump’s got bigger war fish to fry than the lost cause of Ukraine. He’s still supporting Israel’s genocidal ethnic cleansing of Gaza, his fake ceasefire notwithstanding. He’s getting ready to bomb Venezuela, not content with just blasting small, unarmed Venezuelan boats to smithereens. He may be planning another round of air strikes on Iran in his quest at regime change and destabilization there.

Ukraine will collapse on Trump’ watch. Biden never wavered in support of a war impossible to win. Trump, however, wavered in his boast he would end Biden’s war, allowing it to continue incurring hundreds of thousands more casualties and more lost Ukrainian territory. By so doing, history will record Trump’s ownership of America’s failed proxy war to weaken Russia at the end, as surely as it records Biden’s ownership at the beginning.

October 26, 2025 Posted by | Ukraine, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Yanis Varoufakis & Grace Blakeley: Why Everything Feels Broken

Yanis Varoufakis & Grace Blakeley: Why Everything Feels Broken

By Grace Blakeley and Yanis Varoufakis / DiEM 25

In this discussion recorded in Athens, Grace Blakeley and Yanis Varoufakis expose how our so-called democracies have been captured by elites. From Gaza to the climate crisis to the collapse of liberal politics, they explore why even “progressive” leaders are absorbed by the system they enter, how neoliberalism has hollowed out collective power, and why only a bottom-up, transnational movement can reclaim democracy for the many. https://scheerpost.com/2025/10/25/yanis-varoufakis-grace-blakeley-why-everything-feels-broken/

October 26, 2025 Posted by | politics international | Leave a comment

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