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After “Greater Israel,” Netanyahu calls for a “Super-Sparta” and “finishing the job in Gaza”

Voltaire Network | Paris (France) | 3 October 2025, by Thierry Meyssan, translation, Roger Lagassé, https://www.voltairenet.org/article222905.html

Benyamin Netanyahu’s drift from avowed conservatism to Nazism is increasingly evident. After claiming the “historical and spiritual” mission of achieving a “Greater Israel,” that is, conquering the territories of its seven neighbors, he has just called for transforming Israel into a “super-Sparta,” that is, militarizing the state and ceasing all trade with its allies. If words have any meaning, he constantly makes us understand that his references are the fascists Vladimir Jabotinsky and Leo Strauss. From one drift to another, he engaged in a shameless act of lying before the United Nations General Assembly, attributing dark thoughts to his adversaries and claiming the right to continue massacring.

Last week, I warned our readers, particularly Israeli ones, against Benjamin Netanyahu’s rapid drift toward fascistism—and perhaps Naziism, in Ben-Gurion’s words about Vladimir Jabotinsky. [1] I had indeed noted the Prime Minister’s public conversion to the doctrine of “Greater Israel.” Let us recall that this expression is not intended to justify the annexation of the entire Palestinian territories to the State of Israel, but also eastern Egypt, parts of Jordan and Saudi Arabia, all of Lebanon, most of Syria, and part of Iraq, to ​​the point of reforming the ancient Assyrian empire “from the Nile to the Euphrates.”

This announcement, made exclusively in Hebrew, that is, for the sole use of his fellow Israelis, drew strong criticism from all Arab leaders, even reaching the United Nations Security Council on September 23. Foreign Minister Ahmed Attaf declared that “the Israeli occupation compromises any prospect of creating an independent and sovereign Palestinian state, not only on the ground but also in people’s minds.” Fueled by the myth of “Greater Israel,” the Israeli government seeks to redefine the region’s borders and extend its hegemony in defiance of international law and the norms governing peaceful coexistence between states; a statement echoed by the Russian Permanent Representative.

Indeed, how can one not question this reference, which the Prime Minister had always avoided citing throughout his political career and which he now uses in the midst of the “genocide” in Gaza? The term genocide is not a legal whim, but the carefully chosen word of the “Special Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices Affecting the Human Rights of the Palestinian People and Other Arabs of the Occupied Territories,” which submitted its report (reference A/79/363) to the United Nations General Assembly on September 20 [2].

This is also the opinion of Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi, the Advocate General of the Israel Defense Forces. The latter had warned the IDF General Staff that 1.2 million Gazans could not be displaced without ensuring their fate. But on September 8, General Eyal ’Amir, Chief of Staff, overruled these objections. This is the first time since the creation of the State of Israel that a Chief of Staff has ignored the warnings of an Advocate General.

No matter. Benjamin Netanyahu is now reclaiming his complex legacy of fascism and Nazism: on September 15, during a conference organized by Israel’s Accountant General, the Prime Minister declared that the entire world was now against the State of Israel (which is false: he is against its own policies). Particularly Europeans, who are giving in to pressure from their Arab and Muslim immigrants. The enemy is no longer Hamas and Iran, but Belgium and Spain. Also, he continued, Israel must transform itself into a self-sufficient country… a “Super-Sparta.” It must abandon its conventional economic activities and develop its defense industries. [3]

Benjamin Netanyahu spoke cautiously about this myth, saying: “We are Athens and Sparta. But we are going to become Athens and super-Sparta.” It must be remembered that no politician has referred to Sparta since the fall of the Third Reich. It was a leitmotif of the Nazis and their allies, right up to the Japanese imperialists. Everyone claimed to be a Spartan against Athens, just as today, everyone claims to be an Athens against Sparta… except Benjamin Netanyahu and the Straussians. This is why I immediately refer you to what I wrote two years ago [4]: ​​the man behind Netanyahu’s legal coup, the Israeli-American Elliott Abrams, claims not only to be Vladimir Jabotinsky, the founder of Revisionist Zionism, but also to Leo Strauss.

But Leo Strauss was not only a disciple of Jabotinsky, whom he came to welcome in New York with Benzion Netanyahu (Benyamin’s father). He was a philosophy professor at the University of Chicago. He secretly trained his favorite students. He called them his “hoplites” (that is, his soldiers, in reference to ancient Greece). He tested them by sending them to disrupt the classes of his rivals. Then he taught them that to protect themselves from a possible holocaust, they should not rely on democracies, weak regimes, but build their own dictatorships. It was his students, like Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz, who rigged US intelligence and initiated both the attacks of September 11 and the destruction of Afghanistan and Iraq.

The reference to Sparta is a means of recognition that all fascists understand. Yair Lapid, the opposition leader, commented the next day on Radio 103FM, declaring: “Sparta was destroyed. He is the son of a historian. He surprised me. Sparta is a sword, why did he mention it? Because it transformed us into a country at war. We don’t want to be a state at war, we want to be a prosperous, prosperous, and popular country in the world.” Above all, he should have said and repeated that Benzion Netanyahu was a fascist and that Sparta is an unworthy reference in a democracy, that the Holocaust survivors who, fleeing aboard the Exodus, participated in the creation of the State of Israel would turn in their graves to hear the Prime Minister evoke a Nazi myth and perpetrate genocide.

As if that weren’t enough, Benjamin Netanyahu continued to lie before the 80th session of the United Nations General Assembly [5]. In a room deserted by three-quarters of the diplomatic delegations, he claimed that Hamas had massacred “1,200 innocent people” on October 7, while, according to the Israeli press, he had ordered the IDF to kill soldiers and civilians themselves so that they would not be “taken prisoner by the enemy” [6]. He is therefore responsible for half of the deaths he denounces. Then, he claimed that Hamas called in its charter for “the murder of all Jews on the planet,” which was never included in it. He boasted of taking all necessary measures to protect Gazan civilians, while all non-Israeli—and often Israeli—experts note the opposite. He accused all those who try to save Gazans of being anti-Semitic and of spreading anti-Semitism, without realizing that it is his policy, carried out in the name of a self-proclaimed “Jewish state,” that fuels this anti-Semitism. He accused 90% of the Palestinian people of supporting the horrors of October 7, while they supported a military operation by the entire Resistance (except Fatah) and largely disassociated themselves from the crimes committed that day. He accused the Palestinians of not wanting an independent state alongside Israel, but instead of Israel, while Yasser Arafat signed the Oslo Accords alongside Yitzhak Rabin, accepting the “two-state solution.” And so on.

When will we admit that Benjamin Netanyahu is no longer a democrat and that it is our duty to fight him before he kills all the Gazans and begins to purge the Israelis? More than anyone else, Israelis, whose parents were betrayed by their homelands and delivered to Nazi barbarism, should rise up against what the State of Israel is becoming, not only against the Arabs, but also against them.

October 6, 2025 Posted by | Israel, politics | Leave a comment

Peace Without Denuclearisation? Kim Challenges U.S. To Rethink Nuclear Stance

Oyeronke Oyerinde, 5 Oct 25, The Organisation for World Peace

North Korea’s Kim Jong Un has declared that he is open to dialogue with Washington if the United States drops its demand for denuclearisation, which he previously stated he would never accept. During a recent speech at the Supreme People’s Assembly, Kim insisted that his country’s nuclear arsenal is essential for survival, calling recent proposals from the U.S. and South Korea “disingenuous” attempts to weaken his regime. Yet, striking a different note, he also expressed “fond memories” of U.S. President Donald Trump, with whom he held three unprecedented summits. Kim’s statements mark his first direct reference to Trump since the start of Trump’s second presidency in January, raising speculation that Pyongyang sees him as the only credible partner for renewed talks. Rachel Minyoung Lee, an analyst at the Stimson Center, described Kim’s comments as “an invitation to Trump to rethink U.S. policy on denuclearisation.”……………………………………………………………………………

Despite sharp rhetoric, Kim notably did not renounce the 2018 Singapore Declaration, which laid out goals for peacebuilding, new U.S.-North Korea relations, and eventual denuclearisation. This suggests that space for dialogue still exists, though only if both sides are willing to temper their demands. For the U.S., this could mean considering interim steps such as freezes or arms-control-style agreements, as part of a broader peace framework.

The alternative is an escalating arms race on the peninsula. South Korea warns that North Korea is close to developing a missile capable of striking the continental U.S. with a nuclear warhead, a milestone that could trigger further militarisation and raise the risk of miscalculation. Meanwhile, sanctions continue to exact a toll on ordinary North Koreans, worsening food shortages and isolating a population already cut off from much of the world.

The path to peace and security in Northeast Asia cannot rest on ultimatums that no side will accept. Peace is dependent on creative diplomacy: freezing nuclear development, reducing military exercises, opening humanitarian channels, and fostering trust through incremental agreements. Kim’s statement is a challenge, but also an opportunity. If the U.S. and its allies can move from absolutist positions towards pragmatic steps, dialogue could resume. The Korean peninsula has suffered too long under the shadow of war, and what is needed now is not maximalist posturing but the courage to take its first, fragile steps toward peace. https://theowp.org/peace-without-denuclearisation-kim-challenges-u-s-to-rethink-nuclear-stance/

October 6, 2025 Posted by | North Korea, politics international | Leave a comment

Trump says Putin’s offer on nuclear arms control ‘sounds like a good idea’

By Andrea Shalal, October 6, 2025, Reporting by Andrea Shalal; Editing by Cynthia Osterman and Chizu Nomiyama, https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/trump-says-putins-offer-nuclear-arms-control-sounds-like-good-idea-2025-10-05/

  • Summary
  • Putin proposed voluntary limit on nuclear arsenals last month
  • US-Russian ties strained despite Trump-Putin summit in August
  • Putin warned US against sending long-range missiles to Ukraine

WASHINGTON, Oct 5 (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump on Sunday said Russian President Vladimir Putin’s offer to voluntarily maintain limits on deployed strategic nuclear weapons “sounds like a good idea.”

Putin last month offered to voluntarily maintain limits capping the size of the world’s two biggest nuclear arsenals set out in the 2010 New START accord, which expires in February, if the U.S. does the same.

“Sounds like a good idea to me,” Trump told reporters as he departed the White House, when asked about Putin’s offer.

Russia’s U.N. Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia last week had said Moscow was still waiting for Trump to respond to Putin’s offer to voluntarily maintain the limits on deployed strategic nuclear weapons once a key arms control treaty expires.

Any agreement on continuing to limit nuclear arms would stand in contrast to rising tensions between the United States and Russia since Trump and Putin met in Alaska in mid-August given reported incursions of Russian drones into NATO airspace.

Speaking in a video clip released on Sunday, Putin warned that a decision by the United States to supply long-range Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine for strikes deep into Russia would destroy Moscow’s relationship with Washington.

U.S. Vice President JD Vance said last month that Washington was considering a Ukrainian request to obtain missiles that could strike deep into Russia, including Moscow, though it is unclear if a final decision has been made.

Trump, who has expressed disappointment in Putin for not moving to end the war in Ukraine, was not asked directly on Sunday about the prospect of supplying Tomahawks to Ukraine.

“This will lead to the destruction of our relations, or at least the positive trends that have emerged in these relations,” Putin said in a video clip released on Sunday by Russian state television reporter Pavel Zarubin.

One U.S. official and three other sources told Reuters that the Trump administration’s desire to send long-range Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine may not be viable because current inventories are committed to the U.S. Navy and other uses.

Trump is touring a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier, the George H.W. Bush, off the coast of Virginia on Sunday, and will give a speech on a second carrier, the Harry S. Truman, later.

Tomahawk cruise missiles have a range of 2,500 kilometres (1,550 miles). If Ukraine got the missiles, the Kremlin and all of European Russia would be within target.

October 6, 2025 Posted by | politics international, Russia, USA | Leave a comment

Iran says nuclear cooperation with IAEA ‘no longer relevant’

Iranian FM warns that Europe has ‘eliminated justification for talks’ with UN nuclear watchdog after triggering snapback sanctions.

By Elis Gjevori and News Agencies, 5 Oct 2025, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/10/5/iran-says-nuclear-cooperation-with-iaea-no-longer-relevant

Iran’s foreign minister has declared that cooperation with the United Nations nuclear watchdog is “no longer relevant” after Western countries reinstated international sanctions on the country.

“The Cairo agreement is no longer relevant for our cooperation with the IAEA,” Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said on Sunday, referring to a deal signed last month with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)

That agreement had laid out a framework for renewed inspections and monitoring after Tehran suspended cooperation following Israeli and United States attacks on its nuclear facilities in June.

However, the deal lost significance after Britain, France and Germany – all signatories to the 2015 nuclear accord – triggered the return of UN sanctions, accusing Iran of breaching its commitments, claims which Tehran has rejected.

“The three European countries thought they had leverage in their hands, threatening to implement a snapback,” Araghchi told foreign diplomats in Tehran. “Now they have used this lever and seen the results. The three European countries have definitely diminished their role and almost eliminated the justification for negotiations with them.”

He added that the European trio “will have a much smaller role than in the past” in any future talks over Iran’s nuclear programme.

Double standards

Tehran has accused the IAEA of double standards, saying the agency failed to condemn Israeli strikes on Iranian nuclear sites despite its obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

Western states, led by the US and supported by Israel, have long accused Iran of seeking nuclear weapons – allegations Tehran strongly denies. Iran insists its programme is purely civilian and that it retains the right to enrich uranium under the NPT.

Some Iranian lawmakers have suggested withdrawing from the NPT altogether, though President Masoud Pezeshkian has maintained that Iran will remain committed to its treaty obligations.

Araghchi said Tehran’s “decision regarding cooperation with the agency will be announced”, without elaborating, but noted that “there is still room for diplomacy”.

Talks between Iran and the US that began in April to revive a broader nuclear agreement collapsed after Israeli attacks in June targeted Iranian nuclear, military and residential sites.

Tehran has since accused Washington of sabotaging diplomacy and demanded guarantees and recognition of its rights before any potential resumption of negotiations.

Iran has repeatedly denied seeking a nuclear weapon, while Israel is widely believed to possess an undeclared nuclear arsenal of dozens of atomic bombs.

October 6, 2025 Posted by | Iran, politics international | Leave a comment

They Really Think They’ll Be Able To Propagandize The World Into Liking Israel Again.

Caitlin Johnstone, Oct 06, 2025, https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/they-really-think-theyll-be-able?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=175387550&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

It’s cute how the Zionists think they’ll be able to manipulate and propagandize the world into liking Israel again.

Yeah, saturate all online platforms with weird-faced influencers telling us Israel is awesome. That’ll make us forget those years of genocidal atrocities.

Sure, buy up the social media platforms that young people are using so you can censor criticism of Israel. That’ll convince them that Zionism is cool.

Go on, take control of CBS and make Bari Weiss the boss. That’ll make us forget all those videos of mutilated Palestinian children.

Right, use Zionist oligarchs and influence operations to manipulate governments and institutions into crushing free speech which opposes a genocidal apartheid state. That’ll get everyone supporting the genocidal apartheid state.

Propaganda is an effective tool of mass-scale psychological manipulation, but it isn’t magic. It isn’t going to miraculously erase what people know in their bones to be true.

In order to successfully propagandize people you need to first get them to trust you, and then you need to feed them narratives which appeal to the cognitive biases they already hold. Nobody trusts Israel apologia anymore, and people’s biases are now stacked squarely against the Zionist entity. They’ve got nothing to work with and nowhere to start from.

If a coworker you hate came up to you and started stealing stuff off your desk while telling you he’s your friend and that he would never steal from you, you’re not going to believe him no matter how many words he says to you. No matter how skillful a manipulator he is, no matter how eloquent his words are, nothing he says will trump your first hand observations of your material reality.

That’s what it’s like at this point. They’re trying to throw a bunch of language at us in order to convince us that we haven’t seen what we’ve seen, haven’t experienced what we’ve experienced, and don’t know what we know. And they assume it will work because the language they’re throwing at us is being circulated in high volumes and costs a lot of money.

It won’t work, though. Even if propaganda could convince us that we haven’t seen what we’ve seen and don’t know what we know, propaganda only works if you don’t know it’s happening to you. These past two years have made even relatively apolitical members of the public acutely aware that there is an aggressive campaign to manipulate their perception of the state of Israel, and that anyone pushing them to support that state is untrustworthy. Nobody’s going to buy into the propaganda if they don’t trust the source.

Now that everyone’s aware that Israel is paying influencers $7,000 per post to churn out propaganda on its behalf, whenever you see a video online of some young social media-savvy personality promoting pro-Israel narratives you see their replies flooded with memes and jokes about their $7k jackpot. From now on whenever some sunglasses-wearing zillennial shows up going “Israel is surrounded on all sides by Islamofascists and you think JEWS are the problem? Uhh, no babe. Walk with me,” everyone’s going to go “Found one of those $7k posts.”

It just doesn’t work. Psychological manipulation only goes so far. There’s only so much that clever language can do to decouple someone’s mind from their direct experience of material reality.

This is where Israel went wrong in alienating the liberal Zionists. They needed people at the table who understood how normal human beings think, who could help the Israel project walk the delicate line between apartheid abuses papered over with propaganda and full-scale atrocities which would alienate the world. Instead they decided to go all in with the Smotriches and Ben-Gvirs, trusting that the propaganda machine which had served them so well all those decades would continue to carry them through any international upset they might cause.

It hasn’t turned out that way. The world’s eyes are open to what Israel is, and they are never going to close again. You can’t take off the Mickey Mouse mask, show the kids the snarling Freddy Krueger face underneath it, and then put the mask on and hope they start calling you Mickey again. Nobody’s going to forget what you showed them.

October 6, 2025 Posted by | Israel, spinbuster | Leave a comment

The before and after images showing glaciers vanishing before our eyes

 When Matthias Huss first visited Rhône Glacier in Switzerland 35 years
ago, the ice was just a short walk from where his parents would park the
car. “When I first stepped onto the ice… there [was] a special feeling of
eternity,” says Matthias. Today, the ice is half an hour from the same
parking spot and the scene is very different. “Every time I go back, I
remember how it used to be,” recalls Matthias, now director of Glacier
Monitoring in Switzerland (GLAMOS), “how the glacier looked when I was a
child.” There are similar stories for many glaciers all over the planet,
because these frozen rivers of ice are retreating – fast.

 BBC 5th Oct 2025,
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ce32ezzq6zlo

October 6, 2025 Posted by | climate change | Leave a comment

Right-wing Czech politician who promised to cut aid to Ukraine takes lead in parliamentary election .

 04 Oct 2025, https://www.sott.net/article/502181-Right-wing-Czech-politician-who-promised-to-cut-aid-to-Ukraine-takes-lead-in-parliamentary-election

The right-wing party of agriculture billionaire Andrej Babis, branded ‘Czech Trump’ by local media, has taken the lead in his country’s parliamentary election.

Partial results were released by the Czech Statistical Office several hours after the polls closed across the central European country of 11 million earlier on Saturday.

With ballots from 20% of voting districts counted, Babis’ opposition ANO (Yes) party was ahead with 39.7% of the vote, followed by the Spolu (Together) group led by Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala with 19.1%, the agency said.

Babis has been campaigning on a promise to stop Czech military assistance to Kiev, unlike Fiala, who has been a staunch supporter of Ukraine in its conflict with Russia.

The 71-year-old, who served as prime minister between 2017 and 2021, has been particularly critical of Prague’s ammunition initiative for Kiev, calling it “overpriced” and insisting that it should be handled by NATO.

He has spoken out against Ukraine’s membership in the EU, as well as Brussels’ handling of immigration and the Green Deal.

The Western media has warned ahead of the vote that with Hungary and Slovakia already refusing to provide military aid to Kiev and advocating for a diplomatic end to the conflict, Babis’ victory in the Czech Republic could tip Central Europe even further away from Brussels on Ukraine and other key issues.

October 6, 2025 Posted by | EUROPE, politics, Ukraine | Leave a comment

45K gallons of radioactive water to be dumped into Hudson River from Indian Point nuclear plant

Shane Galvin Oct. New York Post, 2, 2025, 

Roughly 45,000 gallons of radioactive water from a defunct plant north of New York City will be discharged into the Hudson River after a federal court ruling struck down a state environmental law.

US District Judge Kenneth Karas sided with company Holtec International over New York State in a ruling issued last week that reversed the 2023 “Save The Hudson” law which sought to prevent the company from muddying the Hudson’s waters.

Holtec sued the Empire State last year, arguing that only the federal government had the right to regulate discharge of the Indian Point plant’s nuclear waste, which amounted to the 45,000-gallon sum, The New York Times reported……………………………………..

Indian Point, which sits on the Hudson River about 35 miles north of Manhattan, was closed in 2021 after years of public outcry from the local community over environmental concerns…………………… https://nypost.com/2025/10/02/us-news/45k-gallons-of-radioactive-water-to-be-dumped-into-hudson-river-from-indian-point-nuclear-plant/

October 6, 2025 Posted by | USA, wastes, water | Leave a comment

Another ageing Royal Navy nuclear-armed submarine completes a 200-day patrol amid fears absence of replacements will make epic voyages ‘the new normal’

Daily Mail, By BY MARK NICOL DEFENCE EDITOR, 3 October 2025

An ageing Royal Navy nuclear submarine has completed a 200-day patrol amid fears of shortages of alternative vessels.

The Vanguard class submarine was welcomed back to port with her hull covered in slime and barnacles.

The marine growth indicated how long the submarine – which carries the UK’s nuclear deterrent – had spent submerged.

Nuclear submarines remain undetected by spending the majority of their time on patrol at very slow speed. This is to minimise their noise signature.

Biofouling as it is also known, can also indicate a submarine has been operating in either shallower or warmer waters.

Nuclear submarine patrols are being extended as Navy chiefs await new vessels.

This submarine was understood to have spent 203 days at sea. Earlier this year another spent 204 days at sea.

While only last year another Vanguard-class submarine broke the 200 day barrier for the first time. At least ten patrols are understood to have exceeded five months.

The trend for extended patrols is dangerous according to Admiral Sir Tony Radakin, the recently retired former Chief of the Defence Staff (CDS).

In his final speech he decried the decrepit state of the Royal Navy’s subsurface fleet at a time when the world is getting more dangerous.

In September Admiral Sir Tony said: ‘Our armed forces are not as strong as we would wish. There is something wrong when governments profess the nuclear deterrent at sea is our highest priority but our sailors are having to put to sea for extraordinarily long patrols in some of the most complex machines on the planet that are beyond their original design life.’……………………….

The oldest of the Vanguard class submarines first put to sea 33 years ago. The vessels have a recommended service life of 25 years.

The physical strain on the Vanguard class submarines is mirrored by the psychological effects on their crews of spending six months and longer at sea.

Each submarine has a crew of around 130 sailors and officers

Experts have also warned of the growing risk of a catastrophic accident as parts are being cannabalised from other submarines which are more than 30 years old…………………………….

The shortage of submarines is also compounded by the length of time it takes to conduct repairs.

The Vanguards will be replaced by Dreadnought submarines – but these are not expected to enter service before the early 2030s……………………… https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15159175/Another-ageing-Royal-Navy-nuclear-armed-submarine-completes-200-day-patrol-amid-fears-absence-replacements-make-epic-voyages-new-normal.html

October 6, 2025 Posted by | safety, UK | Leave a comment

Sellafield nuclear workers to strike over pay

 ITV 3rd Oct 2025, https://www.itv.com/news/border/2025-10-03/sellafield-nuclear-workers-to-strike-over-pay

Construction workers at the Sellafield nuclear site are to strike from Saturday in a dispute over pay.

Unite said 1,500 of its members, including electricians, joiners and welders, at the Cumbria site will walk out until 13 October.

The union said other nuclear projects pay premiums it wants Sellafield to match, and it warned of further industrial action if the dispute is not resolved.

Unite general secretary Sharon Graham said: “Our members are highly skilled workers operating in an extremely challenging environment.

“That this is the most significant industrial action at Sellafield in recent history speaks volumes about the levels of feeling among the workforce.”

As well as the strikes, a continuous overtime ban will start on 14 October.

October 6, 2025 Posted by | employment, UK | Leave a comment

Panic in Israel as Hamas agrees to release all of the hostages

Laura and Normal Island News, Oct 04, 2025, https://www.normalisland.co.uk/p/panic-in-israel-as-hamas-agrees-to?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=1407757&post_id=175259462&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=ln98x&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

In a worrying turn of events, Hamas has agreed to release all remaining prisoners in accordance with Donald Trump’s peace proposal. The plan will involve the de-radicalisation and disarmament of Gaza, but not the de-radicalisation and disarmament of Israel. Nevertheless, Netanyahu feels Israel is being unfairly picked on.

Trump has instructed Netanyahu to immediately halt all bombing of Gaza, but Netanyahu has sensibly ignored him and continued bombing throughout the night. Be honest, who would miss the opportunity for some last minute mass murder? Not a Zionist, that’s for sure.

Understandably, Hamas’ announcement has been met with horror in the Israeli war room which has successfully held off a peace deal for two years so it can kill as many Palestinians as possible.

Israel only had to sacrifice half of the hostages to achieve this goal and would be quite happy to sacrifice the other half for two more years of slaughter. It is therefore drawing up emergency plans to derail the peace process and blame Hamas. I’m told a false flag is not off the table.

Netanyahu has launched an investigation to establish why the IDF failed to murder all of the Hamas negotiators before they could agree to peace. This was an enormous and unforgivable oversight.

While Netanyahu and his accomplices are worried a peace deal could mean they face jail, Israelis are torn on the idea of a ceasefire. On the one hand, they don’t give a fuck about those prisoners, but on the other hand, they have bombed everything there is to bomb several times over, and taking selfies among the rubble gets old. Mass slaughter is even making some of them feel sad.

One Zionist was told the pang he felt when he squished children with a bulldozer might have been a conscience, although it was probably self-pity. Either way, he was promptly arrested, and we don’t talk about him anymore. His family has destroyed all pictures of him.

Given the serious risk of self-pity spreading among IDF ranks, perhaps it really is time to end this thing, and I can go back to doing anything other than satirising a fucking genocide. Palestinians have no idea how hard my life is.

Let’s just end this thing now and pat ourselves on the back for a job well done…

It’s fair to say Israel has achieved many things throughout this genocide. For example, it has destroyed 80% of the buildings, 86% of the farmland, 90% of the cattle, 89% of water and sanitation infrastructure, 100% of desalination plants, and it has made Gaza more or less unliveable. Israel has killed so many civilians that the world lost count.

Israel didn’t stop at Gaza either. It killed a load of people in the West Bank and Syria and Yemen and Iran and Qatar and Lebanon. Who remembers the time when Israel’s pagers took the eyeballs of doctors and nurses and all of the nicest people laughed? Good times.

The relentless bombing campaign was not Israel’s only achievement though. Israel successfully colonised TikTok, the social media app that was promised to God’s chosen people 3,000 years ago. Israel is carrying out a Nakba on TikTok by culling everyone who has ever used the word “AIPAC”. Needless to say, AIPAC does not exist and it’s racist to say otherwise.

Mahmoud Abbas says he is willing to make regular child sacrifices to Israel in exchange for the Gaza presidency, but he has been told his services will not be needed. If a peace deal can be agreed, we have the exciting prospect of Tony Blair ruling Gaza from afar without the consent of Palestinians.

We need someone with the ability to eliminate all evidence of genocide. It’s gonna take the most ghoulish person imaginable to erase hundreds of thousands of corpses and act like they never existed. Needless to say, Blair is just as keen to harness the souls of the dead as he was to steal oil in Iraq.

Once the peace deal is in place, Palestinians will kindly be allowed to live in tents with minimal rations and occasional bombings until they get fed up and leave. At this point, Blair will be given a Nobel Peace Prize and all mentions of Palestine will be erased from the history books. Sadly though, Netanyahu will probably be in jail on corruption charges. Life can be so unfair x

October 5, 2025 Posted by | Israel, politics | Leave a comment

  Trump says Hamas ‘ready for peace’, tells Israel to stop bombing Gaza

By Alastair McCready, Umut Uras and Urooba Jamal, 4 Oct 20254 Oct 2025, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2025/10/4/live-trumps-tells-israel-stop-bombing-gaza-after-hamas-ceasefire-reply

Hamas has submitted its response to US President Donald Trump’s peace plan, with the group agreeing to hand over administration of the enclave to Palestinian technocrats and free all Israeli captives.

The Palestinian group’s response did not address the crucial issue of its disarmament, but it said it was willing to “immediately enter” peace negotiations through mediators.

In a video address following Hamas’s statement, President Trump said the development was “unprecedented”, before cautioning that it’s important to get the “final word down in concrete”.

Trump also said he believes Hamas is ready for a “lasting peace”, as he called on Israel to “immediately stop bombing Gaza” in a post on his Truth Social platform.

Israel has continued its deadly bombardment of Gaza, killing at least 72 Palestinians across the Gaza Strip on Friday, according to medical sources.

Israel’s war on Gaza has killed at least 66,288 people and wounded 169,165 since October 2023. Thousands more are believed to be buried under the rubble. A total of 1,139 people were killed in Israel during the October 7, 2023, attacks and about 200 were taken captive.

October 5, 2025 Posted by | Gaza, Israel, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Book Review: A Call to Arms About the Threat of Anti-Science

By Dan Falk. 10.03.2025. https://undark.org/2025/10/03/book-review-science-under-siege/?utm_source=Undark%3A+News+%26+Updates&utm_campaign=00d7f4a4e8-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_5cee408d66-185e4e09de-176033209

“Science Under Siege,” by Michael E. Mann and Peter J. Hotez, is an impassioned manifesto against attacks on science.

In the 1995 book “The Demon Haunted World,” the astronomer Carl Sagan warned that the United States was turning its back on science, and that the consequences would be dire. Near the start of their new book, “Science Under Siege: How To Fight The Five Most Powerful Forces That Threaten Our World,” Michael E. Mann and Peter J. Hotez cite Sagan’s vision of science as a “candle in the dark,” and argue that what the astronomer feared is now coming to pass. In fact, readers may get the impression that the situation is already much worse than what Sagan envisioned.

While Sagan was primarily concerned with the rise of pseudoscience, Mann and Hotez fear that we’re now in the midst of an anti-science boom, led by people, corporations, and governments who intentionally spread false or misleading information. “Anti-science has already caused serious illness and mass casualties in the near term,” they write. “Unmitigated, it will in the long term take millions more lives, produce misguided national policies, and have long-lasting catastrophic consequences, including potentially, the destabilization of our civilization.”

Mann and Hotez are not merely observers, but scientists who have found themselves on the front lines of the ongoing attacks on science. Mann is a climate scientist at the University of Pennsylvania, and director of the Penn Center for Science, Sustainability, and the Media. Hotez is a pediatrician and vaccine scientist at Baylor College of Medicine, where he is also the co-director of the Texas Children’s Center for Vaccine Development. In 2022, he was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for his work on a patent-free Covid-19 vaccine.

While attacks on science have taken many forms, the authors highlight the current pushback against vaccines and skepticism over climate science as two of the most urgent issues. Mann and Hotez describe the resistance to climate science and vaccines as a one-two punch, but add that there is a third punch as well, in the form of mis- and disinformation. The authors point to the devastating consequences of resistance to public health measures, especially vaccines, which came to the fore during the Covid-19 pandemic, the death toll from which currently stands at 1.2 million Americans, according to the World Health Organization.

Many of those deaths, they suggest, could have been prevented had people been vaccinated and followed social distancing and mask guidelines. And they’re not shy about saying who’s to blame: “The deaths occurred mostly along a political partisan divide,” they write, “with those living in Republican-majority (‘red’) states disproportionately suffering most of the deaths and disabilities as a consequence of being targeted by propaganda and misinformation from elected leaders, extremist media, and the modern political Right.”

Resistance to vaccines isn’t new, but the authors argue that the anti-vaxx movement reached new heights as the pandemic wore on: “Heading into 2023, the pandemic’s fourth year, we witnessed an expanded alliance of malevolent billionaires, tech bros, and high-net worth individuals — plutocrats, prominent podcasters, and far-right extremists, including Steve Bannon and the ‘Proud Boys’ — marching at anti-vaccine rallies and joining forces with the more established antivaccine activists.”

They rebuke Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican member of Congress, for calling those who administer vaccines “medical brown shirts,” using language associated with Nazis. And (not surprisingly) they chastise those who continue to give oxygen to the long-debunked alleged link between vaccines and autism.

Then there’s the climate crisis. The world is warming, global wind patterns and ocean currents are shifting, ocean levels are rising, and extreme weather events are becoming more frequent. Mann and Hotez call out many sources of climate misinformation, including “petrostates” — nations whose revenues are largely derived from fossil fuels. (The petrostates are one of the five “powerful forces” referenced in the book’s subtitle, the others being plutocrats, propagandists, the press, and pros — referring to scholars who use their credentials to promote unsupported or contrarian views.) Of the petrostates, Russia tops the authors’ list. Citing Russia’s dependence on fossil fuels and its authoritarian leadership, including what they see as a desire to destabilize Western democracy, they write: “These factors combine in a perfect storm of consequences for the global spread of civilization-threatening antiscience.”

October 5, 2025 Posted by | media, resources - print | Leave a comment

Small or big, new nuclear reactors are not climate solutions.

By David Suzuki with contributions from Senior Editor and Writer Ian Hanington, 2 Oct 25, https://davidsuzuki.org/story/small-or-big-new-nuclear-reactors-are-not-climate-solutions/?utm_source=mkto-none-smSubscribers-readOnline-body&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=scienceMatters-smallOrBigNewNuclear-en-03oct2025&mkt_tok=MTg4LVZEVS0zNjAAAAGdSLfvwz3-gaAzswU0cR9sbbcB6EK9J4ozsxpnQ5NzdYKwi0T9FyAHMSo5n-WVHWM8P49lrcxTdIEkaadCrd1Fc6v-BTBQ7LotO0zBv-mJVZIfBg

Despite the efforts of industry and its supporters to convince us otherwise, coal, gas and oil are outdated, inefficient, polluting energy sources, especially compared to alternatives. Some people, including politicians, are touting nuclear power as a good alternative. Is it?

Proponents argue it’s “clean,” because it doesn’t generate greenhouse gas emissions. But considering its entire life cycle, it’s far from clean, and it’s rife with problems — from uranium mining and transport to building and eventually decommissioning nuclear power plants to geopolitical issues around fuel supply and site security to radioactive waste disposal and weapons production. Of course, renewable energy also comes with impacts, which is why reducing energy and materials use is critical.

Besides environmental and other issues, building nuclear power plants — even largely untested small modular reactors, or SMRs — is expensive and time-consuming.

As Andrew Nikiforuk writes in the Tyee, “Due to its cost and complexity, it will not provide cheap or low-emission electricity in timeframe or scale that matters as climate change continues to broil an indifferent civilization.” He notes, however, “That is not to say that nuclear technology won’t play a minor role in our highly problematic energy future.”

Nikiforuk points to a recent study of 401 nuclear electricity projects built between 1936 and 2014 in 57 countries. It found the average time to build them was 70 months, and average cost overruns were close to US$1 billion (on top of massive projected expenditures). Because nuclear only supplies about nine per cent of global energy, and many reactors are nearing the end of their average life spans, it’s unlikely to play a major role in bringing emissions down as quickly as needed.

The 2025 “World Nuclear Report” says that, “In 2024, total investment in non-hydro renewable electricity capacity reached a record US$728 billion, 21 times the reported global investment in nuclear energy. Solar and wind power capacities grew by 32 percent and 11 percent, respectively, resulting in 565 GW of combined new capacity, over 100 times the 5.4 GW of net nuclear capacity addition. Global wind and solar facilities generated 70 percent more electricity than nuclear plants.”

Consider that much of the push for SMRs is coming from people like Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, to fuel increased oilsands production, and tech billionaires, to provide the enormous amounts of power required for data centres and artificial intelligence.

Canada is already set to pay more than $1 billion for SMRs and other nuclear projects. But the “World Nuclear Report” notes that the few SMR projects now in play are “in serious financial trouble.”

Nikiforuk writes that “to achieve an economy of scale would require the production of thousands of SMRs, which is not happening anywhere any time soon.” He also notes that “SMRs are not small (they occupy the area of a city block), cheap or, for that matter, any safer than large reactors.” Studies show they can actually produce more waste overall than conventional reactors.

Energy Mix reports that costs for renewable energy and battery storage are dropping rapidly while nuclear plant prices continue to increase.

The “World Nuclear Report” states that renewable energy technologies “are evolving towards a highly flexible, fully electrified energy system with a decentralized control logic, outcompeting traditional centralized fossil and nuclear systems.”

That’s a clue as to why so many hyper-capitalist forces are pushing nuclear over renewable energy: Centralized power systems are easier to control, monopolize and profit from than systems based on energy sources freely available everywhere. And it’s easier to shift costs of fossil fuel and nuclear power plants to the public in the form of subsidies, taxes and higher electricity bills.

Given the urgent need to quickly address global heating, it would be far better to put money into renewable energy and infrastructure, including a modern east-west renewable-powered electricity grid in Canada.

While energy from wind, solar and geothermal, along with storage, also comes with environmental consequences and requires mining and materials, it’s still far cleaner, more efficient and quicker and easier to deploy than fossil fuel or nuclear power. To reduce impacts, we must, as Nikiforuk writes, “systematically reduce our energy and material consumption at an unprecedented pace.”

Like fossil fuels, nuclear is an outmoded, overpriced way to produce power.

October 5, 2025 Posted by | climate change, spinbuster | Leave a comment

Would cockroaches really survive a nuclear apocalypse?

The U.S. TV series “Mythbusters” tested the cockroach survival theory in 2012 when they exposed cockroaches to radioactive material. The roaches survived longer than humans would have, but they all died at extreme levels of radiation.

Phys Org, by Kate Stanton, University of Melbourne, 3 Oct 25

The 2008 film Wall-E depicted Earth as a post-apocalyptic wasteland with nothing on it but the abandoned remnants of human society and a forlorn, trash-compacting robot. The titular robot’s only living company is a surprisingly adorable pet cockroach named Hal, Pixar’s nod to the popular myth that cockroaches will outlive us all.

Despite Hal’s sympathetic portrayal, many people think cockroaches are pretty gross.

But the creepy crawlies do have a reputation for resilience, likely contributing to the belief that they could even survive a nuclear bomb and subsequent radiation exposure.

Media reports have suggested that the cockroach myth stems from rumors that insects thrived in the aftermath of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

But School of Population and Global Health Professor Tilman Ruff, a Nobel Laureate who studies the health and environmental consequences of nuclear explosions, says he has yet to see any documented evidence that there were cockroaches scuttling through the rubble.

“I’ve certainly seen photographs of injured people in Hiroshima that have lots of flies around, and you do imagine some insects would have survived,” Professor Ruff says. “But they still would have been affected, even if they appear more resistant than humans.”

The U.S. TV series “Mythbusters” tested the cockroach survival theory in 2012 when they exposed cockroaches to radioactive material. The roaches survived longer than humans would have, but they all died at extreme levels of radiation.

School of Biosciences Professor Mark Elgar says the results of the Mythbusters test are incomplete because they only looked at how many days the cockroaches lived after exposure. They didn’t look at the cockroaches’ ability to produce viable eggs, thus ensuring the continued survival of the species.

“There is some evidence that they seem quite resilient to gamma rays, although they are not necessarily the most resistant across insects.”

“You could argue,” Professor Elgar adds, “that some ants, particularly those that dig nests deep into the ground, would be more likely to survive an apocalypse than cockroaches.”

Previous tests of insects subjected to radiation found that cockroaches, though six to 15 times more resistant than humans, would still fare worse than the humble fruit fly.

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… Professor Elgar questions whether they would be able to thrive without humans and other animals.

“For a while they’ll be able to eat dead bodies and other decaying material but, if everything else has died, eventually there won’t be any food. And they’re not going to make much of a living,” Professor Elgar says.

“The reality is that very little, if anything, will survive a major nuclear catastrophe, so in the longer term, it doesn’t matter really whether you’re a cockroach or not.” https://phys.org/news/2025-10-cockroaches-survive-nuclear-apocalypse.html


October 5, 2025 Posted by | environment | Leave a comment

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