1 NUCLEAR ISSUES « nuclear-news

Ambassador Chas Freeman: Trump PUSHES ESCALATION — Israel’s Strategy COLLAPSES Overnight

3 April 26,

COMMENT by Robert Anderson

The US, and its administration are on the losing end of this war, there’s a coverup going on. The military hospitals in Germany are full, we have many more casualties from the war in the Gulf/Iran/Israel. Iran is essentially winning this war. We will quit the war while we are behind (losing in this case. Epstein will come back to the forefront at some point. If nothing else this will bring Trump down, he’s being blackmailed by Israel which forced him into this war,

April 5, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Iran, Israel, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Massacre of UK aid workers: two years of obfuscation from Britain

Hamza Yusuf, Declassified UK, Apr 3, 2026

April 1st marked the two year anniversary of Israel’s massacre of World Central Kitchen (WCK) aid workers in Gaza.

Seven members of the organisation were killed by Israeli drones while travelling in a convoy in Deir el-Balah in Central Gaza, after unloading 100 tonnes of food aid at its Gaza warehouse.

The group was travelling in a “deconflicted zone” in two armoured vehicles that were clearly branded with the WCK logo and had coordinated their movements with the Israeli military.

The attack was not an anomaly, but a feature of Israel’s systematic targeting of aid workers in Gaza. The United Nations said that 383 aid workers were killed in 2025, with nearly half of them in Gaza.
As Declassified previously revealed, Britain’s Ministry of Defence holds video footage of Gaza from the day of the attack but is refusing to publish it – footage taken by a Royal Air Force surveillance plane which spent approximately five hours above Gaza that day.

n December 2025, the family of James Henderson renewed their demand for the MoD to release the recording. “The reason for not supplying that footage from the Ministry of Defence is a bit of an insult,” his father told Declassified.

The cousin of another of the victims, James Kirby, said in a statement released on the anniversary of his killing: “It is especially difficult to see that men who were so loyal and committed to their country have not yet received the justice they deserve.”Two years on, communication from the government has been limited, and the family remains unsure whether a full and formal investigation is underway.”

A tepid statement from the UK’s Middle East Minister Hamish Falconer published on the two-year anniversary saidthe UK “will continue to push for justice”.

But Falconer is only calling on Israel to investigate itself. “I urge Israel to swiftly conclude and publish their findings into this attack. The families of those killed must know why this happened. Lessons must be learnt”, Falconer said.

But the accountability the British government is demanding would be much clearer if it released its own spy flight footage.

True to form, however, where Israel is involved, Britain prefers at best silence in the face of crimes and at worst smokescreens and deceit.

April 5, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | secrets,lies and civil liberties, UK | Leave a comment

Washington Post Promotes Nuclear Agenda Tied to Bezos’ Investments

The piece contains no disclosure about Bezos’ financial ties to the nuclear energy sector, continuing a trend previously identified by FAIR (11/20/25). Bezos is the largest individual shareholder of Amazon, which has invested $500 million in small modular reactor nuclear (SMR) startup X-Energy. X-Energy recently signed a letter of intent to explore deployment in areas that include Illinois. Amazon is a member of the Nuclear Energy Institute, which advocated to end the state’s moratorium.

Peter Castagno, 1 April 26, https://fair.org/home/washington-post-promotes-nuclear-agenda-tied-to-bezos-investments/

The Washington Post has devoted four editorials to supporting the expansion of nuclear energy in the past three months, relying on factual errors and distortions to make the case for the Trump administration’s unprecedented cuts to nuclear safety regulation. The Post‘s owner, Jeff Bezos, is the chair of Amazon, a company dependent on electricity-guzzling data centers that invested more than $1 billion in nuclear energy last year.

The first of the editorials (1/15/26) was headlined “The Facts About Nuclear Energy Are Sinking In. Even in Illinois.” It lauded Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker’s decision to end the state’s moratorium on building new nuclear plants.

‘Clean energy’ (except the toxic waste)

The Washington Post editorial said of Pritzker:

The 2028 presidential hopeful personified the Democratic Party’s gradual realization that the country cannot meet its electricity needs—let alone combat climate change—without embracing the world’s largest source of clean energy.

As FAIR has previously noted, leading experts dispute the claim that nuclear energy is essential to address climate change. Describing it as “clean” obscures unresolved problems such as radioactive waste. More than 100,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel are stored in pools requiring active cooling and dry casks throughout the country—over 11,000 tons in Illinois alone, the largest stockpile of any state.

An expert report published the same day as the Post‘s Illinois editorial, co-authored by former NRC chair Allison Macfarlane, described the situation as a national imperative: The federal government has collected more than $50 billion from ratepayers for a waste repository it has never built, paid more than $12 billion to reactor owners in damages for failing to take the waste, and is projected to pay an additional $40 billion more.

Illinois’ 1987 moratorium was a bipartisan measure signed into law by a Republican governor that prohibited construction of new nuclear plants until the federal government identified and approved a means of disposing of radioactive waste. That condition has never been fulfilled. The Post omits the reason for the moratorium, instead characterizing nearly four decades of policy as a “perplexing attitude” driven by ideological environmental activists:

Illinois has suffered for decades from serious cognitive dissonance on nuclear energy. The state boasts the nation’s largest fleet of nuclear reactors, generating more than half its electricity from those plants. Yet lawmakers in Springfield followed the lead of environmental activists who regard the industry with open disdain…. That perplexing attitude is finally changing.

The Post also did not consider how the state’s years-long criminal nuclear scandal might affect its residents’ views. Since 2020, Illinois utility Exelon and its subsidiary Commonwealth Edison have agreed to more than $200 million in fines with federal authorities for bribing political figures to pass legislation that included roughly $2.35 billion in nuclear subsidies—the same subsidies Exelon has repeatedly stated it requires to keep its Illinois plants operating. The scandal is part of a broader pattern of corruption in the industry that the Post elided in other editorials.

Celebrating safety rollbacks

A month later, under the headline “America’s Nuclear Future,” the Washington Post editorial board (2/14/26) championed the Trump administration’s nuclear safety rollbacks:

Sometimes, regulators have even forced changes to designs mid-construction, as happened in 2009, when they required containment buildings for reactor developments in Georgia and South Carolina to be able to withstand direct aircraft strikes, driving up costs and delaying construction.

The editorial board invoked the Vogtle project in Georgia and the VC Summer project in South Carolina as cautionary tales about regulatory overreach. The Post did not mention that VC Summer’s failure in South Carolina was primarily caused by executive fraud and mismanagement (Power, 10/15/21).

Further, a senior representative of Southern Nuclear, the operator of Georgia’s Vogtle reactors, recently attributed reactor construction delays to macroeconomic events and lead contractor Westinghouse’s bankruptcy rather than over-regulation. The new reactors cost $35 billion, more than twice the original estimate, and were completed seven years late in 2024.

The Post claimed the Nuclear Regulatory Commission forced changes while reactors were “mid-construction” in 2009, but physical construction for both projects did not begin until 2013, as noted by Edwin Lyman, director of nuclear power safety for the Union of Concerned Scientists, and the pro-nuclear source they cited.

The Post made other misleading claims in the article regarding the science of radiation dangers. The editorial board expressed support for the Trump administration’s efforts to drastically weaken the NRC’s radiation guidelines, which are based on the Linear No-Threshold (LNT) model. LNT maintains cancer risk as proportional to radiation dose, with even tiny amounts causing small but real risks, particularly for infants and vulnerable populations. The Post wrote:

The science underpinning the radiation rule is mushy, at best. It’s based on a theory that because radiation poses a serious cancer risk at high doses, it must also pose a low risk at lower doses.

It is irresponsible for a reputable news outlet to describe the science supporting LNT as “mushy.” As the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (10/15/25) recently explained, the use of LNT model for radiation has been repeatedly affirmed by authoritative scientific bodies, including “the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, virtually all international scientific bodies, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the NRC itself.”

The Post did disclose Amazon’s nuclear energy investments in the February 14 piece, and in two following editorials. But those disclosures don’t convey the scope of their efforts to influence nuclear policy.

Amazon spent nearly $19 million on lobbying last year, including on nuclear energy–related issues. Amazon Data Services is a member of the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI), the nation’s biggest trade group pushing to cut safety regulations—the same NEI that recently celebrated the Post’s inclusion of nuclear energy in its “25 Good Things That Happened in 2025.” In January, the Bezos Earth Fund donated $3.5 million to the Nuclear Scaling Initiative to help coordinate bulk purchases of standard reactor designs. Shannon Kellogg, vice president of public policy at Amazon, chairs the Data Center Coalition, another prominent lobby group that has pushed nuclear safety regulatory rollbacks.

Don’t mention the P-word

The Washington Post’s next pro-nuclear editorial (2/22/26)—headlined “Fixing America’s Broken Nuclear Supply”—advocated the practice of nuclear reprocessing, which refers to the separation of uranium and plutonium from spent fuel. The extracted materials are then repurposed for use as reactor fuel, but also can be used to create nuclear weapons.

The Post editorial did not contain the word “plutonium.” It glossed over the proliferation risk, the foremost historical concern with reprocessing, only mentioning it once:

President Jimmy Carter banned the practice out of fears of weapons proliferation. President Ronald Reagan later reversed that decision, but reprocessing never rebounded, mostly because nuclear companies decided that sourcing new uranium was more cost-effective.

Reprocessing was originally invented to develop plutonium for nuclear weapons. India used it to create a nuclear bomb from its atomic energy program in 1974, which Carter explicitly cited as the impetus for the ban. Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton also did not encourage reprocessing due to proliferation concerns.

‘Crucial to power AI’

In its most recent nuclear editorial—“The Government’s Freeze on Nuclear Energy Is Thawing”—the Washington Post (3/6/26) celebrated the NRC’s March approval of a construction permit for Bill Gates’ SMR startup TerraPower:

Something shocking happened this week: Bureaucrats approved a project ahead of schedule. Even better, it was for a nuclear project that promises to make energy production safer and cleaner than traditional reactors. The government still holds back America’s nuclear industry too much, but it’s a victory worth celebrating.

The Trump administration has taken unprecedented measures to accelerate new nuclear reactors. It has secretly overhauled nuclear safety rules, proposed to severely cut inspections and radiation standards, and exempted new reactors from environmental reviews. Over 400 NRC employees have left the agency since Trump took office. These developments were not concerning to the Post, however, which wrote “the government still holds back America’s nuclear industry too much.”

The Union of Concerned Scientists’ Lyman warned that the NRC’s fast-tracked review for TerraPower failed to address serious safety concerns inherent to its design. The Post’s claim about TerraPower’s safety ignores unresolved issues admitted to by the NRC in the agency’s December safety evaluation:

The staff did not come to a final determination on the adequacy and acceptability of functional containment performance due to the preliminary nature of the design and analysis.

Unlike traditional reactors, TerraPower’s design does not include a physical containment dome to guard against the release of radioactive material in the event of a meltdown.

The Post wrote:

The speed with which the NRC has been able to review the TerraPower project is a testament to growing bipartisan support for climate-friendly nuclear energy. In June 2024, shortly after the company submitted its application, Congress overwhelmingly passed a bill called the Advance Act to cut red tape. Those reforms were crucial given the surging demand for new energy to power artificial intelligence.

The Post presented TerraPower’s rapid review as a “testament to growing bipartisan support for climate-friendly nuclear energy.” It does not mention that Trump fired the former Democratic NRC chair for the first time in its agency’s history, and its two remaining Democratic commissioners told lawmakers they believe they could be fired for refusing to approve reactors for safety reasons. Multiple Democratic lawmakers who voted in favor of the Advance Act have lambasted the Trump administration’s actions to expedite reactor approvals as dangerous and illegal.

The Post editorial did not mention the primary impetus for TerraPower’s rapid licensing process: a series of executive orders Trump signed last May. They directed the NRC to approve new reactors within 18 months, consult with DOGE on a wholesale revision of its regulations, and weaken radiation protections rooted in its “overly risk-averse culture.” A recent ProPublica investigation (3/20/26) revealed that nuclear firms were given the opportunity to offer edits for the EOs, many of which are financially connected to DOGE’s leadership.

‘Energy to cost less’

The Post went on to claim expanding nuclear energy will lower energy costs: “Anyone who wants energy to cost less should be excited about the US producing more of it.”

Yet as FAIR (4/21/16) explained in a 2016 analysis, Lazard investment bank’s widely cited, annual levelized cost of energy report has repeatedly found nuclear energy to be far more expensive than renewables, a finding that remains unchanged in its most recent report.

The Post claimed that the new generation of Silicon Valley–backed SMRs will be cheaper than traditional reactors, but the first expected commercial SMR project was canceled in 2023 due to repeated cost overruns that spent over $600 million in federal funds.

X-Energy, the SMR firm backed by Amazon, has also steeply increased its cost projections. In 2021, the Department of Energy awarded TerraPower around $2 billion, and gave $1.2 billion to X-Energy. X-Energy’s projected cost estimates have surged since then, from roughly $2.5 billion in 2021 to a range of $4.75–5.75 billion in 2023.

The Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis warned these cost increases should serve as a “red flag” in a 2024 analysis. It concluded:

Investment in SMRs will take resources away from carbon-free and lower-cost renewable technologies that are available today and can push the transition from fossil fuels forward significantly in the coming 10 years

As physicist MV Ramana argues in his book Nuclear Is Not the Solution (2024), tech billionaires like Bezos are backing nuclear energy rather than doubling down on renewables for reasons of ideology, military and government alliances, and, crucially, profit opportunities. X-Energy filed for an IPO last month, giving Amazon the opportunity to leverage AI and nuclear hype into a higher opening valuation.

When the Post’s editorial board (10/15/25) hailed small reactors last year as a “worthy gamble” in an editorial headlined “The Military’s Big Gamble on Small Nuclear Reactors,” it did not mention its owner stood to profit from that wager.

April 4, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | media, USA | Leave a comment

From ISIS to Iran: Joe Kent Says Washington Keeps Repeating the Same Catastrophic Playbook

April 3, 2026, ScheerPost Staff, https://scheerpost.com/2026/04/03/from-isis-to-iran-joe-kent-says-washington-keeps-repeating-the-same-catastrophic-playbook/

In a wide‑ranging and unusually candid conversation, former National Counterterrorism Center Director Joe Kent explains why he resigned over the Trump administration’s war on Iran—and why he believes the United States has once again walked into a strategic disaster of its own making.

Kent’s account, drawn from decades inside U.S. covert and military operations, offers a rare insider narrative of how Washington’s pro‑war reflexes, Israeli pressure, and America’s own history of regime‑change hubris converged into the current crisis.

A War Built on a False Premise

Kent opens with the core claim that drove his resignation: Iran posed no imminent threat to the United States.

As he puts it, “Iran was not on the cusp of attacking us… They observed a very calculated escalation ladder.”

According to Kent, Iran halted proxy attacks once Trump returned to office, sat at the negotiating table, and even refrained from striking U.S. forces during the 12‑day war—until Israel launched its own attack on Iranian nuclear sites.

The only “imminent threat,” Kent argues, came not from Tehran but from Israel’s unilateral actions, which forced Washington into a conflict it did not need and could not win.

How Israeli Influence Shapes U.S. War Decisions

One of the most explosive threads in the interview is Kent’s description of how Israeli intelligence, lobbying networks, and media allies shape U.S. policy far beyond what most Americans understand.

Kent describes a “multi‑layered influence ecosystem” that bypasses normal intelligence vetting and pressures senior U.S. officials directly.

“They will come in and say, ‘They’re within two weeks of getting a bomb,’ and that night it’s repeated on TV,” he explains.

This echo chamber, he argues, successfully moved the U.S. red line from “no nuclear weapon” to “no enrichment at all”—a shift that made diplomacy impossible and war inevitable.

The Forever-War Reflex in Washington

Kent echoes what former officials like Lawrence Wilkerson have long warned: Washington has a structural bias toward war.

Defense contractors, political incentives, and a bipartisan foreign‑policy class create what Kent calls the “factory settings” of U.S. power—settings that default to escalation, not restraint.

Even Trump, who campaigned on ending endless wars, was eventually pulled into the Iran conflict. Kent argues Israeli officials and neoconservative advisers played to Trump’s ego, promising an easy, historic victory.

The U.S. Role in Creating ISIS—And Repeating the Pattern

Kent’s most damning historical analysis concerns the U.S. role in the rise of ISIS and al‑Qaeda affiliates in Syria.

He recounts how the Iraq War destabilized the region, empowered Iranian‑aligned militias, and pushed Gulf states and Israel to back radical Sunni factions in Syria.

“We were supporting al‑Qaeda, which eventually morphed into ISIS,” Kent says bluntly.

He describes how U.S. and Turkish support helped elevate Abu Mohammad al‑Julani, an al‑Qaeda figure who now effectively governs northwest Syria with tacit Western acceptance.

The lesson, Kent argues, is clear: regime‑change wars always produce monsters—and America never seems to learn.

Iran’s Strategy: Win by Not Losing

Kent believes Iran has adopted a long‑term strategy shaped by watching U.S. failures in Iraq and Afghanistan:

• survive • absorb blows • raise global energy costs • outlast Washington’s political will

Iran doesn’t need to defeat the U.S. militarily, he argues—only to avoid collapse.

And with control over the Strait of Hormuz, ballistic missile capacity, and regional alliances, Iran can keep the war costly indefinitely.

The Nuclear Danger: A Self‑Fulfilling Prophecy

Kent warns that U.S. and Israeli pressure may push Iran toward the very outcome Washington claims to fear.

“We basically destroyed the school of thought that opposed nuclear weapons,” he says, referring to the killing of Iran’s former Supreme Leader and the rise of hardliners.

He predicts Iran may now pursue a “North Korea solution”—a nuclear deterrent to prevent future attacks.

The Only Exit: Restrain Israel, Reopen Diplomacy

Kent’s prescription is stark:

Publicly restrain Israel’s offensive operations
Cut military aid if necessary
Offer sanctions relief
Reopen the Strait of Hormuz
Return to negotiations

Without restraining Israel, Kent argues, the U.S. will remain trapped in an endless cycle of escalation.

“Unless we restrain Israel, I just don’t see us having a way out of this,” he warns.

This conversation is not just another critique of U.S. foreign policy. It is a rare moment when a senior insider—someone who helped run America’s counterterrorism apparatus—publicly breaks with the system he once served.

For ScheerPost readers, Kent’s testimony reinforces what independent journalists have long documented:

• U.S. wars are rarely about security • Israeli influence shapes U.S. decisions in ways the public never sees • regime‑change operations consistently backfire • Washington’s war machine is structurally incapable of learning from its failures

Kent’s resignation and his warnings should be a national scandal. Instead, they are being heard mainly on independent platforms—another sign of how tightly controlled mainstream narratives around war have become.

or Joe Kent’s Resignation, in His Own Words, Reveals MAGA’s Fracture Over War—Not a Break From Empire

Remember this too: as Nate Baer reported, “Then you’ve got the frauds like Joe Kent, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center who just resigned over the war. A MAGA devotee and former special forces operative who pulled the trigger for U.S. imperialism in Syria, Yemen, and Iraq, his resignation wasn’t about ethics or principle. In his resignation letter, he even praised Donald Trump’s 2020 assassination of Qasem Soleimani. Trump was doing imperialism right then—now, in Kent’s view, he’s simply doing it wrong.”

April 4, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Iran, Israel, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Does the Trump administration understand how ‘enriched’ uranium is made into weapons?

Harmeet Kaur, CNN, 2 April 2026

For the US to reach a deal with Iran or to end its war in the country, President Trump has said he wants Iran to surrender its “enriched” uranium.

“We want no enrichment, but we also want the enriched uranium,” he told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins last week.

The president has at times cited Iran’s “enriched” uranium stores as part of his ever-changing rationale for the war, and in recent days, he’s reportedly considered sending US troops in to seize them. But nuclear arms experts say the way Trump and his lead negotiator have talked about uranium enrichment raises doubts about how well they understand the technicalities.

For one, Trump keeps referring to “nuclear dust,” which is not a known term in the nuclear energy industry. And since the February 26 US-Iran nuclear talks, Steve Witkoff, a former real estate developer who has been leading US negotiations with Iran along with Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, has made claims that experts say betray a similarly weak expertise………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

Uranium that has been enriched above the natural 0.7% level of uranium-235 and up to a 20% concentration is considered low-enriched uranium, used for civilian purposes. Commercial reactors typically require uranium enriched to less than 5%, while research reactors used for testing or medicine generally require uranium enriched to up to 20%.

Uranium enriched beyond 20% is considered highly enriched uranium, and uranium enriched above 90% is considered weapons-grade.

The higher the enrichment level, the more quickly uranium can be enriched to weapons-grade, Diaz-Maurin says. Once uranium has been enriched to 20%, a vast majority of the work required to enrich it to weapons-grade levels has been completed. It becomes exponentially easier to enrich 20% uranium to 60%; enriching from 60% to 90% is even easier, he says.

The higher the enrichment level, the lower the minimum mass of enriched uranium required to produce a bomb, says Diaz-Maurin. For example, uranium that’s been enriched above 20% can technically be used to produce a crude weapon, but you would need about 400 kilograms of it, making it inefficient and impractical. When the enrichment level goes up to 60%, the critical mass drops down to about 42 kilograms. Uranium enriched to weapons-grade requires about 28 kilograms, which can fit into a missile warhead, he says.

Since Trump pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal in his first term, Iran has been enriching its uranium closer and closer to weapons-grade, though it officially proclaimed a religious prohibition against building a nuclear weapon. Now, given that the US and Israel have attacked the country as negotiations were ongoing, Iran’s hardliners in parliament are calling on the regime to advance to full nuclear armament.

Western nations, as well as the UN watchdog International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), have long expressed concerns about Iran’s production and stockpiling of highly enriched uranium. On June 12 last year, the IAEA estimated that Iran’s stockpile included 440 kilograms of uranium enriched up to 60%, Diaz-Maurin wrote in a recent analysis. The next day, Israel attacked Iran, killing prominent nuclear scientists and significantly damaging Iran’s main enrichment site.

Enrichment level is an important indicator of risk, but there are a host of other factors that should be considered in assessing how quickly Iran could produce weapons-grade enriched uranium, says Kelsey Davenport, director for Nonproliferation Policy at the Arms Control Association. Those other considerations include the amount of enriched uranium a country has, its capacity to enrich it and whether the uranium is being held in solid fuel rods or in gas form.

“Witkoff had a poor grasp of the details,” she says.

For example, Davenport says comments that Witkoff made in the aftermath of February 26 negotiations with Iran indicated some confusion between nuclear reactors, which use enriched uranium for power, and the centrifuge facilities where the enrichment process takes place. Witkoff seemed particularly concerned about a research reactor in Tehran that he claimed was being used to stockpile highly enriched uranium. Reports from the UN’s nuclear watchdog estimate that Iran had about 45 kilograms of 20% enriched uranium stored in fuel assemblies at the reactor, which Davenport says “is not even enough for one bomb.”

To be developed into a nuclear weapon, she says the uranium at the reactor would need to be converted back to gas form and then be further enriched to weapons-grade. Before Israel’s strike on Iran’s main conversion facility last June, that might not have been difficult. Now, the situation has changed. “Could Iran convert that material back to gas form? Yes,” she says. “Could they do it quickly and easily at this point? No.”

Davenport says Witkoff was also reportedly surprised by how much enriched uranium was in Iran’s stockpile, even though this information was well documented by international inspectors. “I think he was focused on the wrong details and did not have the nuclear expertise or the expert team available to him to assess how the Iranian proposal would have impacted risk overall,” Davenport says.

Iran also said that it made an offer to dilute its 60% enriched uranium to a lower percentage, which Diaz-Maurin calls “a sound one from a non-proliferation perspective.” But he says it doesn’t appear that US negotiators took the proposal seriously. “I suspect that they did not really understand what the meaning was,” he adds. “And here we are.”

Less than two days after Witkoff and Kushner met with Iran to discuss its nuclear program, the US and Israel attacked the country. Some experts suggest that the decision was informed, at least partially, by a shallow understanding of Iran’s nuclear program and positions.

“It certainly seems as though there was a gap, and that’s a huge problem on something like this, especially when it seems like potentially a military decision was made based on things that were happening in that room,” says Connor Murray, a research analyst for the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation.

A month on, the US is engaged in an intense war that experts argue could potentially have been avoided with another word: Diplomacy. US and Israeli strikes have indeed severely diminished Iran’s capacities to enrich uranium, Diaz-Maurin says. But he says Iran’s know-how and political will to build nuclear weapons probably won’t be destroyed so easily.

“You can’t really bomb away an idea, a program and knowledge. So there will always be a suspicion that Iran is doing something,” he says. “And one could argue that now more than ever, they have incentive to accelerate whatever program they have.” https://edition.cnn.com/2026/04/01/us/word-of-week-enriched-cec

April 4, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics, Uranium, USA | Leave a comment

Escalating To Catastrophe

when Trump and Hegseth use this phrase, they are using it knowingly and deliberately. They are channelling all of LeMay’s savagery, racism and fascism.

They are simply reflecting the dominant belief held for decades by US military planners that the US can, and should, commit war crimes and mass murder to get what it wants.

Nate Bear, Apr 02, 2026, https://www.donotpanic.news/p/escalating-to-catastrophe

In his televised address last night Trump said the US was going to continue attacking Iran for another two or three weeks and would bomb the country “back to the Stone Ages, where they belong.”

Legal challenge against nuclear site plan rejected

BBC 2nd April 2026,
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cy01wkgw2z8o

A judge has thrown out a legal challenge against a plan to extract water at the UK’s largest nuclear site.

Sellafield, in Cumbria, was given permission last May by the Environment Agency (EA) to extract water from its site, as part of the process to build a new radioactive waste storage facility.

Campaigners for Lakes Against Nuclear Dump (LAND) submitted a legal challenge against this, amid fears for the impact on nearby rivers. A high court judge said there was “no credible evidence” to allow the challenge to go ahead.

A Sellafield spokesman said the outcome would allow it to focus on its “mission to deal with the hazards on our site safely and sustainably”.

The licence granted to Sellafield would allow the company to extract up to 77,077,224 gallons (350,400 cubic metres) of water a year until 2031.

The EA previously said it had considered all the potential impacts on the environment before giving permission.

Marianne Birkby, who submitted the challenge for LAND, said the group disagreed with the decision and would be looking to lodge an appeal.

It argued the environmental impacts of the licence had not been properly assessed and feared contaminated water would end up in the rivers Calder and Ehen.

“We feel we must challenge the Environment Agency’s continual rubberstamping of Sellafield’s wish lists,” Birkby said.

Sellafield said removing water from a construction site was standard practice when preparing land for a building project.

A spokesman said: “This water will not be discharged to the rivers Calder or Ehen. It is pumped to on-site storage tanks for testing prior to being discharged direct to sea.”

April 4, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Legal, UK | Leave a comment

Inspiring the Authentic Journalist: The Pentagon’s Renewed attack on Press Credentials

1 April 2026 Dr Binoy Kampmark AIM Extra, https://theaimn.net/inspiring-the-authentic-journalist-the-pentagons-renewed-attack-on-press-credentials/

On March 20, 2026, US District Senior Judge Paul Friedman found for The New York Times in a ruling deeming the Pentagon’s media access policy in breach of the US Constitution. Central to the policy was the requirement that all credentialled journalists sign a pledge that officials would not be asked for information they were not authorised to release. The Pentagon Facilities Alternative Credentials (PFACs) policy was found to have violated the First Amendment for its lack of reasonableness and being “viewpoint-discriminatory,” and the Fifth Amendment for not outlining clear standards governing cases when press credentials can be denied.

The judge thought the policy’s purpose was rooted in notions of removing “disfavoured journalists” while filling, in their emptied ranks, those “favourable to or spoon-fed by department leadership.” Indeed, that happened, with an exodus of main stable news organisations refusing to take up the pledge, leaving those friendly to the administration to take their place in mild leisure and bigoted sympathy.

The irony there is that the Pentagon media pack do not, for the most part, need to be encouraged by such feeding practices. They normally swallow the slop and staple whole. Truly intrepid reporters wedded to sharp if ugly authenticity are rarely seen at press gatherings conducted and managed by officialdom in the capital cities of the world, certainly those in the business of defence and security. The issue is not the correctitude of the ruling that the PFAC policy breached the Constitution but the curious sense that the Fourth Estate was necessarily better informed for sharing desks in situ, or near officials, moving through corridors without invigilation and having what is known as “access” to aides and advisers

The judge certainly gave little thought in examining that premise, taking the evidence at face value that the “presence of PFAC holders at the Pentagon has enhanced the ability of journalists and news organizations to keep Americans informed about the US military while posing no security or safety risk to Department property or personnel.” (In what way?) The environs of the building also offered chances for press briefings, even those called at short notice, and opportunities to question officials at, before or after such briefings. Semi-formal and informal opportunities to question personnel also helped identify “the context and detail needed to report accurately and effectively about defense policy and military operations.”

The Pentagon promised to both appeal the ruling and introduce a revised restrictive policy as stridently buffoonish as its first one. Instead of abiding by the ruling to re-credential the Times reporters and permitting those who had refused to sign the pledge to have their passes restored, the department shut down access to most of the building. The intention is to house these bought scribblers in a new, and yet unbuilt annex. The decades-old Correspondents’ Corridor has been shut down, and journalists given limited unescorted access to a library at the complex’s periphery.

With The Times again taking the matter to court, Judge Friedman found these arrangements “weird.” “Is this a Catch-22? Is this Kafka?” Hardly. Had Franz Kafka advised this peculiar administration, he would have informed them about bureaucracy’s innumerable options of control regarding the media message in war. The press would have been given the grand review and assessment on battles and engagements, curated, scrupulously controlled. No wrinkles, no frowns. Questions would have been near irrelevant, lies, generously scattered and sprinkled.

At the hearing itself, Justice Department attorney Sarah Welch weakly suggested to Friedman that the information given to the paper may have been outdated: journalists could access a designated, temporary workspace directly from the Pentagon parking lot, or take the shuttle. Such is the nature of Secretary of War Pete Hegseth’s thin and ever thinning charity.

In addition to issues of access, Friedman was also concerned that a journalist’s credentials might be revoked if anonymity is offered to sources of information known to be classified or barred from release by statute. Merely asking a question cannot constitute grounds of punishment. “I thought I answered that question,” he explained in the hearing. “A journalist can always ask and they can ask anybody.”

The lawyer representing the Times, Ted Boutrous, pursued the obvious line that the revised interim policy was intended to “purge the Pentagon of reporters who are engaged in independent reporting.” This policy of sheer “gibberish” was merely a form of “gaslighting.” The Pentagon had “made the press credential we fought so hard to get back into a meaningless piece of plastic.” But did it really have much meaning to begin with?

Reporters were subsequently told by Commander Timothy Parlatore that any stern reviewing of credentials would ignore published work, focusing instead on journalists daring to sniff out classified or legally barred information. “Anytime a person with a security clearance has somebody that approaches them trying to solicit information, they’re supposed to report that.” The First Amendment was a relic farthest from his mind as he expressed satisfaction that the “constant leaks and constant reports about classified things” had “largely stopped.” The missions in Venezuela and Iran had been executed to perfection “without the same worry of the classified leaks.” His news is obviously of that unique variety: unchallenged and unverified.

Trump and his simian henchmen, some slobbering in sanguineous yearning and prayer (Hegseth again), would be surprised by the notion that the Fourth Estate is not to be bullied but seduced, not to be ridiculed but praised. Vanity in searching for a source often blights the searcher: confirmation bias and dreams of the scoop are imbibed with the establishment cocktail. Give the press pack a story, however, true, and they will run with it. Once the information limps to the newsroom, broadsheet or podcast, it will have been managed and mangled into spectral irrelevance, lost in the short-term stutters and moist mutterings of social media. It would have become just another establishment story.

In this context, leaks become more imperative than ever. As the Iran War groans on, the hunger for such disclosures is bound to be stimulated. Showing a stunning lack of foresight, the Trump administration’s attempt to control information through removing credentials or barring reporters’ access to most of the Pentagon may well encourage journalists to finally seek richer, more reliable alternatives. The public will get the copy it deserves, unmanaged and unspun by the media magicians in the department and the pliant regurgitators of the Pentagon Press Set.

April 4, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | media, USA | Leave a comment

The Platform of Shame: How Australia Normalised a Genocidal Regime

1 April 2026 Dr Andrew Klein, PhD AIM Extra. https://theaimn.net/the-platform-of-shame-how-australia-normalised-a-genocidal-regime/

An ambassador who calls dead journalists terrorists. A death penalty for Palestinians only. A government that says nothing. And a Press Club that provides the stage.

I. The Spectacle

On March 31, 2026, the National Press Club of Australia hosted Dr Hillel Newman, the newly appointed ambassador of Israel, for an address titled “Reshaping the Middle East.”

What unfolded was not diplomacy. It was propaganda. It was the marketing of genocide. And it was allowed to continue, uninterrupted, on Australian soil, under the lights of an institution that once stood for journalistic integrity.

Newman rejected a figure of 70,000 dead in Gaza – a number, he said, provided by Hamas. He claimed the ratio of civilian to combatant casualties was “the lowest in urban warfare” and that Israel should be “commended” for the “low number of uninvolved civilians that were actually killed.”

He was speaking over the bodies of 70,000 people. He was speaking over the findings of a United Nations commission of inquiry that, in September last year, found that Israel had committed genocide in the Gaza Strip – accusing the nation of having committed four genocidal acts, “namely killing, causing serious bodily or mental harm, deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the destruction of the Palestinians in whole or in part, and imposing measures intended to prevent births.”

The Press Club did not challenge him. The journalists in the room did not walk out. The broadcast continued.

II. The Death Penalty Law

On March 30, the Israeli Knesset passed a law imposing the death penalty for terrorism-related offences. Human Rights Watch has analysed the bill and found it explicitly discriminatory.

The law makes death by hanging the default punishment for West Bank Palestinians convicted of nationalistic killings. It also gives Israeli courts the option of imposing the death penalty on Israeli citizens convicted on similar charges – language that legal experts say effectively confines those who can be sentenced to death to Palestinian citizens of Israel and excludes Jewish citizens.

Within the military court system of the Occupied Palestinian Territory, the bill imposes the death penalty for killings classified as acts of terrorism as defined under Israeli law, even without a prosecutorial request. The bill only allows courts to order life imprisonment in unspecified exceptional cases where “special reasons” are found, limiting judicial discretion. It also prohibits commutation of sentences and mandates execution within an accelerated timeframe of 90 days.

Israeli citizens and residents are explicitly excluded from this provision: military jurisdiction applies exclusively to Palestinians, while Israeli settlers are tried in civilian courts.

Human Rights Watch has noted that military trials of Palestinians have “an approximately 96% conviction rate, based largely on ‘confessions’ extracted under duress and torture during interrogations.”

Adam Coogle, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch, stated: “Israeli officials argue that imposing the death penalty is about security, but in reality, it entrenches discrimination and a two-tiered system of justice, both hallmarks of apartheid. The death penalty is irreversible and cruel. Combined with its severe restrictions on appeals and its 90-day execution timeline, this bill aims to kill Palestinian detainees faster and with less scrutiny.”

The Palestinian Authority has condemned the law as a “war crime” and a “flagrant violation of international humanitarian law, particularly the Fourth Geneva Convention, which guarantees protection for individuals and fair trial rights.”

At the Press Club, Newman defended the law. “Just like in the United States, in Japan and in India, which have capital punishment, Israel has the right, as a sovereign state, to decide … capital punishment,” he said.

He did not mention the discrimination. He did not mention the 96% conviction rate. He did not mention the torture.

III. The Journalists

Newman was asked about the killing of journalists in Gaza and Lebanon. The International Federation of Journalists has reported that 261 journalists and media workers have been killed in Gaza since October 7, 2023. The Committee to Protect Journalists has accused Israel of killing a record 129 journalists in 2025.

Newman’s response was chilling.

He claimed that two of three journalists killed in an Israeli air strike in Lebanon were “100 per cent terrorist” members of Hezbollah’s elite Radwan force. He said they were “dressed up as journalists.” He claimed that both Hamas and Hezbollah “disguise themselves as press and remain terrorist operatives.”

When pressed on what percentage of killed journalists were not terrorists, he admitted: “The honest truth is that we have no way of knowing the exact amount of journalists who weren’t 100 per cent journalists who were killed.”

He has no way of knowing. Yet he called them terrorists anyway. On Australian soil. At the National Press Club.

The Committee to Protect Journalists has previously described such accusations as “smear campaigns” without “credible evidence to substantiate their claims.”

Newman also dismissed the broader death toll of journalists, saying: “When people outside quote 250, 300 journalists [have been killed], what they’re doing is they’re just buying [it] hook, line and sinker. If they would check, they would find that the majority of all the journalists, so-called journalists, that were affected were actually activists guised as journalists.”

He has no evidence. He provided none. The Press Club did not ask for it.

IV. The Frankcom Family

While Newman spoke inside the Press Club, the family of Zomi Frankcom stood outside.

Frankcom, an Australian aid worker, was killed by an Israeli drone strike on April 1, 2024, while working for World Central Kitchen in Gaza. Seven aid workers died. The convoy was struck three times.

Two years later, the family is still waiting for justice. They are still waiting for the release of critical drone footage audio that would establish motive. Former Defence Force chief Mark Binskin, who conducted an independent inquiry, was given access to unedited drone footage – but it did not include audio.

Newman was asked repeatedly whether the Israeli government would apologise to the Frankcom family. He refused. “Every incident of an innocent person or aid worker that is affected by a war situation is tragic, and we’ve expressed full sympathy with the family,” he said.

Sympathy. Not an apology.

He said reparations were “dependent on the final outcome of the interrogation.” Two years later, the interrogation is still not final.

Mal Frankcom, Zomi’s brother, said the family would like a formal apology, but he believed this was unlikely because it “could be seen as an admission of guilt.”

He met with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on Tuesday. He urged the government to use all possible diplomatic levers to pressure Israel to complete its investigation.

The ambassador was asked about the audio. He said: “That’s not in my hands. It’s in the IDF’s hands.”

The IDF’s hands. Where it has been for two years.

V. The Australian Government’s Response

Foreign Minister Penny Wong told the Labor caucus that Australia opposes the death penalty “in all instances.” She pointed to a joint statement Australia signed alongside France, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom that opposed the measure.

The statement said: “We are particularly worried about the de facto discriminatory character of the bill. The adoption of this bill would risk undermining Israel’s commitments with regards to democratic principles.”

A joint statement. Words. Not action.

The government has not summoned the ambassador. It has not imposed sanctions. It has not suspended military cooperation. It has not done anything that would cost Israel anything at all.

The same government that rushed to pass hate speech laws after the Bondi terror attack – laws that criminalise the phrase “from the river to the sea” – has nothing to say about a law that would execute Palestinian prisoners by hanging within 90 days, with no right of pardon, under a discriminatory legal regime.

The same government that welcomed Israeli President Isaac Herzog to Canberra has not condemned the man who wore a noose-shaped lapel pin while celebrating the passage of this law – Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s National Security Minister.

The same government that expelled Iran’s ambassador after ASIO concluded Tehran orchestrated the bombings of a synagogue and a kosher restaurant has not applied the same standard to Israel.

VI. The Question of Double Standards

In 2024, the Albanese government expelled Iran’s ambassador, Ahmad Sadeghi, after domestic spy agency ASIO concluded that Iran had orchestrated the bombings of a synagogue in Melbourne and a kosher restaurant in Sydney.

A top Iranian diplomat, Mohammad Pournajaf, defected from the regime and was granted asylum in Australia. The government acted. The ambassador was expelled.

Yet Israel’s ambassador calls dead journalists terrorists, defends a discriminatory death penalty law, refuses to apologise for the killing of an Australian aid worker – and the government says nothing.

Why was the Iranian ambassador expelled, but the Israeli ambassador remains?

The answer is the network. The donors. The lobbyists. The fear of being labelled antisemitic. The capture of our political class by a foreign ideology that demands silence in exchange for support.

VII. Has the Press Club Been Captured?

The National Press Club is meant to be a forum for robust journalism. For challenging those in power. For holding the powerful to account.

On March 31, 2026, it provided a platform for an ambassador who called dead journalists terrorists. Who defended a discriminatory death penalty law. Who refused to apologise for the killing of an Australian aid worker.

The journalists in the room did not walk out. They did not cut the microphone. They did not refuse to platform a man who accused the dead of being terrorists without evidence.

This does no credit to Australian journalism. It does no credit to the Press Club. It does no credit to Australia.

VIII. The Questions They Refuse to Ask

We will ask the questions they refuse to ask:

Why was Hillel Newman given a platform to call dead journalists terrorists?
Why did the National Press Club not challenge his claims in real time?
Why has the Australian government not summoned the ambassador to answer for the death penalty law?
Why has the government not condemned the law in the strongest possible terms?
Why has the government not suspended military cooperation with Israel?
Why has the government not imposed sanctions?
Why has the government done nothing that would cost Israel anything at all?
Why was the Iranian ambassador expelled, but the Israeli ambassador remains?

The Frankcom family deserves answers. The Palestinian prisoners facing execution deserve the world to speak. The Australian people deserve to know why their government is silent.

IX. The Larger Pattern

This is not an isolated incident. It is the same pattern we have been exposing for weeks.

The same network that brought us the Segal Plan – mandatory Zionist indoctrination in universities. The same network that brought us the police crackdown in New South Wales – eight armoured officers breaking down a woman’s door at 5am. The same network that is turning our public service into an arm of foreign influence. The same network that has captured our political class.

The same silence. The same complicity. The same refusal to act.

Israel is committing genocide. The International Court of Justice has found it “plausible.” The United Nations commission of inquiry has found it has committed genocidal acts. The world is watching.

And Australia says nothing. Or says a few words in a joint statement, then returns to business as usual.

X. What Must Be Done

The National Press Club must answer for its decision to platform Newman. Why was he not challenged? Why was the broadcast allowed to continue? Why were dead journalists slandered without evidence on Australian soil?
The Australian government must summon the ambassador. He must answer for the death penalty law. He must answer for his comments about journalists. He must answer for the Frankcom family.
The government must condemn the death penalty law in the strongest possible terms. A joint statement is not enough. Words are not enough. Australia must use every diplomatic lever to oppose this discriminatory, inhumane legislation.
The government must suspend military cooperation with Israel. Australia cannot claim to oppose the death penalty while cooperating militarily with a state that imposes it discriminatorily.
The government must impose sanctions. The time for words is over. The time for action is now.
The Frankcom family must receive justice. The audio must be released. The investigation must be completed. Those responsible must be held accountable.

XI. A Warning

What happened at the National Press Club on March 31, 2026, was not an aberration. It was the logical conclusion of a pattern.

A foreign ambassador called dead journalists terrorists. He defended a law that executes Palestinians by hanging within 90 days, with no right of pardon, under a discriminatory legal regime. He refused to apologise for the killing of an Australian aid worker.

And Australia was silent. The government was silent. The Press Club was silent. The media was silent.

This is what complicity looks like. Not active participation. Silence. The refusal to speak. The refusal to act. The refusal to hold accountable those who commit atrocities in our name, with our support, under the cover of our alliance.

The wire is not cut. The shells fall short. The men who send others to die do not walk the ground.

But we will not be silent. We will ask the questions they refuse to ask. We will name the names. We will expose the pattern.

And we will keep cutting the wire until there is nothing left but the garden.

This article is dedicated to my wife, who stands with me shoulder to shoulder, and I am so proud of her.

Sources:……………………………………………………………

April 4, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | AUSTRALIA, civil liberties | Leave a comment

Scenario Analysis for Partitioning and Transmutation(P&T) in a Phase-out Scenario

In February 2025, the German Federal Agency for Disruptive Innovation
(SPRIN-D) published the “Implementation Study on an Accelerator-Driven
Neutron Source at the Site of a Former Nuclear Power Plant” (Houben et
al. 2025), proposing an alternative waste management option. This type of
radioactive waste management is often summarized under the broader term of
Partitioning and Transmutation (P&T).

The SPRIN-D study has been critically
assessed with respect to its assumptions, feasibility, and expected
benefits for Germany e.g. by the German Federal Ministry for the Safety of
Nuclear Waste Management (Bundesamt für die Sicherheit der nuklearen
Entsorgung (BASE) 2025).

The P&T scenarios in the SPRIN-D study address
only a narrow and highly constrained case. They do not provide a
transparent, reproducible nationwide system description for the treatment
of the full German high-level waste inventory (HLW). Additionally key
modelling parameters and interim results are only partly documented. Under
the explicit assumption of hypothetical technical feasibility, based on
documented parameters and literature values, this INRAG study estimates
what a national implementation of a P&T scenario in Germany based on
Transmutex’ START concept could entail.

After briefly outlining the
background, we define a consistent set of scenario parameters and
justifying the chosen values. We then present the modelling results, such
as the number of facilities and time periods required under the stated
boundary conditions, followed by a discussion of selected potential safety
implications of operating a full-scale system over multiple decades.

The analysis is limited to technical and system-dimension aspects. Overall, the
results indicate that the optimistic assumptions in Houben et al. (2025) do
not provide a transparent, reproducible nationwide mass-balance model and
results change drastically if parameter ranges are applied as reported in
the scientific literature.

Even under optimistic modelling assumptions, P&T
does not remove the need for a geological repository. Rather, the burden of
nuclear waste is shifted into a long-lived multi-site nuclear industrial
system with additional facilities, operational waste streams, and prolonged
institutional requirements.

INRAG 11th March 2026,
https://www.inrag.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/inrag_put_publication_V2.pdf

April 4, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Germany, wastes | Leave a comment

Manchester Professor appointed expert reviewer for Government nuclear decommissioning review

A University of Manchester Professor has been appointed by Lord Vallance,
Minister of State for Science, Innovation, Research and Nuclear, as an
Expert Reviewer for an independent assessment of the Nuclear
Decommissioning Authority (NDA); an executive non-departmental public body
that is charged with, on behalf of government, the mission to clean-up the
UK’s earliest nuclear sites safely, securely and cost effectively.

Professor Zara Hodgson FREng is an internationally recognised expert in
nuclear energy policy and research, and Director of the University’s
Dalton Nuclear Institute. She has been appointed to support the NDA 2026
Review, which has been commissioned by the Government to provide assurance
on the NDA’s performance and governance, and to make recommendations on
improvements.

The Review is led by Dr Tim Stone CBE, a senior expert
adviser to five previous Secretaries of State in two successive UK
governments and the Chair of Nuclear Risk Insurers. Professor Hodgson will
join a team of three other independent experts to support Dr Stone. The
review will focus on the NDA’s strategic planning and management, project
and programme delivery, and financial management. It will assess how
effectively the NDA delivers value for money for the taxpayer while
maintaining the highest standards of safety, transparency and governance
across the UK’s civil nuclear legacy. Reviewers will challenge current
practices, propose bold value-for-money recommendations, and highlight good
practice while identifying areas for improvement.

Manchester University 1st April 2026, https://www.manchester.ac.uk/about/news/manchester-professor-appointed-expert-reviewer-for-government-nuclear-decommissioning-review/

April 4, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics, UK | Leave a comment

Christian Nationalists in US Government Push Attacks on Iran as Holy War

Hegseth’s prayer services at the Pentagon are a sign the guard rails are shrinking. On March 25, he prayed for “overwhelming violence” using carefully selected passages from the Bible to justify an unjust war. Head bowed, Hegseth intoned: “Pour out your wrath upon those who plot vain things and blow them away like chaff before the wind…. Let every round find its mark against the enemies of righteousness and our great nation…. Let justice be executed swiftly and without remorse so that evil may be driven back.”

Christian nationalists conveniently ignore the passages where Jesus commands his followers to serve the poor and love thy neighbor.

With Pete Hegseth leading the Department of Defense, the line separating church and state is increasingly blurred.

By Sara Gabler , Truthout, April 2, 2026

How Christian clergy talk about Jesus this Easter Sunday will tell you a lot about their politics. While parishioners in the U.S. are likely to be greeted by the traditional refrain, “He is risen,” at their April 5 Easter service, they’re just as likely to be met with the phrase, “Christ is King.” This rhetoric replaces the traditional understanding of Easter as a celebration of Jesus’s sacrifice and resurrection with a more aggressive vision of a warrior Jesus that resonates strongly with Donald Trump-aligned white Christian nationalists.

The phrase “Christ is King” isn’t new — it’s sometimes used by Christians to refer to the belief that Jesus’s divine rule goes beyond that of earthly leaders. But the phrase has recently become “a kind of rallying cry for Christian supremacy,” historian Kristin Kobes Du Mez, author of Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation, told Truthout.

Over the last few years, the slogan has spread from far right provocateurs like Nick Fuentes to Trump’s cabinet and the military. In February, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth used the phrase at a convention of the National Religious Broadcasters, galvanizing Christian nationalists’ thirst for authoritarian rulers whose Jesus is defined by militant masculinity — more like a crusader or cowboy than the peace-loving, “sacrificial lamb” celebrated on Easter, who was executed for challenging the hierarchies of empire.

Along the way, the phrase has become a dog whistle for antisemitism, and it’s often combined with other Christian nationalist “holy war” rhetoric that has been spiking since the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran on February 28.

Popular Christian Zionist preachers like John Hagee came out of the gate praising Operation Epic Fury in a sermon from March 10. On March 23, Rep. Andy Ogles posted an AI-generated video of himself, Pete Hegseth, and Marco Rubio dressed as crusaders with the caption: “This is a battle of good vs evil. We must reaffirm that our nation was built on Christian principles.” Their language and iconography distract from the fact that the U.S. and Israel’s attacks on Iran were launched without congressional approval, are unpopular, and have killed more than 1,500 people.

Saddle Up Your Horses

Christian nationalists like Hegseth, Hagee, and Ogles have fashioned a messiah to look like the kind of earthly leader they desire, one who will uphold what Du Mez calls their ideology of “militant masculinity.” It’s a paradigm that “enshrines patriarchal authority and condones the callous display of power, at home and abroad,” she writes in Jesus and John Wayne.

Du Mez says: “Christian nationalists tend not to talk about Jesus very much. They’ll talk about biblical law, righteousness, or social issues. But if you really start talking about Jesus in the Bible, then you get into things that arguably undercut many of their core values.”

Christian nationalists conveniently ignore the passages where Jesus commands his followers to serve the poor and love thy neighbor. Instead, figures like the disgraced evangelical pastor Mark Driscoll promote militant masculinity through podcasts streams like “Built for War” and an Instagram account full of bull-wrestling cowboys.

The frontiersman protector of faith and “family values” hailed by Driscoll’s podcast saturates white evangelical culture. Even in the ’90s, this was theprimary message about masculinity………………………………………………………………………………………………

With Hegseth leading the Department of Defense, the line separating church and state is increasingly blurred. In February, he invited Christian nationalist pastor Doug Wilson to a prayer service at the Pentagon and has been holding these monthly prayer services since last May. The group Americans United for Separation of Church and State (AU) filed a lawsuit over the meetings to “determine whether the departments are upholding their obligation to remain neutral about religious matters and respect the religious freedom of federal workers.”

Alessandro Terenzoni is the vice president of public policy at AU. He told Truthout that the Trump administration is “playing this long game” to “Christianize the federal workforce,” including the military, through measures like the executive order on “Eradicating Anti-Christian Bias” and the Religious Liberty Commission.

The December meeting of the Religious Liberty Commission that focused on the military was led by Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick with a roster of members and speakers that Terenzoni says looked “like a commercial for the organizations who are pushing this sort of Christian nationalist agenda: the Heritage Foundation, First Liberty Institute, the Alliance Defending Freedom who represent Christian nationalist plaintiffs in all these lawsuits.” Terenzoni says the meeting contradicted the mandate that the government not “single out one faith to privilege above others or turn the military into a mission field.”

White Christian nationalist messaging isn’t coming from Hegseth alone. In March, Trump appointed Turning Point USA’s Erika Kirk to an advisory role for the Air Force Academy. She replaces her late husband, Charlie Kirk, who, in the one board meeting he attended in August 2025, insisted the academy finish repairing an on-site chapel because its closure has had a “depressing effect on the psyche of the cadets.”……………………………………………

Terenzoni warns that the leaders of the Religious Liberty Commission are promoting a persecution narrative in order to legitimize their work. ……………………………………………………………..

Du Mez also warns that Christians’ sense of embattlement is what’s behind their support of “preemptive” war. “With somebody like Hegseth, who in his own books, talks about setting aside the rules of warfare because that’s only for weak men. This kind of preemptive attack, aggression is always justified, because they’re going to come for you, so you need to get out in front of that,” says Du Mez. In their worldview, they’re the victims, not the civilians in Iran whom the U.S. and Israel are bombing, or the Palestinians whose genocide is funded by the U.S. government.

Wounded Masculinity

Generations of Christian nationalist men were raised on militant masculinity and its faux nostalgia, glorification of rugged individualism, and delusions of persecution. That’s part of what made Trump’s “Make America Great Again” vision so appealing to them — Black and Brown men are conspicuously left out. “Masculine power is dangerous if it isn’t in the hands of white Christian men,” says Du Mez. “In the run-up to the 2024 election, Trump campaigned on the threat of immigrants. That was really their bread and butter.”

The MAGA movement has also been swift at marshaling militant masculinity to pass anti-LGBTQ policies. “This administration is really fixated on gender. We knew during the campaign that the vilification of transgender Americans was a big piece of what they were doing,” says Terenzoni.

“One of the things that’s different now is that there seem to be very few guardrails anymore,” says Du Mez. “In many ways, the rhetoric doesn’t actually feel all that different. But their access to power is. The fact that now our Secretary of Defense has been steeped in this militant evangelicalism and has wholly embraced these ideas of militant Christian manhood and has absolutely thumbed his nose at the rules of warfare and, one might argue, human decency.”

The prayer prompted a rebuttal from Pope Leo XIV, who wrote on social media that Jesus “does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war.” But such a rebuke is not likely to satisfy the warmongers in the U.S. government, making AU’s lawsuit over these Christian nationalist services even more urgent.

Source: https://truthout.org/articles/christian-nationalists-in-us-government-push-attacks-on-iran-as-holy-war/?utm_source=Truthout&utm_campaign=0903417e9b-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2026_04_02_07_10&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_bbb541a1db-0903417e9b-650192793

April 3, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Religion and ethics, USA | Leave a comment

‘The rope is for Arabs only’: Israel’s new death penalty law for Palestinians recycles a colonial playbook

For years, Israeli forces already operated under rules that permitted the shooting and killing of unarmed persons, so long as they could nominally be deemed a threat. But Israel’s current war has expanded this category to the point that nearly everyone can now be made into a target.

The execution law is largely a shield designed to protect soldiers from even the limited threat of accountability, and to formalize what the field has already made routine.

The passing of the recent Israeli death penalty law legalizes an already existing policy of executions within a set schedule. The same colonial logic governs how Israel launches its wars: first Gaza, then Lebanon, now Iran. Resistance in this region is refusing Israel’s timetable of death.

By Abdaljawad Omar, Mondoweiss, April 2, 2026

The picture of Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir jubilantly trying to open a champagne bottle on the Knesset floor over the passing of a death penalty law for Palestinians will be anchored in history as one of those photographs that needs no caption.

It’s the image of a country that has never truly left the colonial moment into which it was born. It didn’t simply inherit British practices, but kept them alive for over 70 years. It now reaches back to retrieve one of the darkest of these practices.

Israel’s new death penalty law, which exclusively targets Palestinians, did not come out of nowhere. It was passed down from a scaffold the British had already built on the same land, testing it on the same people under the same sky. In his study of Britain’s “pacification” of Palestine, Matthew Hughes, a military historian at Brunel University, shows how the military courts established by the British Mandate in November 1937 were built for speed above all else — a terror performed so quickly that no one had time to appeal or look away. Shaykh Farhan al-Sa’di, an elderly Qassamite revolutionary leader and one of the principal field commanders of the 1936 uprising, was captured on a Monday, tried on a Wednesday, and hanged on a Saturday. It’s the same law Israel reintroduced today.

What those courts also reveal is that British execution policy was, from the beginning, applied differently depending on who stood before the judge. Palestinians were hanged for carrying four bullets; Jews received prison sentences for firing weapons. The courts were equal on paper and unequal in practice, and everyone living under them knew it.

Bahjat Abu Gharbiyya, a Palestinian nationalist and resistance fighter who lived through the British Mandate and left some of the most detailed firsthand accounts of that period, documented this disparity plainly: in his account, the capital sentence fell on Arabs, while Jews charged with the same or graver offenses walked away with prison sentences. The rope, in practice, was for Arabs only.

The new Israeli law carries this same racism forward, entering a prison system where Palestinians make up the vast majority of political prisoners, and where the definition of who is dangerous has been stretched until it fits almost anyone who refuses to disappear quietly. The rope, as it always has been in Palestine, is for Arabs only.

There is something else that legalizing execution does, something beneath the law’s stated purpose that may be its more consequential effect. Hughes shows that in Mandate Palestine, official policy and unofficial violence never operated separately. As British courts hanged men with increasing speed and confidence, the threshold for what soldiers felt permitted to do in the field quietly fell. At Miska, a Palestinian village in the coastal area, British police tortured four captured Palestinian rebels in May 1938, killing them once interrogation was complete — not in a courtroom, but in the open.

Law and lawlessness were not opposites in that system: they fed each other. The widened application of capital punishment in the courts gave license to soldiers in the field. What we are watching in Gaza, Lebanon, and the West Bank today follows the same pattern, pushing the boundaries of permissible conduct.

A codification of existing practice

In this sense, Israel is not doing something new with this law. It is catching up with itself. The execution law is largely a shield designed to protect soldiers from even the limited threat of accountability, and to formalize what the field has already made routine. According to Israeli rights group Yesh Din, of the 1,260 complaints filed against soldiers for harming Palestinians between 2017 and 2021, soldiers were prosecuted in less than 1% of cases — 0.87%, to be precise. The law does not create impunity, but guarantees it. Once enshrined, it pushes the violence further, each legal expansion making extrajudicial killing easier to justify, and each unjustified killing creating pressure for new legal cover. They drive each other.

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… https://mondoweiss.net/2026/04/the-rope-is-for-arabs-only-israels-new-death-penalty-law-for-palestinians-recycles-a-colonial-playbook/

April 3, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Atrocities, Israel | Leave a comment

So much winning

318 million people were already at crisis-level hunger before February 28. That figure has been earmarked for aggressive growth,

Please make it stop, Mr. President

Gold and Geoppolitics, , Apr 02, 2026

In 2002, the Pentagon spent $250 million on the largest wargame in US military history called ‘Millennium Challenge’. 13,500 participants, 2 years of planning, the works. The idea was pretty straightforward: simulate an invasion of a Middle Eastern country in the Persian Gulf. Suspiciously resembling Iran. The purpose was to demonstrate that America’s technological dominance could steamroll anything in its path.

They picked a retired 3-star Marine named Paul Van Riper to play the enemy.

Van Riper, who spent 41 years in uniform from Vietnam to Desert Storm, took one look at the scenario and did what any self-respecting adversary would do. He ignored it completely. Instead of radios, he used motorcycle couriers. Attack orders were hidden in the daily call to prayer. Swarms of explosive-laden speedboats were sent through the Strait of Hormuz.

And in less than 10 minutes, he sank 16 US warships. An aircraft carrier, 10 cruisers, and 5 amphibious ships. Over 20,000 simulated American casualties. The equivalent of Pearl Harbor, executed with small boats and cruise missiles by a retired Marine with a phone and a bad attitude.

So the Pentagon did what any self-respecting institution does when reality disagreed with the plan.

The ships were un-sank. Van Riper’s forces had to turn on their anti-aircraft radar so it could be easily targeted and destroyed. They even told him he wasn’t allowed to shoot down the incoming 82nd Airborne. The whole rest of the exercise was scripted to guarantee an American victory.

Van Riper walked out in disgust. His parting words: “Nothing was learned from this. A culture not willing to think hard and test itself does not augur well for the future”.

That was 24 years ago. The conditions Van Riper exploited haven’t changed. They’ve only gotten worse.

And now we’re one month into this shooting war with Iran. “Operation Epic Fury”.

Let’s have a look at what we’ve achieved, shall we?

The Strait of Hormuz has been successfully transitioned from a free international waterway into a revenue-generating toll infrastructure, administered by the IRGC with a published fee schedule, a vetting corridor near Larak Island, and legislation pending to make it permanent. Ships currently pay $2 to $3.5 million per transit, settling in yuan through CIPS, which bypasses SWIFT entirely and represents a significant upgrade in settlement efficiency.

India has adopted the yuan. Japan has adopted the renminbi. Pakistan negotiated preferential rates at 2 tankers per day. Thailand secured bilateral access. Only COSCO, China’s state shipping line, moves freely, which streamlines the user experience considerably if you happen to be Chinese. The dollar’s share of global reserves has reached its lowest level in a century, which suggests the new framework is being broadly embraced.

This is the petrodollar in transition. The mechanism that has underwritten American empire since 1974 – Gulf oil priced in dollars, revenues recycled through US Treasuries, quietly funding a $39 trillion debt – is being replaced in real time by a yuan-denominated corridor that didn’t exist 5 weeks ago. And unlike a military defeat, which can be spun and repackaged for a news cycle to consumers with the attention span of a goldfish, a reserve currency transition is a one-way door.

The Navy has achieved a significant risk management milestone by declining to escort tankers through the Strait, citing conditions that were “too high” – a prudent assessment that prioritises fleet preservation over the stated objective of the war. 3,000 ships and 20,000 seafarers remain in the Gulf, representing the largest involuntary maritime community since the Age of Sail. Maersk has 10 container ships holding position, crews resourcefully extending provisions without fresh food. 470,000 TEUs of container capacity – 10% of the global fleet – is effectively in long-term storage, reducing wear on hulls. The insurance industry has contributed independently: 7 P&I clubs filing cancellation notices achieved what the entire US Fifth Fleet could not, surging war-risk premiums from 0.2% to 10% of hull value. Even after a ceasefire, insurers require 30 to 60 days of incident-free stability before reinstating cover. The Houthis’ Red Sea precedent: 26 months and still no policy written.

Flexibility in goal-setting is a hallmark of mature organisations, and the administration demonstrated this by quietly reclassifying the reopening of Hormuz from “strategic imperative” to “optional”. The waterway that carries a fifth of the world’s oil, that the war was partly launched to secure, is no longer required for the war’s conclusion. This frees up considerable strategic bandwidth to focus on objectives that are also not being achieved, but in less publicly measurable ways.

The war has successfully disrupted seven global commodity flows simultaneously, achieving a level of supply chain diversification that would be difficult to replicate intentionally.

The agricultural sector has been comprehensively de-risked from overreliance on Gulf-sourced inputs. Hormuz transit collapsed 97%, slashing maritime CO2 emissions in the Strait to levels not seen since the Age of Sail. An environmental triumph, really. It also took with it 80% of global sulfur production along with nitrogen capacity that was rendered uneconomic by gas prices. Russia contributed by halting ammonium nitrate exports. China pitched in by banning phosphate exports through August.

All those key macronutrients were successfully eliminated from global supply chains simultaneously, and during planting season no less. Urea at the Port of New Orleans hit $690 a tonne, a 45% gain in three weeks that commodity traders would kill for under normal circumstances. The nitrogen shortage has automatically opted one in four US farmers out of spring production.

318 million people were already at crisis-level hunger before February 28. That figure has been earmarked for aggressive growth, and with the planting window about to shut, the revised projections are locked in.

The plastics and pharmaceutical supply chains have undergone similar rationalisation. Three supply chains for polyethylene were streamlined in one stroke: Indonesia, South Korea, and Singapore. In a single week!

India, producer of 40% of US generic drugs, sources 87.7% of its methanol through the same 21 miles we just helped close, putting paracetamol, ibuprofen, and metformin for 537 million diabetics on an accelerated depreciation schedule…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

The war has generated strong returns for stakeholders on all sides except the one funding it. Iran is producing 1.5 million barrels per day, up from 1.1 million pre-war, selling at $110 a barrel where it used to accept $47. That’s a win. Just not for us.

…………………………….. The war has attracted significant third-party investment. Russia contributed the strike plan, 500 MANPADS launchers, and satellite intelligence. China contributed BeiDou navigation, base imagery, and fabrication tools. In return, both are collecting above-market premiums on every commodity the war has disrupted, while committing zero personnel and accepting zero risk. Iran has been capitalised just well enough to sustain the engagement without resolving it.

And this brings us to the most exciting deliverable on the roadmap. The air campaign has successfully exhausted 15,000 precision strikes, fully deployed the cruise missile inventory, and generated a $200 billion supplemental funding request – yet Iran continues to launch, export, administer the Strait, and issue demands. The enriched uranium remains 100 metres under granite that no ordnance in the US arsenal can reach, which creates a compelling case for boots-on-the-ground engagement. Polymarket agrees: 66-68% probability of US ground entry by April 30.

………………………………………………………………..One month. 88 waves. 40 destroyed energy assets across 9 countries. Seven supply chains severed. A yuan toll booth where the petrodollar used to be. A famine building in the planting data. A carrier in Crete. An AWACS burning in the Saudi desert. Cruise missiles spent. Bond markets screaming. Allies shutting bases. $12 trillion gone. And the only option left on the table is the one that turns all of this into a footnote.

We’re going to win so much.

You may even get tired of winning. https://no01.substack.com/p/so-much-winning?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=4094764&post_id=192834077&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=wuef2&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

April 3, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | business and costs, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Ukrainian Economy ‘Collapsing’

The only real solution to the Ukrainian problem is to accept the Russian peace terms.

By Lucas Leiroz de Almeida, Global Research, March 29, 2026, https://www.globalresearch.ca/ukrainian-economy-collapsing/5920470

Even Ukrainian authorities are beginning to admit the serious crisis affecting the country.

Recently, the head of the Kiev regime’s finance sector confirmed that the country is going through a catastrophic situation, showing deep concerns about the regime’s future.

This clearly shows how the nationalist junta in Kiev is rapidly destroying the country – something that could be avoided if the authorities agreed to make peace with Russia.

During a speech to the Ukrainian parliament on March 26, Daniil Getmantsev, chairman of the Finance, Tax and Customs Committee of the Verkhovna Rada, said that Ukraine is indebted and unable to pay all the expenses accumulated since the beginning of the conflict. He expressed concerns about the future of the Ukrainian economy and “sovereignty,” considering the country’s growing debts with major global financial institutions.

Getmantsev primarily denounced the country’s debts to the EU, the IMF, and the World Bank. He emphasized that Ukraine is already indebted to these organizations and does not appear to be in a position to repay this debt anytime soon. Therefore, the tendency is for the country to continue contracting more loans and becoming increasingly indebted.

The official explained some of the numbers behind the crisis. Ukraine failed to pay the installments of the loan from the EU’s “Ukraine Facility” program. Thus, the country missed out on part of the expected funding, as it failed to fulfill its part of the agreement.

He drew attention to the situation and warned Ukrainian parliamentarians about the current dangers. According to Getmantsev, it is possible that Ukrainians are close to “losing” the country because of this crisis. Therefore, he urges local politicians to act quickly to prevent the worst-case scenario. He believes immediate reforms are necessary, as well as greater integration with the EU, an audit of public spending, and a reform of the Ukrainian social security system.

“In 2025, we failed to meet 14 indicators of the Ukraine Facility. And because of this, we did not receive 3.9 billion euros (…) Moreover, 300 million of that amount is being lost completely in the first quarter [as] we have already failed to meet 5 out of 5 indicators (…) We can lose the country like this (…( Today is not the time to hide from responsibility, not the time for populism, not the time to look for popular decisions (…) It is the time for systematic work, European integration, deregulation, pension reform, an audit of state expenditures, and bringing the economy out of the shadows” he said.

This makes it clear that not even the regime’s own officials can hide the Ukrainian reality anymore. The country’s crisis has reached such a critical point that all sides are gradually admitting that it is impossible to maintain the current situation in the long term. With the decrease in international aid and constant losses on the battlefield, Ukraine has entered a critical phase in the conflict – being extremely vulnerable and close to collapse on several levels, mainly militarily and economically.

The previous attitude of Ukrainian and Western propaganda was to deny the crisis and claim that Ukraine had the economic and military situation under control. These lies helped keep the Ukrainian war machine active for a long time, but Ukraine’s losses caused European public opinion to change its attitude on the subject – which generated popular pressure in the West against continued aid programs.

Furthermore, Europe itself has reduced its capacity for aid. With the energy and economic crisis resulting from anti-Russian sanctions, added to constant international instability, Europe is entering a phase of social insecurity, making it more prudent to control spending than to continue systematically sending money to Ukraine. Although this money is often delivered in the form of loans, it seems certain that Ukraine will not be able to repay it. And even loans secured by the delivery of rare earth minerals and natural resources are unsafe, since exploration will be hampered during hostilities.

In fact, the pro-war lobby in the EU is still strong, which is why aid continues, but the material circumstances have forced the bloc to significantly reduce assistance – which has further worsened the crisis for Ukrainians. Now, there is no longer any way to disguise reality. Ukraine is trapped in a crisis from which it cannot easily emerge. No matter how much local authorities speak of “urgent measures” or “necessary reforms,” the country will certainly not be able to overcome its current difficulties while the conflict with Russia continues.

In this sense, the correct course of action for Kiev would be simply to accept the Russian peace terms and establish an agreement to end hostilities. Any other “measure” would be a mistake, incapable of saving the country from absolute collapse.

April 3, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | business and costs, Ukraine | Leave a comment

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