It was blindingly obvious that Europe wasn’t going to agree to the reparations loan.
It really is time to ditch the dreamers and get back to diplomacy
Ian Proud, Dec 22, 2025, https://thepeacemonger.substack.com/p/it-was-blindingly-obvious-that-europe?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=3221990&post_id=182242521&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
Brussels was the centre of the pro-war universe on 18 December as the European Commission tried to bludgeon the resistance out of Belgian Prime Minister, Bart de Wever. He had stood firm against the plan to use immobilised Russian assets to underwrite the war in Ukraine and never looked likely to budge. He didn’t budge and the European Commission gamble failed in spectacular fashion. This has left European taxpayers on the hook for a Euro 90 billion loan to Ukraine that, in all likelihood, may never be repaid.
De Wever didn’t dig his sturdy defensive positions out of any particular sympathy with Russia. He did so on the basis of a rational analysis of the significant legal and financial risks his country would face should it agree to an illegal expropriation of assets frozen in Belgium.
Any realist observer of events could see that the EU proposal was illegal, tantamount to theft and would never succeed. It was obvious that De Wever wasn’t going to shift his position, despite the procession of Europe’s finest who beat a path to his door in a bid to convince him to adopt a plan that he had already rejected.
The final denouement had been predictable since the idea of giving Ukraine Russia’s frozen assets with no questions asked was first raised in 2024.
The idea didn’t lose its lustre even after the refusal to ask questions of Ukraine’s leaderships has led to billions in foreign aid being pilfered by those in charge. Right up to the wire, the pro-war lobby was screaming from every vantage point for De Wever to stiffen his sinews and do the right thing.
This idea is really rooted in the need to protect the economic security of the European Union the Commission assured everyone. While at the same time calling it a reparations loan, when it was obvious to impartial observers that the money would simply be tipped into a massive gold rimmed hole of Ukrainian state finances.
That hole, by the way, will remain gaping for as long as the war continues, and for some years after it ends. And the loan the Commission has been forced to take out will only cover two years of budgetary shortfalls in Ukraine, with no one asking who would pay from 2028. Unless the war ends, European taxpayers will have to pay to keep Ukraine on life support.
And they’ll have to pay more than the Commission is letting on as the loan agreed last night will only cover two thirds of Ukraine’s financing needs, and when it runs out the Ukrainians will be back to ask for more.
Continue readingNotes On Bondi Beach And Free Speech
Caitlin Johnstone, Dec 22, 2025, https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/notes-on-bondi-beach-and-free-speech?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=182280999&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
The dumbest thing we are being asked to believe today is that pro-Palestinian protests caused the Bondi shooting. It’s self-evidently moronic. No one sincerely believes it. They’re just pretending to believe it to get protests banned and criticism of Israel outlawed.
Nobody actually believes pro-Palestine protests caused the Bondi shooting. They’re just pretending to believe that to promote the interests of a genocidal apartheid state.
Nobody actually believes “globalize the intifada” means “kill all Jews”. They’re just pretending to believe that to promote the interests of a genocidal apartheid state.
Nobody actually believes pro-Palestine demonstrations are “hate marches” or that pro-Palestine speech is “hate speech”. They’re just pretending to believe that to promote the interests of a genocidal apartheid state.
Nobody actually believes there’s a soaring epidemic of antisemitism in our society that is caused by anti-genocide demonstrations. They’re just pretending to believe that to promote the interests of a genocidal apartheid state.
Nobody actually believes opposing the state of Israel is the same as hating Jews. They’re just pretending to believe that to promote the interests of a genocidal apartheid state.
Israel supporters are liars and manipulators. They support genocide and apartheid. Of course they will lie about what they believe, and pretend to think things that they don’t actually think. They’re defending a mass atrocity that can only be defended using lies. They’re bad people. Bad people do bad things
It’s crazy how the Bondi shooters got radicalized by the anti-genocide protests from 2023 to 2025 and then invented a time machine and went back to 2019 to join ISIS.
That’s the claim that’s being made when people say the mass shooting in Sydney was caused by pro-Palestine protests, you know. In 2019 Naveed Akram was on an Australian intelligence watch list because of his ties to an Islamic State terror cell, so the claim that the Gaza protests caused or incited the shooting necessarily requires an element of time travel. Call their story “The Terrorists and the Time Machine”.
We’re being asked to believe that ISIS were a bunch of cuddly wuddly snuggle bears until Australians started protesting an active genocide.
Continue readingFukushima Now (29) – Part 1: What Constitutes Responsibility?
by Citizens’ Nuclear Information Center · December 21, 2025, By Yamaguchi Yukio, https://cnic.jp/english/?p=8747
n the 14 and a half years that have passed since March 2011, the cesium-137 that was released has finally made it to the halfway point of its half-life. After 90 years, its radioactive concentration will have diminished to one-eighth its initial level, and after 300 years, one-thousandth. According to the current medium-to-long-term roadmap, decommissioning measures should be completed around 2041 to 2051. Even by then, however, the radioactivity will have decreased only by a little more than half. Not even what these “decommissioning measures” are supposed to include has been decided on yet.
In places with serious radioactive contamination, nobody will be able to live there for another century. The area thus affected is said to exceed 300 square kilometers. The first sample of fuel debris taken from the Unit 2 reactor weighed 0.7 grams, and the second, 0.2 grams. The information gained from their analysis is just as miniscule. Meanwhile, the total amount of fuel debris in the Unit 1-3 reactors is estimated at 880 tons. Whether it will be necessary to retrieve all of it to begin with is a matter of great contention.
Idogawa Katsutaka, who was mayor of Futaba Town at the time of the accident, evacuated the entire town to protect everyone there from radioactive exposure, leading many of them as far as 250 kilometers away to Kazo City, Saitama Prefecture, near Tokyo, where they took refuge in a gymnasium that had belonged to the town’s former Kisai High School. This was just one of the municipalities that evacuated from Fukushima Prefecture to escape radioactivity. The town’s population totaled 6,971 people overall, of whom 187 took refuge at the former Kisai High School (as of September 18, 2012). Details of their evacuation were relayed widely around the world by the 2012 film “Nuclear Nation” (Japanese: “Futaba kara Toku Hanarete,” directed by Funahashi Atsushi, music by Sakamoto Ryuichi).
As of 1 August 2025, the registered population of Futaba Town had dwindled to 5,157 in all, of whom 59 percent were living within Fukushima Prefecture and 41 percent were still evacuees elsewhere among 43 of Japan’s 47 prefectures. Idogawa’s hope is, “We want somehow to go home, all of us, together, to a safe hometown.” The number of returnees so far, however, is a mere 87 people (as of August 2025).
■ Idogawa filed suit in May 2015 against the government of Japan and Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO), seeking 755 million yen in damages. A decision on the case was rendered on 30 July 2025 in Tokyo District Court, finding no responsibility on the part of the government, but ordering TEPCO to pay compensation of about 100 million yen for damages to real estate and compensation for the evacuations.
The reasoning behind this decision was that even if the government had required TEPCO to take measures against a possible tsunami, there was a good likelihood that a similar accident could have occurred anyway, so the government bore no responsibility for it. This followed the precedent of a Supreme Court’s ruling on 17 June 2022 denying the government’s responsibility.
Nor did they recognize Idogawa’s claim that his health had been damaged by his exposure in the course of evacuating. This angered Idogawa, who called it a terrible decision against a person who had faithfully fallen in line with Japan’s atomic energy administration.
I think what caused this tragic nuclear accident, unprecedented in scale, was Japan’s fundamentally flawed nuclear power system, adopted by the government in the name of “peaceful use of the atom.” It can only be called a huge transgression by the politicians, bureaucrats, scientists, and business leaders of that time on account of their lackadaisical inattention to safety.
The theory of plate tectonics teaches us not to expect to see broad regions of stability, free from concerns about earthquakes, tsunamis or volcanic activity in the Japanese archipelago. We are only part way toward clarifying the causes and circumstances of the Fukushima nuclear accident. Despite this, the government is ignoring the lessons of history and clearly announcing a “nuclear renaissance” in its 7th Strategic Energy Plan. Even if it intends to “put safety first” as a condition, it cannot create safety measures if it has yet to elucidate the causes of the accident. This is no way to ensure “safety first.” It’s a contradiction.
Establishing nuclear power plants in the Japanese archipelago in itself is a mistake. The first chairman of Japan’s Nuclear Regulation Authority publicly stated that even if the new safety standards created in 2012 were fulfilled, it would not guarantee safety. Even now, the phrase “safety first” commonly uttered by nuclear proponents is a fiction and can only be called irresponsible.
Revealed: Trump’s secret $264 million plot to put nuclear doomsday weapons in Britain to face down Putin
Daily Mail, By NICK ALLEN, US NEWS EDITOR (POLITICS), 22 December 2025
The true scale of President Donald Trump‘s ambitions to turn the U.K. into a potential nuclear launchpad has been revealed.
A massive $264 million plan to overhaul a Royal Air Force base in the English countryside includes knocking down at least half a dozen existing buildings, setting up secure intelligence facilities, protecting the surrounding area against enemy electronic pulse attacks, and sending over 200 American personnel, according to Pentagon funding proposals.
It represents confirmation that American nuclear weapons will return to Britain for the first time since President Barack Obama withdrew them 17 years ago.
However, despite widespread speculation that U.S. nuclear weapons have already arrived in the U.K, the documents indicate it will not happen for several years.
The idea that they had already been sent gained steam on July 17 when a massive U.S. Air Force C-17 Globemaster III arrived at RAF Lakenheath in Suffolk.
The aircraft had been tracked by flight data sites traveling 10 hours from Kirtland Air Force base in New Mexico, where America stores its nuclear arsenal.
Experts speculated that it may have been carrying B61-12 nuclear gravity bombs, each with a potential power bigger than the weapon dropped on Hiroshima in 1945.
Lakenheath is home to the U.S Air Force’s 48th Fighter Wing, known as Liberty Wing, which flies F-35A aircraft capable of being fitted with B61-12s.
However, detailed Pentagon assessments of Lakenheath’s suitability as a nuclear base, reviewed by the Daily Mail, make clear that it is far from ready.
Bizarrely, one of the reasons given was that some of those involved in the U.S. nuclear operation would not have quick access to a toilet during an Armageddon-style scenario.
The existing building that would be used as the primary command post is in ‘adequate condition but beyond its useful life,’ the documents said.
It said controllers within the ‘Emergency Action Cell’ would ‘not have direct, restricted access to a restroom’ in the current facility.
In addition, ‘cooling and air filtration’ was not good enough to support a SCIF – a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility – which is a high-security room used by the U.S. government and military to discuss extremely sensitive classified intelligence.
The Lakenheath operation is described as a ‘Surety’ mission, which is a term the Pentagon uses when discussing the security and safety of nuclear weapons and associated facilities.
The Air Force’s budget estimates for the 2026 financial year suggests $104 million will be needed for a ‘Surety command post.’
It would house facilities including a control center for Air Force Nuclear Command, Control and Communications……………………………………………………………………………………………
The U.S., rather than NATO, is expected to pay for developments at Lakenheath because it is ‘necessary to complete the project in the timeframe required by United States military commanders.’
Construction of the command post is expected to start in August 2027 and be completed by July 2031.
A separate operations compound is priced at $149 million and will involve demolishing half a dozen existing buildings and creating an armory with massively thick concrete walls, and possible storage for anti-tank weapons.
‘This project is required to provide enhanced security capabilities supporting the potential stationing of specialized weapons at Royal Air Force Lakenheath,’ the project outline said.
‘Specialized weapons surety includes materiel, personnel, and procedures, contributing to the safeguarding and reliability of specialized weapons, and to the assurance that there will be no specialized weapon accidents, incidents, unauthorized weapon detonation, or degradation in performance at the target.’
The budget also details the addition of over 200 U.S. security personnel at the base.
A current building to be used by the first security personnel is said to be in ‘deteriorated condition.’
It ‘cannot accommodate the additional weapons, ammunition, and equipment associated with the increase in manpower required for the potential Surety Beddown mission.’
The problems include asbestos, lead based paint, poor ventilation, and ‘improper sanitary sewer drainage.’
Improvements are needed to ‘accommodate the potential Surety mission beddown’ and without them, security forces personnel would not be able to implement the minimum response times, safeguarding, and assurance procedures required for specialized weapons.’
Construction of the second compound is not expected to start until 2028 and finish in 2031…………………………………………………………….
Funding documents show an additional $11 million is expected to be spent on electronic security systems, bringing the total for the nuclear mission at Lakenheath to $264 million.
B61-12 nuclear bombs, which are 12ft long and weight about 800 pounds – are a staple of the U.S. arsenal.
They are unguided ‘gravity bombs’ dropped over targets and are equipped with four fins to increase accuracy to within 30 meters of the target.
They are ‘tactical’ nuclear weapons intended for use against specific military targets, such as wiping out battlefield units or bases, rather than for leveling cities.
However, their power can still be three times the size of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.
The warhead used in B61-12s has a variety of options for how much explosive power it can yield with the minimum being 0.3 kilotons and the maximum 50 kilotons
The bomb that destroyed Hiroshima in 1945 hade a yield of roughly 15 kilotons.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer confirmed this month that the U.K. is set to buy 12 F-35A fighter jets from the U.S.
The U.K. will receive its jets at the end of this decade and it will be the first time it has had an air-launched tactical nuclear weapon since 1998.
While it will own the jets, the U.S. will retain ownership of the nuclear weapons they come with.
It means the U.K. will not be able to deliver a nuclear strike with those bombs without explicit approval from Washington…………… https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15375073/Trumps-secret-264-million-plot-nuclear-doomsday-weapons-Britain-face-Putin.html
If You’re Not Free To Oppose A Genocide, Your Society Is Not Free
Caitlin Johnstone, Dec 21, 2025, https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/if-youre-not-free-to-oppose-a-genocide?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=182228375&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
If the right to free speech does not include the right to oppose an active genocide using strong and unmitigated language, then there is no freedom of speech.
This is exactly the sort of thing that freedom of speech is intended for: times when the government is doing something wrong which needs to be ferociously opposed. That’s the primary reason it’s an enshrined value in our society. Freedom of speech is for holding the powerful to account.
If you only have freedom of speech when you’re agreeing with your government and saying nothing which inconveniences the powerful, then Saudi Arabia has free speech. Every tyrannical regime that has ever existed has had freedom of speech by those standards. You don’t measure a society’s freedom by how much its citizenry are allowed to agree with their government, you measure it by how much they’re allowed to disagree.
And right now we are being told we’re not allowed to disagree. We’re being told the protests need to stop, the anti-genocide chants need to be criminalized, and everyone needs to shut up and obey — all justified by the completely baseless narrative that the words and actions of pro-Palestinian activists were somehow responsible a terrible massacre that was committed in Sydney last week.
And these policies just so happen to serve the interests of the very same western powers whose genocide-enabling actions were being forcefully opposed these last two years. Government officials constantly being protested and questioned about their facilitation of Israel’s genocidal atrocities. Politicians who are consistently confronted by anti-genocide demonstrators during their public appearances. Wealthy arms manufacturers whose profit margins are being harmed by direct action from activist groups. Plutocratic media institutions who are becoming more and more discredited in the public eye as the Gaza holocaust exposes them all. Billionaires whose empires are built upon the political status quo that gave rise to the genocide in question.
If the powerful are shutting down speech rights to advance their own interests in your society, then your society is not meaningfully different than the dictatorships the western world tries to contrast itself with. All our stories about living in a free society have been just that: stories. Fairy tales.
That’s what they’re telling us with this mad rush to stomp out freedom of speech this past week. They are telling us that we do not live in the kind of society we were taught about in school. They are telling us that the only reason we were allowed to speak as we pleased in the years leading up to the Gaza genocide is because we were a bunch of compliant sheep who were not meaningfully challenging the interests of the powerful, and now that we are meaningfully challenging them the facade of freedom and democracy is falling away.
As Frank Zappa once said, “The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it’s profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theater.”
Global nuclear arms control under pressure in 2026
The fragile global legal framework for nuclear weapons control faces
further setbacks in 2026, eroding guardrails to avoid a nuclear crisis. The
first half of the year will see two key events: the US-Russia bilateral
treaty, New START, expires on February 5, and in April, New York hosts the
Review Conference (RevCon) of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of
Nuclear Weapons (NPT) — the cornerstone of global nuclear security
frameworks.
The RevCon, held every four to five years, is meant to keep the
NPT alive. But during the last two sessions, the 191 signatory states
failed to agree on a final document, and experts expect the same outcome in
April.
Daily Mail 22nd Dec 2025, https://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/afp/article-15405099/Global-nuclear-arms-control-pressure-2026.html
EDF faces the financial equation: Bernard Fontana is considering massive asset sales to generate 20 billion euros
December 16, BY Emma Ray
Barely installed at the helm of EDF, Bernard Fontana is embarking on a
major strategic shift. Faced with unprecedented investment needs and an
already substantial debt, the new CEO is preparing a sweeping adaptation
plan aimed at generating nearly €20 billion in financial flexibility over
three years.
This strategy comes as EDF’s financial situation continues to
be a cause for concern. At the end of 2024, net debt reached €54,3
billion, a level deemed worrying by the French Court of Auditors.
Entrevue 16th Dec 2025, https://entrevue.fr/en/societe/edf-face-a-lequation-financiere-bernard-fontana-envisage-des-cessions-massives-pour-degager-20-milliards-deuros/
Trump row threatens to delay Britain’s nuclear renaissance.
Concerns mount for power plant investment as US pauses tech trade deal.
Matt Oliver Industry Editor. James Titcomb Technology Editor. Matthew Field Senior Technology Reporter, 17 December 2025
Britain’s plans to usher in a “golden age” of nuclear power are at risk of being delayed amid a row with Donald Trump over the UK-US trade deal. Campaigners raised concerns that new projects face being hampered after the US paused the tech prosperity deal, in which Mr Trump and Sir Keir Starmer vowed to deepen co-operation on nuclear energy.
It was accompanied by pledges of investment in Britain by US-based X-Energy and
Centrica, the owner of British Gas, as well as the American nuclear company
Last Energy and the London port operator DP World.
Some nuclear industry
sources played down the dispute on Wednesday as a “negotiating tactic”,
but others said it could slow the deployment of American-designed mini
reactors in the UK if it was not resolved. It comes amid growing
frustration in Washington over Britain’s Online Safety Act, which critics
claim will stifle free speech and stymie American artificial intelligence
companies. Sam Dumitriu, of the pro-nuclear campaign group Britain Remade,
said: “This will undoubtedly concern Britain’s nuclear communities, who
have been promised new projects and the jobs that came with them.
Telegraph 17th Dec 2025, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/12/17/trump-row-threatens-to-delay-britains-nuclear-renaissance/
The Problem with Machado: Assange Sues the Nobel Foundation.
21 December 2025 Dr Binoy Kampmark, https://theaimn.net/the-problem-with-machado-assange-sues-the-nobel-foundation/
The Swedish police have promised it will go nowhere, but the attempt by WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to draw attention to the inappropriateness of María Corina Machado as a Nobel Peace Prize recipient raises a few salient matters. On December 17, Assange submitted a criminal complaint to the Swedish Economic Crime Authority and Swedish Crimes Unit. The legal complaint is directed against the Nobel Foundation, arguing that the pending transfer of 11 million SEK ($US 1.18 million) and the award of the prize medal to Machado violates the terms of Alfred Nobel’s will of November 27, 1895.
The will, binding under the terms of Swedish law, stipulates that the award of the prize and monies be given to a person who, during the preceding year, “conferred the greatest benefit to humankind” in pursuing “the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.”
Given that the peace prize laureates are selected by the Norwegian Nobel Committee, seeking to hold them accountable for their poor choice of awardee might have been a better starting point. But the complaint is alert to this, noting that the Swedish funds administrators have a fiduciary duty when it comes to disbursing the funds. “The Norwegian committee’s selection does not grant them criminal immunity.” Indeed, it was up to the administrators to consider such a decision made “in flagrant conflict with the explicit purpose of the will, or where there is evidence that the awardee will use or is using the prize to promote or facilitate the crime of aggression, crimes against humanity, or war crimes.”
Whatever the administrative minutiae, Assange’s effort is worth noting. Machado has become the unsavoury alternative to the Venezuelan incumbent, Nicolás Maduro, a figure who refused to accept the electoral returns for his opposing number, Edmundo González, in July 2024. González was essentially a pick by Machado, who has emerged as the empurpled, plumed candidate seeking Maduro’s overthrow. That she was the 2025 choice of prize recipient was galling enough for 21 Norwegian peace organisations to boycott the ceremony and prompt Nobel Peace Prize laureate Adolfo Pérez Esquivel to remark that, “Giving the prize to someone who calls for foreign invasion is a mockery of Alfred Nobel’s will.”
Machado has made no secret of her approval of the buildup of US military personnel (around 15,000) off the coast of Venezuela since August, including a nuclear-powered attack submarine and the world’s largest aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford. She has “incited and defended the Trump administration’s use of lethal military force and preparation for war.” The US military has already committed, charges Assange, “undeniable war crimes, including the lethal targeting of civilian boats and survivors at sea, which has killed at least 95 people.” (President Donald Trump has liberally designated such individuals narco-terrorists.) The Central Intelligence Agency has been authorised to conduct covert actions in Venezuela. Parts of the Venezuelan military have been classified by the Trump administration as a Foreign Terrorist Organisation (FTO).
Since Assange submitted his complaint, Trump has ordered a complete blockade of sanctioned oil tankers entering or exiting Venezuela. The US has thus far seized two tankers, though the authorities have failed to distinguish which tankers are sanctioned or otherwise. The Panama-flagged Centuries, for instance, was not officially sanctioned by the US, showing that this administration is not one to be, as US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth put it, legally tepid.
A list of incitements to war by Machado are enumerated. They include the dedication of the award to President Trump for having “Venezuela in where it should be, in terms of a priority for United States national security”; a heartfelt endorsement of US military escalation as maybe being “the only way” in dealing with Maduro; warm appreciation for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s “decisions and resolute actions in the course of the [Gaza] war” and the endorsement of extrajudicial killing of civilian boats in the Caribbean Sea as “visionary”. Hardly the résumé for a peacemaker.
Assange argues that the failure of the funds administrators to stop pertinent disbursements to Machado, in light of the material submitted in the complaint, “indicates ongoing criminal intent.” Such funds aided “a conspiracy to murder civilians,” violated national sovereignty through using military force and advanced resource theft (Machado’s promised reward to US firms of oil and gas resources amounting to US$1.7 trillion). In doing so, Nobel’s will and charitable purpose had been violated through “gross misappropriation, aiding international crimes […] and conspiracy.” They also breached Sweden’s obligations under the Rome Statute. By way of remedy, the “immediate freezing of all remaining funds and a full criminal investigation lest the Nobel Peace Prize be permanently converted from an instrument of peace into an instrument of war” was sought.
In an email to AFP, Swedish detective inspector Rikard Ekman showed little interest in taking the matter up. “As I have decided not to initiate a preliminary investigation, no investigation will be conducted on the basis of the complaint.”
While this complaint remains a purist’s attempt to return the peace prize to a more conventional reading (Assange thinks the UN Secretary General António Guterres and UN human rights chief Volker Turk eminently more suitable candidates), the practice of awarding this inflated award to figures of ill-repute and sullied reputation will be hard to shake. The ghost of former US security advisor and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, a man lauded for bringing peace to Indochina when he covertly indulged illegal bombing campaigns, not to mention war crimes, torture and an assortment of other blood sports, continues to loom large. It might well be time to abolish the Nobel Peace Prize altogether, and the committee responsible for it. It was never a strong indicator of merit, even if it offers the chance for some very dark humour for the reptiles to revel in.
Biodiversity Net Gain: can developers be trusted?
Developers seem rather too fickle concerning their obligations to protect the environment, and the situation may be about to get worse
Rachel Fulcher, 21 December 2025
During the consultations for Sizewell C, it became clear
from the documents put forward by EDF, owner of this pine forest, that the
company considered the plantation to be of low biodiversity value.
They failed to take into account the fact that the rides between the trees
supported several species so rare that they are protected by law. Looking
into it in further detail I came across Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG), which
specifies that developers must provide a minimum of 10% net gain for nature
in addition to compensating for any damage caused.
Using the Statutory
Biodiversity Metric devised by the Department for Environment, Food and
Rural Affairs (Defra), the biodiversity value of the land prior to
development is calculated in units according to size, type of habitat, its
current condition, ecological distinctiveness and location. The proposed
replacement and enhancement habitats are then also calculated and must show
the necessary improvement.
Ideally these should be in the same area, but if
this is not possible then they can be elsewhere. As a last resort, builders
can simply buy habitat units from conservation organisations or even obtain
biodiversity credits from the government. In the first instance, however,
they must avoid harm – but do they?
A conversation with a Suffolk
ecologist revealed his profound disapproval of use of this metric,
considering the method to be ‘damaging’. He feels that it gives
builders a licence to destroy the environment, including protected sites
and species, so long as they offer something more elsewhere. However, some
non-governmental organisations (NGOs) have accepted BNG on the basis that
something for nature is better than nothing.
East Anglia Bylines 21st Dec 2025, https://eastangliabylines.co.uk/environment/biodiversity-net-gain-can-developers-be-trusted/
Ethics matter more than ever – even in Israel
19 December 25, https://theaimn.net/ethics-matter-more-than-ever-even-in-israel/
Who’d have thought, in this time of crisis, lies and propaganda, that it might be the Jerusalem Post that showed us an ethical direction?
And, on another matter of ethics – the Jerusalem Post, again.
I’m pretty used to the pro-Zionist propaganda that spills out from the Israeli media, the American media, and the Australian media.
I don’t know if it’s Hannukah, Christmas, or what, but in the usual cacophony of news and opinion, – that normally unfashionable subject of ethics is now standing out.
The Jerusalem Post spelt out its horror at the new, and murderous symbolism, of the lapel image now worn by ultranationalist Israeli politicians. Closely resembling the previous symbol, which called for the return of the Israeli hostages, their new symbol calls for continued killing of Palestinians, as the lapel image morphs from a ribbon into a noose.
A golden noose around Israel’s soul – says the paper – “The golden noose goes far beyond poor taste. It represents a theology of death, a reverence for vengeance that distorts the face of Judaism and deals a severe blow to Israeli society.”
“Jews around the world would be hard-pressed to defend and embrace the Jewish state.“
And indeed, this noose-wearing thing might backfire – as Jews in Israel and beyond reflect on the ethics of the Netanyahu government’s war on Palestinians.
Almost simultaneously, came the news of the massacre of Jews at Bondi Beach. The mainstream corporate news outlets have, predictably, latched on to this, to engender more vengefulness and hatred, and to blame Australia’s Prime Minister for his support of Palestinian state rights.
There is much coverage and genuine concern for the victims of this cruel outrage and their families. In amongst this, some sentimental coverage of the brave man who tackled an armed killer. As the ABC pointed out, media coverage treated this man as an oddity – as being a Muslim, one would not expect such decency. – a media attitude that is subtly Islamophobic.
” Ahmed al-Ahmed a 43-year-old Sydney fruit shop owner and father of two, moved toward the attacker, wrapped him from behind, wrestled away the long gun, and forced the shooter to retreat. He was shot and hospitalized, but his split-second decision is widely credited with preventing even greater carnage.”
And commented – “There is something profoundly Hanukkah about that moment.”
The Post goes on to reflect on those non-Jews of history, who risked everything to save Jews, – Raoul Wallenberg. Oskar Schindler. Chiune Sugihara and more
“These stories are not only about the Holocaust, but they are also about moral clarity under pressure, the choice to see a fellow human being and refuse to look away.”
This man’s courage and generosity of spirit has impressed people world-wide, and his actions have been praised in the media, cutting through the general tone of anger and hatred
The author, ZVIKA KLEIN, reminds that Hannukah means “a demand that human beings choose decency over cruelty“
Which is pretty much what Christmas is supposed to mean, too.
While the merchants of hate, revenge, and political opportunism hold sway in the corporate media, voices for compassion and decency are being heard too. These are hopes to cling to for the coming year, and bring some positive meaning to Hannukah and Christmas,
After the First 70,669 Deaths
By Patrick Lawrence / Consortium News, December 19, 2025
I take the 15 victims at Bondi Beach and divide them by the 71,000 deaths in Gaza as of this writing. I get a fraction of 0.0002143.
I read in a BBC report that the victims of the Dec. 14 shooting at Bondi Beach, along the coast a few miles from central Sydney, were “generous, joyful and talented.”
These were Jews who had gathered, a sizable group, to celebrate Hanukkah under Australia’s summer sun. Immediately this is cast across the West as a case of out-of-control, come-from-nowhere anti–Semitism having nothing to do with the conduct of “the Jewish state.”
Two of the victims, Sofia and Boris Gurman, “were people of deep kindness, quiet strength and unwavering care for others,” the family said in a statement the Australian Broadcasting Corporation published Tuesday.
I read that Reuven Morrison, another of the 15 victims, was “the most beautiful, generous man who had a gorgeous smile that would light up the room.” I read that the friends of Dan Elkayam, a French Jew marking the holiday in Australia, “described him as a down-to-earth, happy-to-lucky individual who was warmly embraced by those he met.”
You can read about these victims of the Bondi Beach shooting, too. The ABC published commemorations of 12 of the 15. There are photographs, the intimate remembrances of those who knew the deceased, some boilerplate describing how Australia’s state broadcaster is reporting the story. The New York Times published similar items on 13 of the victims under the headline, “What to Know About the Victims of the Bondi Beach Shooting.”
The ABC report is here, and The New York Times’s is here. If you study them briefly you find the themes common to both. Individuation is the essential point. We must know the names and see the faces of all of those killed. Innocence and virtue are the other running themes.
The Times ran a similar feature after Sept. 11, 2001. Under the headline, “Profiles in Grief,” it published thumbnail biographies of the 2,977 victims of the World Trade Center attacks, a half-dozen or so a day all through that strange autumn. I studied those short pieces carefully, and it is the same now as then: Everyone is uniquely himself or herself, everyone innocent, everyone generous, everyone happy and caring. Every life precious, in a word.
I do not know how to continue writing this commentary other than bluntly and honestly. The Bondi Beach killings bring us to a transformative moment and warrant no less.
The 15 people who perished at Bondi last Sunday — and there may be more casualties to come among those hospitalized with wounds — did not deserve to die at the hands of a father-and-son act reportedly inspired by the remnants of the Islamic State. These were senseless murders by any conceivable judgment — so senseless I am stating the obvious by saying so.
The Dishonesty of Official Grief
But I cannot enter into the responses officials and the media serving them have urged incessantly since last weekend. Out of the question for any number of reasons, chief among them the dishonesty at the core of what I may as well call “official grief.”
Read in the larger context of these awful events, the obsessive humanization of the Bondi Beach victims is an upside-down exercise in dehumanization. This is first, straight off the top. Jewish lives count, white lives count, names, faces, generous smiles — all this counts.
But the names, faces and lives of those the Zionist regime has terrorized and brutalized for the past two years or eight decades, depending on how you reckon history: No, no need for any of this because they do not count.
This is an obscenity, in my view — obscene for what it is and because it has a 500-year history. Since the opening of the imperial era in the late 15th century, the West has aggrandized itself with its never-to-be-questioned claims to civilization, decency, law and moral superiority, while the rest of the world consists of unruly, racially inferior, not-quite-human barbarians. The horrors of the mission civilisatrice — inhumanity in the name of humanity — were the inevitable outcome and so they remain.
Indulge in official grief as it is now more or less forced upon us and you are a 21st century participant in this self-serving… as I say, this obscenity. I do not see that it is any more complicated.
The New York Times published an especially egregious case in point a day after the attacks. “I no longer want to hear, after a mass shooting, of the remarkable ways a community came together,” Sharon Brous, a rabbi in Los Angeles, wrote in the paper’s opinion section. “I don’t want platitudes and pieties. I want justice…. I don’t want to celebrate resiliency. I want reform” — reform, that is, to combat the anti–semitism she understands to be the beginning and the end of the Bondi Beach story.
Rabbi Brous went on to explain that, post–Bondi, she struggles against despair. But she found great humanity, on the other hand, in “the vibrancy of the worldwide Jewish community that immediately rallied in solidarity, reminding us that when one limb is struck the whole body is unwell.”
Simply typing these brief passages leaves me incredulous. Justice, reform, rallies in solidarity with the 15, nothing for the 71,000 (the Gaza Health Ministry’s count at this writing), who evidently do not even enter Rabbi Brous’s head. And the Zionist terror machine’s daily strikes in Gaza and the West Bank as we speak? No, nothing, for they are not part of any “whole body,” however this is conceived.
Yes, I can grieve for those who died last Sunday, but it is a question of recognition, of keeping things in proportion. Here is my admittedly simplified formula: I take the 15 victims at Bondi Beach and divide them by the 71,000 deaths in Gaza as of this writing. I get a fraction of 0.0002143 and this is the extent of my grief for the 15.
I have called the Bondi Beach attack transformative. Two reasons.
One, these awful events mark a major step in the erasure not only of history and memory but of sheer cognition. I have heard or read no mention from any mainstream quarter of the campaign of terror and dehumanization the Zionist state now wages not just in Gaza and in the West Bank but against Muslim populations across much of West Asia.
This is hardly new. Apartheid Israel and its too-numerous, too-powerful enablers have sought to erase and otherwise obscure the truth of the Zionist project since there was a Zionist project to speak of. But Bondi Beach looks set not merely to normalize the human mind’s incapacity to see, think and judge but to enforce this damage to the collective consciousness by means of those “reforms” Rabbi Brous proposes.
Two, Zionists and their fellow travelers instantly began to use the events of last Sunday to condemn the Palestinian cause altogether. This is again nothing new.
Utter “From the river to the sea…” or “Globalize the intifada,” and you risk your job, your professorship, your visa; arrest in Britain; profess support for Palestine Action, the British protest group, and you will be arrested and tried under the U.K.’s draconian terrorism laws.
But Bondi Beach already serves to license Zionists to advance a blanket condemnation of the Palestinian cause. Predictably enough, the Zionist-supervised New York Times gives us another case in point. ………………………………………………………………………………..
Judaism Versus Zionism
Just as I was thinking through the events at Bondi Beach and wondering why my sympathies came to 0.0002143 percent of what they were officially supposed to be, I began reading the book Yakov Rabkin, the distinguished professor of history at the University of Montreal, just published.
Israel in Palestine: Jewish Rejection of Palestine (Aspect Editions), is a brief, superbly lucid essay on the difference between Judaism and Zionism — the former embodying an excellently humanist tradition and the latter its violent perversion into a limitlessly vicious ethno-nationalist ideology.
Some pages in I came to this sentence:
“Across Israel and worldwide, Jews grapple with contradictions between the Judaism they profess and the Zionist ideology that has in fact taken hold of them.”
This simply stated reality landed squarely. I immediately went back to those brief biographies the Australian Broadcasting Corp. and The New York Times just published. Yes, I thought. Generous, kind toward others, compassionate: They put the victims exactly in the Judaic tradition as Rabkin described it.
Rabkin gives an excellent précis of the long history of animosity most Jews felt toward Zionism during its emergent phase in the late 19th and early 20th century. They, especially Jews residing in Palestine prior to the arrival of the first Zionist settlers, who lived peaceably side-by side with indigenous Arabs, wanted nothing to do with it.
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. the possibility of a Mossad provocation cannot be dismissed. The historical record suggests this. (Mossad is now assisting Australian investigators into the attack). And given the use Zionists make of the Bondi Beach events, the cui bono argument cannot be thrown out of court.
Already there are Zionists in Australia and elsewhere asserting that anyone who has until now stood for the Palestinian cause bears responsible for the gruesome events at an Australian beach last Sunday. Reflecting this sentiment—and the political influence of militant Zionism in Australia—federal and state governments are now considering legislation that would, among much else, allow authorities to ban demonstrations and even speech in support of a free Palestine.
I take the opposite view as to where responsibility lies: Mossad op or no Mossad op, it is fairer to say it is Zionists who are responsible, directly or by way of the war they wage against Palestinians — and against morality and ordinary decency, against our public discourse, our laws and civil liberties, our consciences, our faculties of reason — for the deaths at Bondi Beach.
Post–Bondi, it follows immediately, it is ever more imperative that Jews the world over declare themselves either as Jews in the Judaic tradition or as Zionists. The urgency of mass denunciations of Zionism could hardly be more evident. https://consortiumnews.com/2025/12/19/patrick-lawrence-after-the-first-70669-deaths/
‘Huge conflict of interest’: Trump’s $600 million windfall after nuclear deal.
ByMatt O’Brien and Jennifer McDermott, Sydney Morning Herald, December 19, 2025
The parent company of US President Donald Trump’s Truth Social media platform is merging with a fusion power company, an unusual pairing of the Trump name with a futuristic clean energy venture that aims to power the next wave of artificial intelligence. Trump Media & Technology announced its merger with TAE Technologies in an all-stock deal that the companies said was valued at more than $US6 billion ($9.1 billion).
The combined company says it plans to find a site and begin construction next year on the “world’s first utility-scale fusion power plant,” with aims to provide the electricity needed for artificial intelligence.
Nuclear fusion is seen as a promising solution to climate change caused by burning fossil fuels, but one that is a long way off compared to today’s clean technologies like wind and solar. It will need huge investment as well as regulation to advance, which makes Trump’s ties a major conflict, said Richard Painter, a former White House ethics lawyer in the George W. Bush administration.
“He’s jumping into this industry just like he jumped into cryptocurrency a couple of years ago,” Painter said. “Just as the United States government is gonna get all involved in it. And it’s so obvious that there’s a huge conflict of interest.”
Devin Nunes, the Republican congressman who resigned in 2021 to become the chief executive of Trump Media, will be co-CEO of the new company with TAE CEO Michl Binderbauer.
Shares of Trump Media & Technology have tumbled 70 per cent this year but jumped 34 per cent in afternoon trading on Thursday.
Trump is by far the largest stakeholder in Trump Media, owning 41 per cent of all outstanding shares. The share surge has added about $US400 million ($605 million) to Trump’s net worth, according to Forbes.
Backed by Google and other investors, TAE is a private company and the merger with Trump Media would create one of the first publicly traded nuclear fusion companies.
“We’re taking a big step forward toward a revolutionary technology that will cement America’s global energy dominance for generations,” Nunes said in a prepared statement.
TAE focuses on nuclear fusion, a technology that combines two light atomic nuclei to form a single heavier one. It releases enormous amount of energy, a process that occurs on the sun and other stars, according to the United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency.
TAE and Trump Media shareholders will each own approximately 50 per cent of the combined company.
In October, the US Department of Energy released what it called a “road map” for fusion technology, with the aim of fostering “a burgeoning fusion private sector industry in the US toward maturity on the most rapid timeline.” A number of tech companies, including Google, Microsoft and OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman, have shown interest in fusion technology as a way of powering the energy-hungry data centres needed to build and run their AI products…………………………………………
Holland said the Trump administration has said it strongly supports fusion, but has yet to make any new financial support available.
In the association’s surveys of the industry, companies are saying they expect to see fusion energy on the electricity grid in the 2030s, with most saying they expect it in the first half of the 2030s, Holland said.
TAE and Trump Media say the transaction values each TAE common stock at $US53.89 per share.
At closing, Trump Media & Technology Group will be the holding company for Truth Social and TAE, along with its subsidiaries TAE Power Solutions and TAE Life Sciences. https://www.smh.com.au/business/companies/huge-conflict-of-interest-trump-media-to-merge-with-nuclear-fusion-company-in-9-1-billion-deal-20251219-p5nowl.html
Fearing risks in using Russian assets, EU agrees €90bn Ukraine war loan.
Friday, 19 December 2025, https://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2025/12/19/760887/EU-agrees-%E2%82%AC90bn-Ukraine-a-legal-fears-block-use-of-Russian-assets
EU leaders have agreed to provide Ukraine with a €90 billion ($98 billion) loan backed by the bloc’s common budget, while shelving plans to use frozen Russian state assets amid legal and financial concerns and repeated warnings from Moscow.
The agreement was reached early on Friday after overnight talks at a summit in Brussels, as the EU sought to secure funding to continue the war in Ukraine over the next two years.
Under the deal, the EU will raise funds through loans guaranteed by its shared budget, abandoning proposals backed by some member states to leverage around €200 billion in Russian central bank assets frozen in the bloc.
The plan failed to win consensus, largely due to objections from Belgium, where most of the assets are held. Belgian officials warned of legal risks and the potential for retaliatory measures that would disproportionately affect the country.
Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever welcomed the outcome, saying it avoided significant legal and financial exposure.
“This was extremely risky and raised many unanswered questions,” De Wever told reporters. “Rationality has prevailed.”
Russia has repeatedly warned the EU against using its frozen assets, calling any such move illegal.
On Thursday, Russia’s central bank said it would seek compensation through a Russian arbitration court over the freezing and potential use of its assets held in EU financial institutions, including claims for lost profits.
“In connection with ongoing attempts by EU authorities to seize and illegally use the assets of the Bank of Russia, we declare that compensation will be sought,” the central bank said in a statement, adding that damages of up to $230 billion would be claimed from Euroclear, where most of the assets are held.
EU member states have agreed to maintain an indefinite freeze on Russian central bank assets imposed after the outbreak of the Ukraine war in 2022.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday that any expropriation of Russian assets would not go unanswered.
“All possible legal mechanisms will be used,” he was quoted by state news agency Tass as saying.
Separately, Russia warned against any deployment of European troops to Ukraine, saying such forces would be considered “legitimate targets.”
In a statement, Russia’s foreign ministry accused the EU of planning to “occupy” Ukraine rather than seeking a settlement.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has previously said foreign troops sent to Ukraine would be treated as legitimate military targets.
The developments come amid divisions within the EU over the war and its role in possible peace talks. French President Emmanuel Macron said Europe should engage directly with Moscow.
“It is in our interest as Europeans and Ukrainians to re-engage discussions,” Macron said, adding talks should begin “in the coming weeks.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Ukrainian and US delegations were due to hold further talks in Washington on Friday and Saturday, while US President Donald Trump urged Kiev to move quickly towards a deal.
The Kremlin said it was preparing contacts with Washington on a revised peace proposal.
Earlier talks in Berlin involving US, Ukrainian and European officials ended without a breakthrough, with Russia opposing NATO membership for Ukraine and Kiev rejecting territorial concessions.
Hi-tech holocaust: How Microsoft aids the Gaza genocide
| Alan Macleod, MintPress News, 2025-10-27 |
Israel’s genocide is being powered by Microsoft.
From creating a massive digital dragnet, aiding in the production of A.I.-generated kill lists, hiring hundreds of Israeli spies to run its internal affairs, and suppressing figures opposing the slaughter, the Seattle-based tech corporation has played a key role in the violence.
MintPress has detailed the deep collaboration between the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) and Amazon, Google, TikTok, Apple, Palantir, and Oracle, but Microsoft’s relationship with the government and armed forces of Israel is potentially the closest,leading then-CEO Steve Ballmer tostatethat “Microsoft is as much an Israeli company as an American company.” MintPress explores the decades-long partnership between Microsoft and Israel, and the employees trying to break that marriage from the inside.
Turning Code Into Carnage
“Among U.S. tech firms,” the Associated Press wrote, “Microsoft has had an especially close relationship with the Israeli military.” That relationship, it notes, massively expanded after the October 7, 2023, attacks.
In the months following October 7, the IDF’s usage of Microsoft’s Azure cloud service surged more than 200-fold. The amount of data from surveillance cameras, drones, checkpoints, biometric scanners, phone calls, and intercepted Palestinian personal data stored by the IDF on Microsoft servers doubledin the next nine months,reaching13.6 petabytes by July 2024 – equivalent to 23,000 years of audio, or seven trillion pages of text.
The point of all this was to create an enormous digital dragnet, where Palestinians’ every move, word, and keystroke was recorded in monitored in the greatest and most dystopian digital dragnet ever created. In the words of Yossi Sariel, the head of Unit 8200, the IDF’s surveillance division, the plan was to “track everyone, all of the time.”
Sariel argued that big data was the solution to Israel’s problems, envisaging a future where Israel intercepted and stored “a million calls an hour” from Palestine, and used A.I. to search for keywords and identify threats.
There was no way, however, that Israel could do this alone, as it did not possess the expertise or anything like the storage capacity needed for such a project. To this end, Sarieltravelledto Seattle in 2021 to meet with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, to pitch him on the surveillance partnership whereby Microsoft would build Unit 8200 a customized and segregated area within its Azure platform.
The Israeli military uses Microsoft Azure to transcribe, translate, and otherwise process intelligence garnered via mass surveillance, which is then linked to Israel’s A.I.-based weapons systems.
The largest and most controversial organization within the Israeli military, Unit 8200 has long been the centerpiece of Israel’s hi-tech spying operation. The unit is dedicated to surveillance, cyberwarfare, and online manipulation operations. Last year, it carried out the Lebanese Pager Attack, an act that wounded thousands of civilians. Unit 8200 agents were also behind many of the most infamous international spyware and hacking cases, including the Pegasus software, that was used to surveil tens of thousands of the world’s most prominent political leaders, journalists, and human rights campaigners.
Sariel’s policy of mass surveillance changed the internal attitude at Unit 8200. “Suddenly the entire public was our enemy,”said one officer. The gargantuan trove of information compiled in Microsoft Azure amounted to a vast repository on the entire Palestinian population – a giant database of kompromat that is used to extort and blackmail the region’s indigenous people. If a person was secretly gay, or cheating on their spouse, for example, that information was readily available to Unit 8200 agents, who would then use it to turn their targets into informants. One former Unit 8200 member revealed that, as part of their training, they were made to memorize different Arabic slang words for “gay”, so that they could identify them in conversations.
Palestinian man passes through a biometric gate at the Qalandia crossing near JerusalemThe cloud database is also used to provide after-the-fact justification for arrests of innocent peoples. Off-hand, out-of-context comments made years agocan be used to portray anyone as a member of Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, or another armed resistance force.
…………………………………………………………………………………………….Of course, the vast majority of the deaths have been civilians – around 70% were women and children. But Israeli officials can also go back after the fact and scour their digital dragnet to justify any killing, finding connections or any other incriminating evidence. A senior Israeli military officer described the cloud technology as “a weapon in every sense of the word.” Other officials, however, have gone so far as to raise concerns that Israel’s overreliance on Microsoft as a service is a strategic vulnerability that should be corrected.
Microsoft Sees No Evil, Only Profits
Throughout all this, Microsoft has protested its innocence – and ignorance – of Israeli crimes. A spokesperson for the company stated:
“At no time during this engagement or since that time has Microsoft been aware of the surveillance of civilians or collection of their cell phone conversations using Microsoft’s services, including through the external review it commissioned.
“Any allegations about Microsoft leadership involvement and support of this project … are false.”
But leaked documents suggest Microsoft engineers understood exactly what sort of data was being stored in Azure, and what their clients hoped to achieve……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Corporate Zionism: Roots in Israel’s War Economy
The Azure/IDF partnership is the result of a decades-long relationship between Microsoft and the State of Israel, one which has helped both entities. Microsoft established its first branch in Israel in 1989, and two years later, opened a research and development center in the city of Herzliya near Tel Aviv. The first of its kind outside the United States, the center has continued to expand, and now directly employs an estimated 2,700 workers.
Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, Microsoft began signing deals with Israeli firms and government agencies, and, by the 2010s, was an integral part of the Israeli security state. In 2017, it inked a lucrative contract with the Israeli Prison Service, providing cloud services to the entity responsible for jailing tens of thousands of Palestinians without trial. Today, it maintains over 600 active subscriptions with the Israeli military.
The company has also moved to acquire at least 21 Israeli tech firms. Among these include cybersecurity group, Hexadite, purchased for $100 million in 2017, and Oribi, a web analytics business founded by a former Israeli intelligence agent.
sectorEvery CEO in Microsoft’s history has flown to Israel to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, including Bill Gates, who, in 2016, stated that hi-tech Israeli security was “improving the world.”
In short, Microsoft is a cornerstone of Israel’s burgeoning hi-tech sector, which accounts for 20% of the country’s GDP and more than half of its total exports. Netanyahu himself has showered praise on the corporation, describing the Microsoft/Israel partnership as “a marriage made in heaven.”
Others have been less enthused by this union.In June, Iran deliberately targeted a Microsoft center in Be’ersheva, carrying out a missile strike against it. Iran’s Revolutionary Guard justified their actions, citing Microsoft’s “close cooperation with the Israeli army and its being part of the system supporting aggression, and not just a civilian entity.” “The cyber area that was attacked also includes the residences of people from the espionage and artificial intelligence fields, who operate in direct cooperation with the enemy army and its security apparatus,” it concluded.
Cracking Down on Internal Resistance
A greater threat than Iran to Microsoft, however, is its own employees, hundreds of whom have organized to oppose its role in the genocide. Under the banner of No Azure for Apartheid, workers demand that:
Microsoft terminates all Azure contracts with Israel; disclose all ties to the Israeli national security state; publicly call for a ceasefire, and stop persecuting employees who speak out about the genocide.
This fourth demand is particularly salient, as the corporation has shown little to no tolerance for dissent. In October 2024, it fired two workers for organizing a vigil for Palestinian refugees at its corporate headquarters near Seattle………………………………………………………………………
Targeting Enemies
Company employees are far from the only target of Microsoft’s wrath, however. In May, Karim Khan, chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court,announcedthat Microsoft had locked him out of his official ICC email account, just as he was formalizing charges against Netanyahu and other top Israeli leaders. For many, the timing was not a coincidence, but rather a message.
The British lawyer joined a vast plethora of Palestinians who have complained that Microsoft has terminated their accounts without warning. A BBC investigationfounddozens of Palestinians who, after attempting to use Microsoft services to contact relatives in Gaza, were banned for life. “I’ve had this Hotmail account for 15 years. They banned me for no reason, saying I violated their terms — what terms? Tell me,” one Palestinian-American user said.
IBM’s brand has forever been tarnished by its collaboration with Nazi Germany, aiding Hitler’s slaughter of millions of people. In much the same way, No Azure for Apartheid believe that Microsoft’s name will forever be linked with the destruction in Gaza. Microsoft has enjoyed a decades-long partnership with Israel, which has seen them slowly integrate themselves into the state, becoming a fundamental part of the system of oppression. From servicing the Israeli war machine, to hiring hundreds of Israeli spies to run its affairs, to cracking down on internal and external dissent against it, Israel’s mass killing of Palestinians is aided by Microsoft, whose technological prowess has helped Israel carry out the world’s first A.I.-powered genocide. https://www.mintpressnews.com/microsoft-israel-surveillance-azure-idf-gaza-genocide/290534/
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