As Gaza starves, journalists sell their cameras for food.
At night, we sit together to see who among us journalists is still able to write, and who might collapse tomorrow from sheer exhaustion.
Shaimaa Eid in Gaza, 26 July 2025, https://www.declassifieduk.org/in-gaza-famine-journalists-sell-their-cameras-for-food/
I write these lines as my strength is fading – not just from the demands of journalism, but from the emptiness in my stomach that now clings to my fragile body.
At times, I sleep having shared a single piece of bread with what remains of my family, surviving hunger together.
Every night feels like the one before: the same bedding, the same groans, the same worry: will we find something to eat tomorrow? Will any of us survive this famine?
In Gaza, hunger is no longer just a humanitarian plea – it has become a harsh reality lived by journalists in every detail.
We, who once reported on the suffering of others, have become part of that suffering ourselves.
We write while suppressing our own pain and hunger, struggling to keep the words from collapsing before they reach the world – to show just how deep our oppression runs.
Before the war, I used to move easily between locations and press offices. Now, I walk for kilometres on foot due to the fuel shortage and lack of transportation.
At times, I sit on the curb, exhausted – lowering my head to catch my breath – then push myself to keep walking, because I know I must finish the report to earn the payment that will buy us food for the next day.
The journalistic work that once provided me with a stable income has come to a halt – institutions were destroyed, offices were evacuated, and infrastructure was targeted.
All that remains is freelance work: chasing a story, a photo, a quote, a report, and sending it to the few outlets that still pay us just enough to stay alive.
The cameras and equipment we once saw as extensions of our very souls have now become burdens we sell to secure food for our parents and children.
One of my fellow journalists offered his entire archive – twenty years’ worth of photos documenting life in Gaza – in exchange for a single bag of flour.
It wasn’t a passing decision, but a moment of heartbreak and survival. How could he hold on to images of the past while his children went to sleep without food?
Another sold his camera. Yet another parted with his microphone, the one he used to move between shelters and bombed-out homes.
Carrying our own fragility
A few days ago, a group of us journalists were working in one of Gaza’s hospitals, trying to secure an internet connection for our coverage.
Suddenly, my colleague – who reports on the famine for an international TV channel – collapsed to the ground. It wasn’t due to shelling or an explosion, but from hunger.
Her frail body couldn’t endure two days without food; her empty stomach could no longer withstand the heat and fear.
We carried her in silence and took her to join the dozens of Gaza residents crowding the hospital, all suffering from severe exhaustion and malnutrition.
As we lifted her, it felt as though we were carrying our own fragility – those of us who report on hunger while living through it ourselves.
In the field, the camera is no longer just a tool for documentation; it has become a means of survival.
Those who carry it are considered fortunate, as they can “trade” it for a sack of flour or a can of milk for their children – if available.
We no longer ask for payment in exchange for a photo, but for food. We no longer negotiate contracts, but for the dignity that remains within us – until further notice.
The black markets have become our only destination. Prices are astronomical. A kilo of flour costs what we used to earn in a full day’s work.
A loaf of bread is nine dollars, and if you want to feed five family members at home, you have to think with an economic mindset rather than a humanitarian one.
We meticulously plan the number of loaves, weigh the meals, ration the bites, and try to convince our children that “this is all that is available.”
Every photo trembles
Every day in Gaza feels like a round in an open death arena.
We are not only facing the Israeli killing machine but also battling hunger – a silent enemy that makes no distinction between child, journalist, or elderly.
We have lost control over our lives, our food, and the details of our daily existence. Some of us have even lost the words.
We no longer write with the same spirit, nor do we capture images with the same eye. Every photo trembles, and every word emerges tired, hungry, and afraid.
At night, we sit together as journalists, reviewing and sharing our stories – not as we used to, to improve our work, but to see who among us is still able to write, and who might collapse tomorrow from sheer exhaustion.
One colleague told me, “We are not just covering the massacres; we are living them.” Another said, “What we send to the world is the echo of our weary bodies.”
Before, producing an article like this would take me just one day. Now, with my focus fading and hunger draining my mind, I struggle to gather my thoughts and words, doing my utmost to write in a way that honors what I want to say.
There is no longer a difference between the journalist documenting the event and the civilian being bombed. Both are hungry, fearful, and hunted, without a home.
What is even more painful is that the world does not see this. It sees the images we send, but not the person who took them. It does not see how they were captured.
Despite all this, we continue. Not because we are strong, but because we have no choice but to carry on.
We are the children of this land, the voice of its people, and the mirrors reflecting both its death and its life.
We carry not only the camera, the microphone, and the pen, but also the weight of the cause, the cries of mothers, the hunger of children, and the dream of survival.
Shaimaa Eid is a Palestinian journalist in Gaza. She specialises in human-interest and news reporting, with a focus on amplifying local voices and documenting life under occupation. Shaimaa is a contributor to The Electronic Intifada and Palestine Chronicle.
Ex-UN Special Rapporteur Says Francesca Albanese Deserves Nobel Prize, Not US Sanctions
The US is punishing UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese for her scathing reports on Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
By Marjorie Cohn , Truthout, July 14, 2025
The day after Donald Trump welcomed indicted war criminal Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the United States for the third time in less than six months, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio imposed sanctions against UN Special Rapporteur on Occupied Palestine Francesca Albanese for her clear-eyed critiques of Israel’s genocide.
In a July 9 press statement, Rubio charged that Albanese “has directly engaged with the International Criminal Court (ICC) in efforts to investigate, arrest, detain, or prosecute nationals of the United States or Israel, without the consent of those two countries.” He alleged that Albanese “has spewed unabashed antisemitism, expressed support for terrorism, and open contempt for the United States, Israel, and the West … including recommending that the ICC, without a legitimate basis, issue arrest warrants” for Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.
“No comment on mafia style intimidation techniques,” Albanese responded to the sanctions in a text message to Al Jazeera. “Busy reminding member states of their obligations to stop and punish genocide. And those who profit from it.” She queried why she had been sanctioned: “for having exposed a genocide? For having denounced the system? They never challenged me on the facts.”
In the height of irony, war criminal Netanyahu nominated serial lawbreaker Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize. But it is Albanese who deserves that prize.
“The UN Special Rapporteur on Occupied Palestine deserves the Nobel Peace Prize, not the U.S. punitive pushback by way of targeted sanctions denying her entry into the country and freezing any American assets she may have,” Richard Falk, who served as UN Special Rapporteur on Occupied Palestine from 2008 to 2014, told Truthout.
“This was an intimidating attack on Albanese, an unpaid civil servant, for her brave truth-telling and expert knowledge fully in accord with expectations of the job to report periodically to the UN Human Rights Council and the General Assembly,” Falk added. “Her well-documented reports have broken the mainstream silence in the West on Israel’s genocidal assault, carried out before the eyes and ears of the world, shocking many by its transparency and sadism over a period of more than 20 months. She has also exposed shameful patterns of U.S. complicity with Israeli criminality.”
As they dined together in Washington, Netanyahu told Trump he had nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize. The nomination, which Netanyahu sent to the Nobel Committee 10 days after the U.S. bombed nuclear facilities in Iran, rewarded Trump for his unwavering support for the crimes of the Zionist regime in both Palestine and Iran. Trump has continued and increased Joe Biden’s financial, political, and diplomatic assistance to Israel’s (now) 21-month-long genocide in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, which has killed more than 58,000 Palestinians. Trump also dutifully complied with Netanyahu’s plea to bomb Iranian nuclear sites, dropping several 30,000-pound bunker buster bombs on Iran. U.S. participation in Israel’s international crimes is patently illegal.
“Anatomy of a Genocide”
On July 1, 2024, Albanese filed her report “Anatomy of a Genocide” with the UN Human Rights Council. The summary begins, “After five months of military operations, Israel has destroyed Gaza.” That was one year ago. Not content with destroying Gaza, Israel continues to slaughter, starve, and displace the Palestinian people.
In this report, Albanese thoroughly documents Israel’s commission of genocide which is prohibited by the Genocide Convention. She cites the International Court of Justice’s (ICJ’s) order that Israel prevent and punish genocide and ensure humanitarian aid, which Israel has ignored. Albanese finds that “Israel has strategically invoked the international humanitarian law framework as ‘humanitarian camouflage’ to legitimize its genocidal violence in Gaza.” Israel, she charges, “appears to represent itself as conducting a ‘proportionate genocide.’” The crime of genocide, Albanese notes, entails “both individual and State responsibility.”
Israel’s actions “have been driven by a genocidal logic integral to its settler-colonial project in Palestine, signalling a tragedy foretold,” Albanese continues. “[D]isplacing and erasing the Indigenous Arab presence,” she writes, “has been an inevitable part of the forming of Israel as a ‘Jewish State.’”
Since illegally acquiring Palestinian territory by force in 1967, “Israel has advanced its settler-colonial project through military occupation, stripping the Palestinian people of their right to self-determination,” the report reads. “Genocide cannot be justified under any circumstances, including purported self-defence.” The ICJ has repeatedly held that Israel, as occupier, does not have a right to self-defense against the occupied Palestinians.
Albanese recommends that UN member states immediately implement an arms embargo on Israel, and investigate and prosecute war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide under principles of universal jurisdiction.
“Genocide as Colonial Erasure”
On October 1, 2024, Albanese filed her report “Genocide as Colonial Erasure.” In it, she expands her analysis of Israel’s genocide beyond the July 1 report. She cites the ICJ’s Advisory Opinion of July 2024, finding Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory illegal, and reaffirming that the unlawfulness of the occupation “vitiates [Israel’s] claims of purported self-defence.” Albanese writes that “the only lawful recourse available to Israel is its unconditional withdrawal from the whole of that territory.”
When this report was filed, at least 90 percent of Palestinians in Gaza had been forcibly displaced, “many more than 10 times,” Albanese writes. Israeli officials and religious leaders “continue to encourage erasure and dispossession of Palestinians, setting new thresholds for acceptable violence against civilians. The Nakba, which has been ongoing since 1948, has been deliberately accelerated.”
“As Israeli leaders promised,” Albanese writes, “Gaza has been made unfit for human life.” She found “an intent to destroy [the] population [of Gaza] through starvation … Hungry crowds waiting for food have been massacred.”……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… https://truthout.org/articles/ex-un-special-rapporteur-francesca-albanese-deserves-nobel-prize-not-sanctions/
Chris Hedges: The Persecution of Francesca Albanese.
By Chris Hedges / Original to ScheerPost, https://scheerpost.com/2025/07/10/chris-hedges-the-persecution-of-francesca-albanese/
When the history of the genocide in Gaza is written, one of the most courageous and outspoken champions for justice and the adherence to international law will be Francesca Albanese, the United Nations Special Rapporteur, who today the Trump administration is sanctioning. Her office is tasked with monitoring and reporting on human rights violations that Israel commits against Palestinians.
Albanese, who regularly receives death threats and endures well-orchestrated smear campaigns directed by Israel and its allies, valiantly seeks to hold those who support and sustain the genocide accountable. She lambasts what she calls “the moral and political corruption of the world” that allows the genocide to continue. Her office has issued detailed reports documenting war crimes in Gaza and the West Bank, one of which, called “Genocide as colonial erasure,” I have reprinted as an appendix in my latest book, “A Genocide Foretold.”
She has informed private organizations that they are “criminally liable” for assisting Israel in carrying out the genocide in Gaza. She announced that if true, as has been reported, that the former British prime minister David Cameron threatened to defund and withdraw from the International Criminal Court (ICC) after it issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defense minister Yoav Gallant, which Cameron and the other former British prime minister Rishi Sunak could be charged with a criminal offense for, under the Rome Statue. The Rome Statue criminalizes those who seek to prevent war crimes from being prosecuted.
She has called on top European Union (EU) officials to face charges of complicity of war crimes over their support for the genocide, saying that their actions cannot be met with impunity. She was a champion of the Madleen flotilla that sought to break the blockade of Gaza and deliver humanitarian aid, writing that the boat which was intercepted by Israel, was carrying not only supplies, but a message of humanity.
You can see the interview I did with Albanese here.
Her latest report lists 48 corporations and institutions, including Palantir Technologies Inc., Lockheed Martin, Alphabet Inc. (Google), Amazon, International Business Machine Corporation (IBM), Caterpillar Inc., Microsoft Corporation and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), along with banks and financial firms such as BlackRock, insurers, real estate firms and charities, which in violation of international law, are making billions from the occupation and the genocide of Palestinians.
You can read my article on Albanese’s most recent report here.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio condemned her support for the ICC, four of whose judges have been sanctioned by the U.S. for issuing arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant last year. He criticized Albanese for her efforts to prosecute American or Israeli nationals who sustain the genocide, saying she is unfit for service as a special rapporteur. Rubio also accused Albanese of having “spewed unabashed antisemitism, expressed support for terrorism, and open contempt for the United States, Israel, and the West.” The sanctions will most likely prevent Albanese from travelling to the U.S. and will freeze any assets she may have in the country.
The attack against Albanese presages a world without rules, one where rogue states, such as the U.S. and Israel, are permitted to carry out war crimes and genocide without any accountability or restraint. It exposes the subterfuges we use to fool ourselves and attempt to fool others. It reveals our hypocrisy, cruelty and racism. No one, from now on, will take seriously our stated commitments to democracy, freedom of expression, the rule of law or human rights. And who can blame them? We speak exclusively in the language of force, the language of brutes, the language of mass slaughter, the language of genocide.
“The acts of killing, the mass killing, the infliction of psychological and physical torture, the devastation, the creation of conditions of life that would not allow the people in Gaza to live, from the destruction of hospitals, the mass forced displacement and the mass homelessness, while people were being bombed daily, and the starvation — how can we read these acts in isolation?” Albanese asked in an interview I did with her when we discussed her report, “Genocide as colonial erasure.”
The militarized drones, helicopter gunships, walls and barriers, checkpoints, coils of concertina wire, watchtowers, detention centers, deportations, brutality and torture, denial of entry visas, apartheidesque existence that comes with being undocumented, loss of individual rights and electronic surveillance, are as familiar to desperate migrants along the Mexican border, or attempting to enter Europe, as they are to Palestinians.
This is what awaits those who Frantz Fanon calls “the wretched of the earth.”
Those that defend the oppressed, such as Albanese, will be treated like the oppressed.
The president who talks like a child
28 June 2025 Roswell, https://theaimn.net/the-president-who-talks-like-a-child/
Watching President Trump respond to questions is like watching a child give a report on a book they didn’t read. He rambles, repeats himself, and jumps from topic to topic with little connection to the original question. Ask about the economy, and you might get a story about how everyone says he’s done more than Lincoln. Ask about foreign policy, and he’s suddenly reminiscing about crowd sizes or a golf course he owns.
It’s cringeworthy – not just because it’s embarrassing to witness, but because it’s dangerous. The world sees it. Allies shake their heads; adversaries take notes. His speech patterns aren’t just odd – they reveal a mind that struggles with depth, nuance, or even basic coherence.
He often sounds like someone who needs constant validation, like a child needing applause. Every sentence is laced with “the best,” “nobody knew,” or “a lot of people are saying.” But the substance? Missing in action.
What’s even more concerning is that this isn’t new. His speaking style has always raised eyebrows, but in his second term, it seems to have become even more unhinged. When asked a direct question – about inflation, war, or national security – he responds with something entirely unrelated. He pivots to grievances, boasts about his supposed achievements, or launches into a tirade about the media. It’s not just deflection. It’s a fundamental inability to engage with the question at hand.
This is not a partisan complaint. It’s not about policy. It’s about the basics of leadership: coherence, focus, responsibility. A functioning adult in the Oval Office should be able to answer a question without wandering into fantasy, nostalgia, or conspiracy. Trump rarely does.
Supporters (both MAGAs and media) might claim it’s part of his charm – that he’s just speaking off the cuff, unscripted. But there’s a difference between authenticity and incoherence. When every answer sounds like a poorly rehearsed rally speech, it’s not refreshing – it’s exhausting.
Even his defenders have learned to lower the bar. “That’s just Trump being Trump,” they shrug, as if we should expect the most powerful man in the world to behave like a distracted child. If this were a reality show, it might be entertaining. But it’s not. It’s the presidency. And the stakes are real.
What does it say about America when its president communicates like a confused child? When complexity is replaced with slogans, when questions are treated as insults, and when leadership is reduced to soundbites?
A president doesn’t need to be a poet or a scholar. But they do need to be able to think, listen, and respond like an adult. On that front, Trump continues to fail – loudly.
The prophecy – about Donald Trump.
The world is on edge, and Trump’s insatiable hunger for attention could push it over the brink.
a chaos-driven showman, more concerned with headlines than consequences.
Trump’s ‘chaos’ might appeal to his voters but risks catastrophe on a global stage.
18 June 2025 Michael Taylor, https://theaimn.net/the-prophecy/
A chilling warning, attributed to a biographer of Donald Trump, has lingered in the air since his first campaign: “He would start World War 3 just to prove he could.” Whether this quote, possibly heard in a radio segment or buried in an article, came from Michael D’Antonio or another chronicler of Trump’s life, its exact source remains elusive. Yet, as the 47th President, Trump’s recent actions – bluster at the G7, threats against Iran, and a desperate need to recover from a humiliating military parade – make the warning feel prophetic. The world is on edge, and Trump’s insatiable hunger for attention could push it over the brink.
Trump has always been a performer, a man who thrives on the spotlight. Biographers such as D’Antonio, author of Never Enough: Donald Trump and the Pursuit of Success, describe him as a “little boy” unchanged since first grade, craving validation at every turn. Timothy L. O’Brien, in TrumpNation, paints him as a chaos-driven showman, more concerned with headlines than consequences. This portrait aligns with the biographer’s alleged warning: a leader who might ignite a global crisis not for strategy, but for ego. In 2025, as Trump’s second term unfolds, his sabre-rattling suggests a dangerous willingness to test that theory.
The stage was set on June 14, 2025, when Trump’s military parade in Washington, meant to cement his strongman image, collapsed into a national embarrassment. Billed as a nation-building triumph, it drew sparse crowds, dampened by rain and mocked by critics. The White House spun absurd tales of its success, but the stark reality of empty fields left Trump humiliated. A bruised ego is a dangerous thing, and Trump, ever the performer, needed a bigger stage to reclaim his spotlight.
Enter the G7 summit. Still smarting from the parade fiasco, Trump arrived with a chip on his shoulder, ready to take it out on world leaders. The summit, meant to address trade, climate, and Ukraine, became a platform for his grievances – and a warning of how far he might go to prove his dominance.
Trump’s G7 performance was less statesmanship, more spectacle.
Sensing he wasn’t the most popular person in attendance he bailed early on June 16, citing Middle East tensions – specifically, backing Israel’s strikes and warning Iran to “evacuate Tehran.” His exit – though probably welcomed – left the G7 fragmented, with experts warning of a “global economy adrift.” The biographer’s WW3 warning loomed large: a leader who’d rather disrupt than unite, all to prove he’s in charge.
Iran Threats and Global Jitters
Trump’s Iran rhetoric is where the WW3 fears hit fever pitch. His tweeted threat to “evacuate Tehran,” tied to Israel’s escalating strikes, sent oil prices soaring and sparked panic; “We’re closer to a major military confrontation than we’ve been in two decades.” This isn’t just posturing; it’s a high-stakes gamble that could misfire. The 2020 Soleimani strike, which nearly sparked war with Iran, shows Trump’s willingness to roll the dice. The parade flop likely amplified this urge to punch above his weight, as if global brinkmanship could erase domestic embarrassment.
At home, Trump’s actions mirror his global aggression. Executive orders pardoning 1,500 January 6 rioters, blocking asylum-seekers, and designating drug cartels as terrorists signal a strongman act to rally his base. His tweets about military mobilisation in cities such as Los Angeles, Chicago and New York risks weaponising the government against opponents, a domestic echo of his foreign provocations. If Trump’s parade failure pushed him to lash out at allies and Iran, what’s to stop him from escalating further to boost flagging polls? Starting a war might make him look strong.
The Risk of a Performer’s War
Trump’s “madman theory” – projecting unpredictability to keep foes guessing – worked in his first term to an extent, like pressuring North Korea. But in 2025, it’s a tighter rope. His Iran threats could provoke retaliation, especially with US troops on alert. His G7 snub and NATO skepticism weaken collective defence, leaving smaller nations exposed to Russia or China.
Trump’s ‘chaos’ might appeal to his voters but risks catastrophe on a global stage.
The biographer’s warning, even if apocryphal, captures this perfectly. Starting a war “to prove he could” isn’t about policy – it’s about ego. Trump’s parade flop, G7 antics, and Iran threats show a man desperate to reclaim the narrative, no matter the cost. The stakes – trade wars, Ukraine, the Middle East – are too high for a leader driven by applause.
The world is holding its breath. Trump’s actions have spiked tensions, alienated allies, and raised the spectre of conflict. The WW3 quote, whether from a biographer’s pen or a radio quip, haunts 2025. Its exact words may be lost, but its truth endures: a man who craves attention above all else is a dangerous force. From tariff wars to Tehran threats, Trump’s not just playing to the crowd – he’s playing with fire.
The question isn’t whether Trump would start a war to prove he could – it’s whether anyone can stop him.
The World’s Most Dangerous Man and His Enabler
And so we come to the case of Donald J. Trump. I do not consider the American president to be as dangerous as Benjamin Netanyahu. He, Trump, may be stupider than Bibi, but he is not as unhinged. I count Trump Netanyahu’s enabler, and this is the role he just played.
now we have a nuclear-armed nation of many-times-demonstrated dangerous judgments threatening “a State without nuclear weapons,” as the IAEA refers to Iran.
June 16, 2025 By Patrick Lawrence / Original to ScheerPost
It is some years since I described Benjamin Netanyahu as the most dangerous man in West Asia. That was back when we heard all about the menace of the Assad regime in Damascus, the Beelzebub otherwise known as Iran’s supreme leader, and other such unthinkably malign figures.
The Israeli prime minister just graduated. By any serious reckoning he is the world’s most dangerous man as of the shockingly reckless, altogether nihilist attacks he launched against the Islamic Republic in the early hours of Friday, June 13. I will get to Donald Trump’s place in the ratings in a sec.
In his initial announcement of Operation Rising Lion, Netanyahu asserted that Iran presents “an existential threat” to Israel and that he had no choice but to order an attack. This is nonsense, but we had better pay attention to the nonsense. With this loaded phrase, Bibi has effectively licensed the Zionist state to launch a nuclear weapon if these attacks fail to destroy all of the Islamic Republic’s nuclear programs, as seems likely. This is my read.
There is indeed an existential threat abroad as of last Friday. But it extends well beyond Iran and, indeed, West Asia. As the self-defined Jewish state’s long, dreadful record makes plain, it appears to recognize no limits to the violence it will inflict on others, its breaches of international law and the norms of the human cause, and the risks it will inflict on the world in the name of what amounts to a biblically authorized project of subjugation and domination.
To finish this point, the obsessed leader of a nuclear-armed nation never subjected to the terms of the Non–Proliferation Treaty has just attacked a non-nuclear nation it calls a mortal danger to Israel’s survival because of the nuclear weapons it does not possess. You do the math, as the expression goes.
“Operation Rising Lion,” for the record, is a reference to the Prophecy of Balaam, an infidel with a very mixed record but who impressed the ancient Israelites with his exceptional powers of divination. In the Revised Standard Version of Numbers, 23:24, we find him saying, “Behold, the people shall rise up as a great lion, and lift up himself as a young lion: he shall not lie down until he eat of the prey, and drink the blood of the slain.” So does Bibi, who has the Palestinians down as evil Amalekites straight out of the Old Testament’s mythologies, once again state his purpose.
Israel and Iran are now at war, as one Tehrani told The New York Times after she listened to explosions and watched the flicker fires out her window last Friday evening. All is changed now. Netanyahu has craved this war for decades, always justifying his lust — a clinically psychotic lust, it is right to say — by way of endless lies and an apparently bottomless paranoia. These lies and this paranoia just put the world in danger of a global confrontation. We are all Iranians now: I am perfectly willing to say this.
As to President Trump and the American role in this, there is no need any longer for any of us to deceive ourselves. I continue to insist, against many who think otherwise, that the Zionist state is to be understood as a recklessly over-indulged client and not the Übermeister of U.S. policy. It is a complex dynamic, I mean to say, but the Zionist state just got done what the imperium wants in its broader ambition to “reshape the Middle East,” as the neoconservative cliques who direct U.S. policy have long put it. As I have noted previously in this space, borrowing from spookspeak, Israel does Washington’s wet work in West Asia.
■
As many commentators have remarked in many places, the Israelis have a well-established practice of lying in matters to do with events, policies, the conduct of the Israel Defense Forces, and so on. All governments lie, as I.F. Stone famously contended on many occasions, but the Israelis are in a class of their own among the officially mendacious, it is fair to say.
The thing about the Israelis is that they continue to lie even after a given lie is exposed. Netanyahu, a ready-to-hand case in point, still goes on about how the Hamas militias who attacked southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, raped men and women, beheaded some babies and baked others in ovens, and so on. All of this has been exposed as false, the product of Israel’s hasbara apparatus, the constantly-in-motion machine that produces propaganda for the consumption of international audiences. But Bibi nonetheless continues to retail these smears.
And this is the case with Netanyahu’s claims that, as of last week, Iran was on the very brink of producing nuclear weapons, and it was therefore urgent to stop it.
When he announced Operation Rising Lion, Netanyahu asserted, “It could be in a year, it could be within a few months — it could be less than a year.” Read this carefully. It is sheer fear mongering, not a stated fact in it. There is no more substance to these assertions than there has been since Netanyahu first started carrying on in this fashion in the early 1990s. Anyone aware of the record knows this is merely another in the long line of statements Netanyahu has made of this kind. Bibi knows all his “coulds” and predictions are groundless — Israeli intel and the Central Intelligence Agency have told him so — and he cannot but know those paying attention know he knows this. Now this transparent lie proves enough to start a war with two sides and risk a war with many.
On June 11, two days before the Israelis launched their attacks on Iran, a social media account going by The United States of Israel posted on “X” a timeline of Netanyahu’s claims that the Islamic Republic was about to cross the threshold and become a nuclear-capable danger. There are 20 entries, beginning in 1992 and ending earlier this year. In 1996 Iran was some months to one year away from building a bomb. In 2010 it was a year away, in 2021 months to a year, and so on.
I am not familiar with The United States of Israel and cannot vouch for every entry, but of those I know, they are all accurate. I think first of 2013, when Netanyahu addressed the U.N. General Assembly on Oct.1 with that infamously ridiculous graphic that readers may recall — the bomb shaped like a bowling ball with a fuse out of the top. The forecast then, a dozen years ago, was a year to nuclear capability.
………………………………….. commentators and others now place much weight on a report from the International Atomic Energy Agency charging that Iran has been in violation of its obligations under the Nuclear Non–Proliferation Treaty.
Some facts: The agency is an organ of the United Nations and has 35 members. It convened to vote on a resolution that was advanced by the United States, Britain, France and Germany. This resolution was presented Thursday, June 12, a day before Israel began attacking Iran. It passed with a vote of 19 board members in favor, three against (Russia, China, Burkina Faso) and 11 abstentions; two board members did not vote.
These facts merit scrutiny. Why did four Western powers, which unanimously support Israel and oppose Iran, introduce this resolution when, by last Thursday, United States and European officials were already warning of an imminent Israeli attack? Why did 16 other nations — many of them non–Western, some of them (Canada, the Netherlands, South Korea, Japan) U.S. allies — decline to back the resolution? On the day of the vote, you may recall, the State Department withdrew its diplomatic staff from its embassy in Baghdad and encouraged the families of military personnel in the region to evacuate on a voluntary basis.
Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, immediately interpreted the IAEA’s censure as politically motivated, a preface to the Israelis’ operation the next day. Let us take care here: This view of events cannot be verified as so, but it most certainly cannot be dismissed.
The IAEA censure is contained in the four-page June 12 report. This is a highly technical document having to do with the agency’s access to nuclear-related sites in Iran and the Iranians’ official accounts of their nuclear programs in their regular contacts with the IAEA. The points of contention between the agency and the Iranians go back five years; the most recent of these dates to November 2024. Nothing happened last week or last month or the month before that to prompt the agency’s censure.
Here is a key passage in the document:
Noting with concern the Director General’s conclusion, most recently in GOV/2025/25, that these issues stem from Iran’s obligations under its NPT Safeguards Agreement and unless and until Iran assists the Agency is [sic] resolving the outstanding issues, the Agency will not be in a position to provide assurance that Iran’s nuclear programme is exclusively peaceful …
Does this read to you like a declaration that Iran is on the brink of nuclear-capability and must urgently be stopped? Or does this read as another in a long line of interim reports, the basis for further interaction of the kind that has gone on routinely for decades? Does this, or any other passage if you care to read the technical prose, support Bibi Netanyahu’s latest predictions as earlier quoted? Does it support the commentaries of David French and Bret Stephens? Put this report next to the assertions of these people and you have an across-the-board case of gross distortion.
Iran, in response to the IAEA censure, now threatens to withdraw altogether from the Non–Proliferation Treaty and pursue its nuclear capabilities in earnest. You can read this as a potential horror show or you can think about the principle of deterrence. I have been of the latter persuasion for many years in the Iranian case. Deterrence was held very high as a strategic concept during the Cold War decades. I regretted the circumstances that made deterrence necessary but saw the necessity of it. And now we have a nuclear-armed nation of many-times-demonstrated dangerous judgments threatening “a State without nuclear weapons,” as the IAEA refers to Iran. I come to the same conclusion.
Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s now-perturbed foreign minister, was due to travel to Oman Sunday, June 15, for further talks with the United States on a nuclear accord that would replace the agreement Netanyahu railed against even before it was signed and Trump abandoned. This is now off, for obvious reasons.
And so we come to the case of Donald J. Trump. I do not consider the American president to be as dangerous as Benjamin Netanyahu. He, Trump, may be stupider than Bibi, but he is not as unhinged. I count Trump Netanyahu’s enabler, and this is the role he just played.
Trump is as deep in the pockets of the Israel lobbies and various wealthy American supporters of the Zionist state as any other American pol, allowing for very few exceptions. But in his support of so dangerous an operation as Rising Lion, Trump may have outdone them all, it seems to me. It is one thing, condemnable enough, to back a genocide by way of limitless supplies of weapons, political support and diplomatic cover. Isn’t another to approve of aggression that carries the risk of global conflagration? The degree of cynicism strikes me as yet greater than Joe Biden’s, and I admit that is going some.
There was a day or so just before Netanyahu’s lion began to rise when Trump put Marco Rubio, his hapless secretary of state, out in front of the microphones and cameras to tell the world no, the U.S. had no prior knowledge of Israel’s plans and there were no “American airplanes” involved. It transpires that Rubio meant no jets with the “USAF” insignia painted on their fuselages. Newsweek reported the day the Israelis attacked that Israel has deployed a variety of American-made fighter jets in the Israeli inventory — F–35s, F–16s and F–15s — against the Iranians. You might ask whether this amounts to tacit consent, but don’t bother. The Israelis, ever eager to boast of America’s approval of all their malevolence, have clarified the matter.
Antiwar.com, the libertarian news site, reported June 13 that a senior Israeli official disclosed to The Jerusalem Post that the Netanyahu and Trump regimes colluded “to convince Tehran that diplomacy was still possible after Israel was ready to attack Iran.” As the Jerusalem Post reported, “The round of U.S.–Iranian nuclear negotiations scheduled for Sunday was part of a coordinated U.S.–Israeli deception aimed at lowering Iran’s guard ahead of Friday’s attack.”
Here is the able Dave DeCamp’s report in Antiwar.com and here is the Jerusalem Post’s. And here, for good measure, is how The New York Times played this story under the headline, “A Miscalculation by Iran Led to Israeli Strikes’ Extensive Toll, Officials Say.” Those foolish Iranians: They took the Americans at their word.
All this while, to complete the picture, Trump was on his Truth Social messaging platform with this kind of thing:
We remain committed to a Diplomatic Resolution to the Iran Nuclear Issue! My entire Administration has been directed to negotiate with Iran. They could be a Great Country, but they first must completely give up hopes of obtaining a Nuclear Weapon. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”
I like the flipped-off flattery, the upper-case nouns, and the exclamation points. Very Donald. So is what we read about in the above-cited publications.
I do not want to go on about how cravenly the U.S. so often conducts itself in matters of state. This has been noted often enough. But what the United States just did to Iran with the assist of its client seems to me the ne plus ultra of diplomatic betrayals. I can think of only one other case that offers a useful comparison.
That was when Vladimir Putin personally negotiated a settlement of the Ukraine crisis in its early stages. The Russian president invested heavily in the two Minsk Protocols, signed in September 2014 and February 2015, as a promising solution to the divisions evident in Ukraine after the U.S.–cultivated coup in Kiev in February 2014. He subsequently discovered neither Ukraine nor the Western powers that served as guarantors of these accords, France and Germany, ever had any intention of implementing them.
Essentially at issue in these two cases is trust and breaches thereof. A measure of trust is foundational in international relations. Without it there can be no constructive diplomacy, either between adversaries or, for that matter, among allies. Nations are that much closer to a default of hostility and potential chaos. The Europeans broke trust with the Russians when they abandoned the Minsk accords as soon as they signed them. Trump just broke trust with the Iranians. This is devastation of a kind — scorched-earth statecraft, we may as well call it.
To finish this point, do you think others do not notice this? The Chinese, to name the most critical case?
Trump and Netanyahu just executed the cheapest sort of good-cop, bad-cop routine with Tehran. It is a variant of Biden’s duplicity as he armed Israel with all it needed to proceed with its genocide in Gaza while claiming to fight “night and day” for a ceasefire. Biden betrayed the Palestinians, Trump the Iranians. They have both betrayed all of us. These are acts of desperation, in my final read. Let us not forget why this is, and in which direction history’s wheel turns. https://scheerpost.com/2025/06/16/patrick-lawrence-the-worlds-most-dangerous-man-and-his-enabler/
Kingston Fossil Plant and Oakridge Nuclear Facility – an unholy alliance of radioactive pollution,
While no one was killed by the 2008 coal ash spill itself, dozens of workers have died from illnesses that emerged during or after the cleanup. Hundreds of other workers are sick from respiratory, cardiac, neurological, and blood disorders, as well as cancers.
The apparent mixing of fossil fuel and nuclear waste streams underscores the long relationship between the Kingston and Oak Ridge facilities.
Between the 1950s and 1980s, so much cesium-137 and mercury was released into the Clinch from Oak Ridge that the Department of Energy, or DOE, said that the river and its feeder stream “served as pipelines for contaminants.” Yet TVA and its contractors, with the blessing of both state and federal regulators, classified all 4 million tons of material they recovered from the Emory as “non-hazardous.”
A U.S. Environmental Protection Agency analysis confirms that the ash that was left in the river was “found to be commingled with contamination from the Department of Energy (DOE) Oak Ridge Reservation site.
For nearly a century, both Oak Ridge and TVA treated their waste with less care than most families treat household garbage. It was often dumped into unlined, and sometimes unmarked, pits that continue to leak into waterways. For decades, Oak Ridge served as the Southeast’s burial ground for nuclear waste. It was stored within watersheds and floodplains that fed the Clinch River. But exactly where and how this waste was buried has been notoriously hard to track.
A Legacy of Contamination, How the Kingston coal ash spill unearthed a nuclear nightmare, Grist By Austyn Gaffney on Dec 
15, 2020 This story was published in partnership with the Daily Yonder.
In 2009, App Thacker was hired to run a dredge along the Emory River in eastern Tennessee. Picture an
industrialized fleet modeled after Huck Finn’s raft: Nicknamed Adelyn, Kylee, and Shirley, the blue, flat-bottomed boats used mechanical arms called cutterheads to dig up riverbeds and siphon the excavated sediment into shoreline canals. The largest dredge, a two-story behemoth called the Sandpiper, had pipes wide enough to swallow a push lawnmower. Smaller dredges like Thacker’s scuttled behind it, scooping up excess muck like fish skimming a whale’s corpse. They all had the same directive: Remove the thick grey sludge that clogged the Emory.
The sludge was coal ash, the waste leftover when coal is burned to generate electricity. Twelve years ago this month, more than a billion gallons of wet ash burst from a holding pond monitored by the region’s major utility, the Tennessee Valley Authority, or TVA. Thacker, a heavy machinery operator with Knoxville’s 917 union, became one of hundreds of people that TVA contractors hired to clean up the spill. For about four years, Thacker spent every afternoon driving 35 miles from his home to arrive in time for his 5 p.m. shift, just as the makeshift overhead lights illuminating the canals of ash flicked on.
Dredging at night was hard work. The pump inside the dredge clogged repeatedly, so Thacker took off his shirt and entered water up to his armpits to remove rocks, tree limbs, tires, and other debris, sometimes in below-freezing temperatures. Soon, ringworm-like sores crested along his arms, interwoven with his fading red and blue tattoos. Thacker’s supervisors gave him a cream for the skin lesions, and he began wearing long black cow-birthing gloves while he unclogged pumps. While Thacker knew that the water was contaminated — that was the point of the dredging — he felt relatively safe. After all, TVA was one of the oldest and most respected employers in the state, with a sterling reputation for worker safety.
Then, one night, the dredging stopped.
Sometime between December 2009 and January 2010, roughly halfway through the final, 500-foot-wide section of the Emory designated for cleanup, operators turned off the pumps that sucked the ash from the river. For a multi-billion dollar remediation project, this order was unprecedented. The dredges had been operating 24/7 in an effort to clean up the disaster area as quickly as possible, removing roughly 3,000 cubic yards of material — almost enough to fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool — each day. But official reports from TVA show that the dredging of the Emory encountered unusually high levels of contamination: Sediment samples showed that mercury levels were three times higher in the river than they were in coal ash from the holding pond that caused the disaster.
Then there was the nuclear waste. Continue reading
Memoirs of Mohamed ElBaradei: “The Age of Deception”
MEHR 17th March 2025 TEHRAN, Mar. 15 (MNA) – Firouzeh Doroshti has translated the memoirs of Mohamed ElBaradei, who served as the director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, in the book titled ‘The Age of Deception: Nuclear Diplomacy in Treacherous Times.
The book “The Age of Deception: Nuclear Diplomacy in Treacherous Times” which includes the memoirs of Mohamed ElBaradei from his three terms as the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), has been translated by Firouzeh Doroshti and is now available in bookstores across the country.
This book takes a scrutinizing approach to nuclear diplomacy in a tumultuous phase of modern history.
The book “The Age of Deception” is viewed as a crucial resource for gaining insight into the complicated nature of nuclear diplomacy. ……
Mohammad ElBaradei, an Egyptian-born Lawyer, was the Director-General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) from 1997 to 2009.
A Nobel Peace Prize laureate, and the longest-serving Director General, who got the honour of becoming Director General Emeritus of the agency towards the end of his service.
The book is a compelling account of chronological events and challenges faced by the IAEA during his tenure.
The book covers three decades of his work on cases including Iraq, North Korea, Libya, Iran, and Pakistan, and exposes double standards adopted by the U.S. and other Western nations.
It sheds light on the behind-the-scenes workings of international organizations and the challenges of maintaining neutrality in a politically charged environment.
The book shows how ElBaradei felt that different standards were being applied to different countries’ nuclear programs.
Arguments in his book revolve around the three underlying principles of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
These essential facets of the treaty include the pledge by the (non–nuclear) members not to try and obtain or develop nuclear weapons, a sincere effort on the part of all members to lead the world towards complete disarmament, and thirdly to facilitate the use of atomic energy for peaceful purposes in all member countries with particular consideration for the needs of developing countries.
Reported by Tohid Mahmoudpour https://en.mehrnews.com/news/229527/Memoirs-of-Mohamed-ElBaradei-The-Age-of-Deception
They had a fairytale American childhood – but was radiation slowly killing them?
Decades later, federal investigators acknowledged an increased cancer risk for some people who played in the creek as children,
Sophie Williams, BBC News, Washington DC, 16 Mar 25
After Kim Visintine put her son to bed every night at a hospital in St Louis, Missouri, she spent her evening in the hospital’s library. She was determined to know how her boy had become seriously ill with a rare brain tumour at just a week old.
“Doctors were shocked,” she says. “We were told that his illness was one in a million. Other parents were learning to change diapers but I was learning how to change chemotherapy ports and IVs.”
Kim’s son Zack was diagnosed with a glioblastoma multiforme. It is a brain tumour that is very rare in children and is usually seen in adults over 45.
Zack had chemotherapy treatments but doctors said there was no hope of him ever recovering. He died at just six years old.
Years later, social media and community chatter made Kim start to think that her son was not an isolated case. Perhaps he was part of a bigger picture growing in their community surrounding Coldwater Creek.
In this part of the US, cancer fears have prompted locals to accuse officials of not doing enough to support those who may have been exposed to radiation due to the development of the atomic bomb in the 1940s.
A compensation programme that was designed to pay out to some Americans who contracted diseases after exposure to radiation expired last year – before it could be extended to the St Louis area.
This Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (Reca) provided one-time payouts to people who may have developed cancer or other diseases while living in areas where activities such as atomic weapons testing took place. It paid out $2.6bn (£2bn) to more than 41,000 claimants before coming to an end in 2024.
Benefits were paid to such neighbours, frequently called “downwinders”, in Arizona, Utah and Nevada, but not New Mexico, where the world’s first test of a nuclear weapon took place in 1945. Research published in 2020 by the National Cancer Institute suggested that hundreds of cancers in the area would not have occurred without radiation exposure.
St Louis, meanwhile, was where uranium was refined and used to help create the atomic bomb as part of the Manhattan Project. After World War Two ended, the chemical was dumped near the creek and left uncovered, allowing waste to seep into the area.
Decades later, federal investigators acknowledged an increased cancer risk for some people who played in the creek as children, but added in their report: “The predicted increases in the number of cancer cases from exposures are small, and no method exists to link a particular cancer with this exposure.”
The clean-up of the creek is still ongoing and is not expected to finish until 2038.
A new bill has been put forward in the House, and Josh Hawley, a US senator representing Missouri, says he has raised the issue with President Donald Trump.
When Kim flicks through her school yearbook, she can identify those who have become sick and those who have since passed away. The numbers are startling.
“My husband didn’t grow up in this area, and he said to me, ‘Kim, this is not normal. It seems like we’re always talking about one of your friends passing away or going to a funeral’,” she says.
Just streets away from the creek, Karen Nickel grew up spending her days near the water picking berries, or in the nearby park playing baseball. Her brother would often try and catch fish in Coldwater Creek.
“I always tell people that we had just the fairytale childhood that you would expect in what you consider suburban America,” says Karen. “Big backyards, big families, children playing out together until the street lights came on at night.”
But years later, her carefree childhood now looks very different.
“Fifteen people from the street I grew up on have died from rare cancers,” she says. “We have neighbourhoods here where every house has been affected by some cancer or some illness. We have streets where you can’t just find a house where a family has not been affected by this.”
When Karen’s sister was just 11 years old, doctors discovered that her ovaries were covered in cysts. The same had happened to their neighbour when she was just nine. Karen’s six-year-old granddaughter was born with a mass on her right ovary.
Karen helped found Just Moms STL, a group that is dedicated to protecting the community from future exposures that could be linked to cancers – and which advocates for a clean-up of the area.
“We get messages every day from people that are suffering from illnesses and are questioning whether this is from exposure,” she says. “These are very aggressive illnesses that the community is getting, from cancers all the way to autoimmune diseases.”
Teresa Rumfelt grew up just a street away from Karen and lived in her family home from 1979 until 2010. She remembers every one of her animals passing away from cancer and her neighbours getting ill from rare diseases.
Years later, her sister Via Von Banks was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a form of motor neurone disease. Some medical studies have suggested there could be a link between radiation and ALS, but this is not definitive – and more research needs to be done to firm it up.
That does not reassure people like Teresa who are concerned that more needs to be done to understand how locals are being affected.
“ALS took my sister at 50,” Teresa says. “I think it was the worst disease ever of mankind. When she was diagnosed in 2019, she’d just got her career going and her children were growing. She stayed positive through all of it.”
Like Hawley, Just STL Moms and other community members want the government’s compensation act to be expanded to include people within the St Louis area, despite the programme being in limbo after expiring.
Expanding it to the Coldwater Creek community would mean that locals could be offered compensation if they could prove they were harmed as a result of the Manhattan Project, during which the atomic bomb was developed with the help of uranium-processing in St Louis. It would also allow screenings and further study into illnesses other than cancer.
In a statement to the BBC, the US government’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said it took concerns very seriously and had actively worked with federal, state and local partners – as well as community members – to understand their health concerns, and to ensure community members were not exposed to the Manhattan Project-era waste.
The BBC has also contacted the US Army Corps of Engineers, which is leading the clean-up – but has not received a response to a request for comment.
“My sister would have loved to be part of the fight. She’d be the first to picket,” says Teresa of her efforts to get greater support from the government.
The trend in people around Coldwater Creek getting unwell has not gone unnoticed among healthcare professionals.
Dr Gautum Agarwal, a cancer surgeon at Mercy Hospital in St Louis, says he has not noticed a “statistical thing”, but notes that he has seen husbands and wives and their neighbours presenting cancers.
Now, he ensures that his patients are asked where they live and how close they are to Coldwater Creek.
“I tell them that there’s a potential that there’s a link. And if your neighbours or family live near there, we should get them screened more often. And maybe you should get your kids screened earlier.”
He hopes that over time more knowledge will be gained about the issue, and for a study into multi-cancer early detection tests to be introduced that could help catch any potential cancers, and help reassure people in the area……….. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c2e7011n03vo
Life as a “displaced person”
Evacuated or not, we all need to protect ourselves from the radioactive contamination resulting from the Fukushima nuclear accident. “Evacuation” is a rightful act of a human being to avoid exposure to radiation so as to enjoy good health. In Japan, however, evacuees are subjected to discrimination and bullying, labeled as “rumor spreaders” since our very existence points out the dangers of radiation. Under this severe social pressure, we can barely express our rightful thought.
https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2025/03/09/life-as-a-displaced-person/
Fleeing the Fukushima disaster left many families fatherless, including my own, writes Akiko Morimatsu
I am Akiko Morimatsu. I left Fukushima to avoid radiation exposure caused by the Fukushima nuclear catastrophe, and I have been living as an internally displaced person.
Fourteen years have passed since the Great East Japan Earthquake of March 11, 2011 and the subsequent accident at TEPCO’s Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. The accident is far from over and the crippled power plant continues to contaminate the oceans, air, and land connected to the rest of the world. The situation is anything but “under control”, and I am outraged that none of the leaders of the Japanese State have acknowledged this fact.
Even after 14 years, many people continue to remain displaced. The number of evacuees registered with the government (Reconstruction Agency) is still approximately 29,000 people in all 47 prefectures of Japan, and they are in desperate need of government protection and relief.
However, the exact number of evacuees has never been counted by the Japanese government.
In fact, many more people than registered in official statistics have been compelled to flee their homes and are still in distress with no relief in sight, as they are not officially recognized as evacuees.
I have two children. At the time of the disaster, they were a 5-month-old baby and a 3-year-old toddler. For the past 14 years, my husband (the children’s father) lived in Koriyama City, Fukushima Prefecture, and I was living with my children in Osaka City, far apart one from the other.
Thus, people living in contaminated areas outside of the mandatory evacuation zones, made their not-easy-to-take decision to escape from the radiation source with only mothers and their children, who are more vulnerable to radiation. And this, without official aide or support. Even now, there are many people displaced living by their own means, and among them, a large number of households without fathers.
Evacuated or not, we all need to protect ourselves from the radioactive contamination resulting from the Fukushima nuclear accident. “Evacuation” is a rightful act of a human being to avoid exposure to radiation so as to enjoy good health. In Japan, however, evacuees are subjected to discrimination and bullying, labeled as “rumor spreaders” since our very existence points out the dangers of radiation. Under this severe social pressure, we can barely express our rightful thought.
I would also like to strongly emphasize that this issue is not only a problem for the people of Fukushima. I would like to share with everyone in the world the following question: when threatened with nuclear damage, will you stand on the side of those who impose radiation exposure, or will you stand on the side of those who protect people’s lives and health from radiation exposure?
If nuclear power is promoted as a national policy, fleeing will not be easily allowed, and the government can claim, as in Japan, that coexistence with radiation is possible, in order to preserve nuclear power. It is nothing but deception.
The year 2025 will mark 80 years since the end of World War II. Last year, Nihon Hidankyô, the Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organizations, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, and hibakusha gave a speech to the world audience, drawing attention to the issue of radiation exposure.
We believe that now is the time to connect with people around the world concerned about nuclear damage. Avoiding radiation exposure to protect lives should be a universally recognized principle. As a victim of the Fukushima nuclear disaster, I, too, have renewed my determination to continue to raise my voice and strive for the establishment of this universal right. Let us continue fighting together.
Following the Great Earthquake and nuclear disaster in Fukushima, Akiko Morimatsu moved from Fukushima to Osaka with her two children aged 5 months and 3 years, leaving her husband who decided to continue working in Fukushima. She is the co-chair of the national coordination of the plaintiffs’ groups of the lawsuits filed by victims of the Fukushima nuclear accident, and the representative of the plaintiffs’ group in the Osaka metropolitan area. She lectures in Japan and abroad to defend the rights of nuclear accident victims. In 2018, she gave a speech at the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva. Translation from the Japanese by Kurumi Sugita, Nos Voisins Lontains 3.11.
1 This Month
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com/
12 February – Webinar The Big Push: New Nuclear Projects in Canada
Thursday, February 12, 7 pm Eastern | 2nd of 4 sessions in the 2026 Nuclear Waste Online webinar series
Join a webinar on the push for new nuclear generation in Canada. Go to Northwatch.org to register or use the registration link https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_ZfWOf1GITqSRIZX8CB-A9w
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