nuclear-news

Can the NPT Keep Nuclear Weapons from Spreading? (MBN)

 This week, a month-long review of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty
(NPT) began at the United Nations headquarters in New York City. Middle
East Broadcasting Networks (MBN), a U.S.-funded service that reaches more
than one million viewers in the Middle East, asked me whether the NPT keeps
nuclear weapons from spreading.

I made four points. First, if the NPT is to
succeed in preventing the spread of nuclear weapons, it must clarify what
“peaceful” nuclear activities are permissible. Making nuclear fuel has
brought Iran, North Korea, and Iraq either up to or over the red line of
nuclear weapons manufacturing.

Henceforth, the treaty needs to be
interpreted to prohibit states that lack nuclear weapons from engaging in
this activity. The U.S. NPT delegation seems to have taken this point on:
Yesterday, U.S. representative Christopher Yeaw told the review conference
that there is no “inalienable right” to enrich uranium.

 NPEC 29th April 2026, https://npolicy.org/can-the-npt-keep-nuclear-weapons-from-spreading-mbn/

May 3, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics international | Leave a comment

Varoufakis on Palantir and its 22 points

28 Apr 26

Palantir were kind enough to sum up its hideous ideology in 22 points. And I have taken the liberty of annotating each one of them. Here is my interpretation of all 22 of them (preserving the original numbering ):

1. Silicon Valley owes an immeasurable debt to the ruling class who bailed out the criminal bankers that wrecked the livelihood of the majority of Americans. The engineering elite of Silicon Valley will defend that ruling class to the death (literally!), in the name of the majority of Americans whom they treat with contempt – i.e., like cattle that have lost their market value.

2. Palantir is eyeing the Apple Store, salivating over the prospect of creating its own technofeudal estate. Time to replace the iPhone with another device that dissolves what is left of people’s privacy.

3. Palantir shall give nothing away for free. It cares uniquely over its own growth which it pursues by sowing fear so that it can sell a fake sense of security.

4. Glory to brute force! Ethics is for suckers. The West needs more of Palantir’s murderous software.

5. AI-powered killer robots are coming. The task is to profit magnificently by building killer robots first and ask questions later. To be able to do so, Palantir will do whatever it takes to avoid at all cost any international treaties that limit AI-driven killer robots.

6. Every poor sod (lacking the connections to avoid being thrown into the trenches with killer drones targeting them from the sky) must be drafted into the army. Forget paying soldiers a salary. All payments should be directed to Palantir, where our own people will be serving their ‘national service’ – leaving the dying to non-shareholders.

7. Palantir works overtime to equip US Marines with killer bots that take away from the US Marines whatever remnants of ethical judgment they are left with on the battlefield. American society should be rendered perfectly incapable of any debate that restricts Palantir’s capacity to get the US Military to eliminate any remaining opportunity to reject its software’s choice of targets.

8. Palantir deplores the fact that the public sector is still not totally devoid of a conscience. Public servants must be fired en masse, except some very few approved by Palantir who will receive huge salaries, paid by taxpayers.

9. Palantir thinks that Donald Trump must be beatified for throwing himself into public service. Not forgiving folks like Trump everything risks our soul, not to mention that it raises the prospect of officials that restrict Palantir’s evil project.

10. Politics needs to be AI-like, devoid of anything that can be mistaken for human empathy. Those who look to the political arena to nourish their soul and sense of self must be sent to the gulag forthwith!

11. There are some people too eager to hasten Palantir’s demise. They should rethink, or else!

12. Palantir makes no nuclear weapons but is happily developing other weapons of mass destruction. We proudly announce that we are now ready to add to nuclear Armageddon the AI-driven threat to humanity’s existence.

13. No other country in the history of the world has committed so many war crimes in the name of progress and freedom. The United States offers infinite freedom to people like Palantir’s founders to profit so handsomely by inflicting so much damage upon humanity.

14. American power has feasted on causing one war after another, one putsch after another, one avoidable financial disaster after another. Too many have forgotten or perhaps have taken for granted America’s capacity to pursue forever wars in the name of peace and democracy.

15. German and Japanese Fascism must be made great again. The denazification of Germany was an overcorrection for which Europe is now paying a heavy price. A similar and highly misplaced commitment to Japanese pacifism must also end immediately!

16. We should applaud those who attempt to monopolise everything by means of generous government contracts. Billionaires must not be satisfied merely with their billions. To become even more obscenely rich they need grand narratives that help them convince the poor to use their freedom to keep them, the billionaires, in power. And, by the way, Palantir loves Elon, especially his grand apartheid-inspired narrative.

17. Silicon Valley must be free to do in America’s cities what it did in Gaza. Many politicians across the United States have essentially shrugged when it came to granting Palantir the right to annihilate all remaining civil liberties and human rights. This must end.

18. Epstein’s syndicate should be forgotten lest lovely people like Trump and the Clintons are deterred from entering government. The public arena must be scrutiny-free unless subversives like Sanders or Mamdani enter it.

19. We love banal public figures as long as they give Palantir all the juicy contracts. We also love colourful public figures who give Palantir all the juicy contracts.

20. We need more opium for the masses, as they are not sufficiently inebriated for us to be unimpeded in the pursuit of their complete subjugation. Questioning organised superstition is dangerous and must end.

21. Time to bring back Hitler’s hierarchy of races, with Palantir’s founders and Elon at its Aryan pinnacle. The idea that it is wrong to judge someone by the colour of their skin or their ethnicity or their religion must be jettisoned.

22. Blacks, Muslims, most Asians, and of course women, are inferior untermensch. Blokes in America, and more broadly the West, have for the past half century resisted putting these subhumans in their places in the name of inclusivity. It was a mistake. Such subhumans must never be allowed in, except as servants or sex service providers – at least until we can improve our robots, in which case we won’t need them at all.

May 2, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics international | Leave a comment

A new nuclear arms race is accelerating. There’s only one way to stop it

A major failing of the last review conference in 2022 was that no measures were passed to protect nuclear facilities from attack.

April 27, 2026 , Tilman Ruff, Honorary Principal Fellow, School of Population and Global Health, The University of Melbourne, https://theconversation.com/a-new-nuclear-arms-race-is-accelerating-theres-only-one-way-to-stop-it-281130?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Latest%20from%20The%20Conversation%20for%20April%2027%202026%20-%203750638401&utm_content=Latest%20from%20The%20Conversation%20for%20April%2027%202026%20-%203750638401+CID_b464943fe1c89ff64a2ce9bfba273fa3&utm_source=campaign_monitor&utm_term=A%20new%20nuclear%20arms%20race%20is%20accelerating%20Theres%20only%20one%20way%20to%20stop%20it

This week in New York, diplomats from almost every nation will convene for a four-week review of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), the most comprehensive nuclear arms agreement in the world.

The stakes could hardly be higher.

Russia, Israel and the United States, all nuclear-armed, are conducting illegal wars of aggression against countries without nuclear weapons. Nuclear-armed India and Pakistan engaged in conflict last year across their disputed border, raising the spectre of nuclear escalation.

In February, the last remaining agreement constraining Russian and US nuclear weapons lapsed, with nothing to replace it. The two countries account for nearly 90% of the world’s nuclear weapons.

And all nine nuclear-armed states are investing vast sums in modernising their arsenals with more capable and dangerous weapons. Deployed nuclear weapons and those on high alert, ready to be launched within minutes, are also rising.

All these developments have brought the Doomsday Clock, which assesses how close the world is to existential catastrophe, closer to midnight than it has ever been since 1947.

What is the NPT?

The NPT is considered a cornerstone of international law in relation to nuclear weapons and disarmament. It has the widest membership of any arms control agreement, with 190 states. These include five countries that manufactured and exploded nuclear weapons before 1967 – China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States. All other members do not have nuclear weapons.

North Korea is the only state to have joined the NPT and then renounced it. India, Israel and Pakistan, all nuclear-armed, along with South Sudan, are the only countries that have never joined.

The NPT is essentially a bargain struck in the late 1960s between the states that had nuclear weapons and those that did not. The first five nuclear-armed states – also permanent members of the UN Security Council with veto rights – committed to end the nuclear arms race and eliminate their arsenals.

In exchange, states without nuclear weapons agreed to forego acquiring them, with the sweetener of assistance in developing peaceful uses of nuclear technology.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was established to ensure non-nuclear states did not acquire weapons. However, the treaty did not establish any timeframes, defined processes, or verification or enforcement mechanisms for nuclear-armed nations to disarm.

The NPT entered into legal force in 1970, initially for 25 years. It was hoped the task of nuclear disarmament would be accomplished by then.

When this was clearly not the case in 1995, the treaty was indefinitely extended, thereby removing an important source of pressure on nuclear-armed states to fulfil their side of the bargain. Since then, there have been reviews every five years to debate implementation of the treaty.

Rarely consensus

These conferences, however, have been fraught.

In 2015, for example, Canada, the UK and US blocked adoption of a painstakingly negotiated text at the behest of Israel, a non-member of the treaty. And in 2022, Russia blocked adoption of the final text, mainly due to references to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine, which it attacked and occupied.

Since 1995, only two review conferences have produced an agreed outcome document.

In 2000, the members agreed to 13 practical steps to progress nuclear disarmament, but these remain almost completely unimplemented. And in 2010, the members agreed to a 64-point action plan, but implementation has been variable and weak, particularly for the 22 actions relating to disarmament.

The NPT has been moderately effective, though, in discouraging additional states from acquiring nuclear weapons. A number of countries, such as Canada, Germany, Sweden, Switzerland, South Korea and Australia, gave up nuclear weapons programs or ambitions after joining.

But when it comes to disarmament, the treaty has failed dismally.

The head of this year’s conference, Do Hung Viet, has stressed the risk of failing to find consensus again at this year’s review.

It may not put an end to the NPT itself but […] it may hollow out the NPT. We may lose the credibility of the NPT itself

Two main challenges ahead

In the current dysfunctional international environment, expectations for this year’s conference are low.

Nuclear-armed states have not only failed to disarm, they are growing, modernising and threatening to use their arsenals in an accelerating arms race. And two recent developments are likely to cast further shadows over the debate.

The first is Russia’s unprecedented weaponisation of nuclear facilities in Ukraine, including operating nuclear power plants with huge quantities of radioactive materials in the reactor cores and in spent fuel ponds. Russian forces have engaged in a number of reckless actions, including:

• 
  attacking and damaging the facilities
• interfering with their operation and terrorising staff
• using some as military bases
• and jeopardising the power and water supplies critical to the essential cooling of reactors and spent fuel.

These actions risk a radiological disaster extending far beyond Ukraine’s borders.

A major failing of the last review conference in 2022 was that no measures were passed to protect nuclear facilities from attack.

The second major issue confronting this year’s review: the US–Israeli attacks on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Both countries have cited Iran’s imminent acquisition of nuclear weapons as a pretext for their attacks, despite the fact US intelligence officials and the head of the IAEA said this wasn’t the case.

The might-is-right attacks by the US and Israel raise profound questions for the world’s non-nuclear nations in the value of adhering to the NPT. Why should they comply with the treaty’s stringent requirements when nuclear-armed states can use illegal force against them, at their will?

Non-proliferation cannot be secured by war. In fact, for the surviving members of Iran’s regime (and leaders of other nations), the war likely reinforces the opposite lesson: preventing military aggression is best assured by having nuclear weapons.

The risk of other states now following the North Korean model – leaving the NPT and developing an initially clandestine nuclear weapons program – is much higher.

In the nuclear age, security is either shared or non-existent. The only safe and sustainable future is predicated on eliminating nuclear weapons. This can only be achieved through cooperation, negotiation and international law, backed up by equitable verification.

May 1, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics international | Leave a comment

American “Micro-Militarism: Or How Defeat in the Iran War Will Accelerate American Global Decline

 SCHEERPOST, April 25, 2026 , Alfred McCoy

Writing more than 2,000 years ago, the Greek historian Plutarch gave us an eloquent description of what modern historians now call “micro-militarism.” When an imperial power like Athens then, or America now, is in decline, its leaders often react emotionally by mounting seemingly bold military strikes in hopes of regaining the imperial grandeur that’s slipping through their fingers. Instead of another of the great victories the empire won at its peak of power, however, such military misadventures only serve to accelerate the ongoing decline, erasing whatever aura of imperial majesty remains and revealing instead the moral rot deep inside the ruling elite.

There is mounting historical evidence that America is indeed an empire in steep decline, while President Donald Trump’s war of choice against Iran is becoming the sort of micro-military disaster that helped destroy successive empires over the past 2,500 years — from ancient Athens to medieval Portugal to modern Spain, Great Britain, and now the United States. And at the core of every such ill-fated war-making decision lay a problematic leader, often born into wealth and prestige, whose personal inadequacies reflected and ramified the many irrationalities that make imperial decline such a painful process.

During that demoralizing downward spiral, imperial armies, so lethal in an empire’s ascent, can err by plunging their countries into draining, even disastrous “micro-military” misadventures — psychologically compensatory efforts to salve the loss of imperial power by trying to occupy new territories or display awe-inspiring military might. Although such micro-militarism often chose targets that proved strategically unsustainable, the psychological pressures upon declining empires are so strong that they all too often gamble their prestige on just such misadventures. Not only did such disasters add financial pressures to a fading empire’s many troubles, but in a humiliating fashion, they also invariably exposed its eroding power while exacerbating the destabilizing impact of imperial decline in the capitals of empire (whether Athens, Lisbon, Madrid, London, or Washington, D.C.).

In our moment, when the bombs stop falling and the rubble is finally cleared from the streets of Tehran and Beirut, the impact on U.S. global power of such a de facto defeat will become all too clear — as alliances like NATO atrophy, American hegemony evaporates, legitimacy is lost, global disorder rises, and the world economy suffers.

Let me now turn from the disasters of the present imperial moment to the lessons of history to explore the sort of lasting damage that Donald Trump’s micro-military misadventure in the Middle East might be inflicting on this country’s declining imperium…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

America’s Defeat in the Strait of Hormuz

Another date likely to prove all too significant when it comes to the history of imperial decline is February 28, 2026. The place was Washington, D.C., home to what had been history’s most powerful imperial state that had dominated much of the globe for nearly 80 years through a mixture of military alliances, deft diplomacy, and economic leadership. By then, however, cracks had distinctly begun to appear in its edifice of power as U.S. global hegemony faced an increasingly strong economic challenge from China, its massive military suffered two searing defeats in Afghanistan and Iraq, and its economic globalization produced an angry populism at home.

After a populist campaign based on promises to restore both working-class prosperity and America’s global power, Donald Trump took office a second time in January 2025 promising a “golden age of America,” a “thrilling new era of national success” in which the country would “reclaim its rightful place as the greatest, most powerful, most respected nation on earth, inspiring the awe and admiration of the entire world.” Born to wealth and privilege himself, Trump returned to office convinced of his unique “genius” for leadership and believing that “I was saved by God to make America great again.”

Wielding raw economic and military might to compel obeisance from friend and foe alike, the president, inspired by a delusional sense of divine mission, began attempting to bend the world to his will. But during his first year in office, nothing seemed to work as planned. Indeed, most of his initiatives produced the sort of backlash that only served to show how far the United States had fallen from 1991, when the break-up of the Soviet Union made it the world’s sole superpower.

On April 2, 2025, on what he called “Liberation Day,” Trump announced a roster of punitive tariffs to protect domestic manufacturing largely from Chinese imports that faced an initial duty of 34% — later raised to a fully punitive 100%. But at their October 2025 meeting in South Korea, China’s leader Xi Jinping forced Trump to back down by cutting U.S. access to his country’s storehouse of strategic rare earth minerals.

In January, with his tariff initiative losing its luster, Trump plunged the NATO alliance into crisis by demanding that Denmark give him the island of Greenland, threatening to impose new tariffs on European allies unless they complied. Within a week, however, vociferous European resistance had led him to retract that threat at the Davos economic summit, claiming he was satisfied with NATO’s offer of a “framework of a future deal.”

On February 28th, 2026, with his tariff initiative failing and his Greenland gambit checkmated, Trump joined Israel in a seemingly bold strike on Iran that soon had the makings of the sort of fateful “micro-military” maneuver that appears to go with imperial powers in decline.

In the first few days of war, U.S. and Israeli bombing killed Iran’s leadership, destroyed its navy, and eliminated its air defenses, leaving the country seemingly prostrate before the might of America’s air-power juggernaut. After a week of devastating bombardment that seemed to stun the world with its lethality and precision, on March 6th Trump demanded that Iran offer an “unconditional surrender” and signal its capitulation by “the selection of a GREAT & ACCEPTABLE Leader.” In exchange, he promised that the U.S. would “work tirelessly to bring Iran back from the brink of destruction.”

But much as Nasser had done at Suez in 1956, Iran’s leadership reversed the war’s geostrategic balance by closing a critical maritime choke point in the Strait of Hormuz. By striking five freighters with drones in the first week of war, Iran’s leaders, taking a leaf from Nasser’s geopolitical playbook, effectively shut the Strait of Hormuz to tanker traffic, cutting off gas, fertilizer, and oil shipments that plunged the world economy into an unprecedented energy crisis. By the end of March, Iran’s chokehold over the strait was so tight that it began collecting “tolls” from freighters to permit passage.

Blindsided by the Strait’s unexpected yet utterly predictable closure, on April 5th, Easter Sunday, an unsettled Trump posted a social media message saying: “Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!!” He added: “Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell — JUST WATCH. Praise be to Allah.” Two days later, Trump threatened that, unless Iran opened the Strait of Hormuz, he would attack its civilian infrastructure so severely that “a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.”

After the collapse of subsequent negotiations between the two sides at Islamabad, Pakistan, on April 12th, Trump plunged ever deeper into the Iran quagmire, ordering the U.S. Navy to “begin the process of BLOCKADING any and all Ships trying to enter, or leave, the Strait of Hormuz,” and “interdict every vessel in International Waters that has paid a toll to Iran.” With characteristic bluster, he added: “We are fully ‘LOCKED AND LOADED,’ and our Military will finish up the little that is left of Iran!”

Even if Trump destroys Iran’s infrastructure or eventually negotiates a face-saving peace deal, by every metric that really matters, Washington has already lost its war with Iran. Like all weaker powers in asymmetric warfare, Tehran has been willing to absorb relentless punishment, while inflicting pain that the dominant power can ill sustain. The U.S. will soon run out of targets in Tehran, but Iran has a whole world of damage that its cheap drones can do to the elaborate, exposed petroleum infrastructure on the south shore of the Persian Gulf.

Like Britain at Suez in 1956, Washington will likely pay a heavy price for its “micro-militarism” in the Strait of Hormuz. Close allies, the bedrock of U.S. global power for 80 years, have refused any military support for Washington’s war of choice, prompting Trump to call them “cowards.” In response to his thundering threats of civilian and civilizational destruction (both war crimes), Trump has been condemned by world leaders. Oblivious to the dangers of war in a region that is the epicenter of global capitalism, Washington is now proving ever more dangerously disruptive of the global economy, making China look like a far more stable choice for world leadership. Moreover, while the U.S. military has proven its tactical agility in destroying targets, it clearly can no longer capture meaningful strategic objectives.

With its alliances in tatters, its world leadership forfeited, and its aura of military might evaporating, the only trajectory for U.S. global hegemony now seems to be downward (like so many great powers of the past). By the time Trump’s micro-military misadventure in the Strait of Hormuz is over, the decline of U.S. global power will have accelerated drastically and the world will be trying to move beyond the old Pax Americana toward a new, distinctly uncertain global order.

Alfred W. McCoy, a TomDispatch regular, is the Harrington professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is the author of In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power and To Govern the Globe: World Orders and Catastrophic Change (Dispatch Books). His new book, just published, is Cold War on Five Continents: The Geopolitics of Empire & Espionage.

https://scheerpost.com/2026/04/25/american-micro-militarism-or-how-defeat-in-the-iran-war-will-accelerate-american-global-decline/

April 30, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics international | Leave a comment

CHERNOBYL + 40: NUCLEAR POWER’S DEFERRED DEATH SENTENCE

April 24, 2026, https://jonathonporritt.com/chernobyl-40-nuclear-power-decline/

When the definitive history of the demise of nuclear power is written sometime in the 2020s, 26^th April 1986 will be seen as the first peal of its death knell.

At that time, the industry had seen off any reputational damage from the accident at Three Mile Island in 1979, and was producing about 16% of total global electricity, with steady prospects ahead. But the Chernobyl disaster transformed the ‘tone’ of energy discussion; the industry’s brash arrogance was gone; safety was the No.1 issue. By 2015, its contribution was down to 11%; today it’s just 9% – at least as much because of the 2011 Fukushima disaster as Chernobyl.

Nuclear power is the industry that has refused to die. We find ourselves, today, all over again, engulfed in a tsunami of massively overblown nuclear propaganda. It’s almost all bollocks, for so many reasons. But given this is a short anniversary blog (I was Director of Friends the Earth in 1986, so 26^th April is one of those few dates I remember unprompted!), let’s just touch on two of these reasons.

1. NUCLEAR’S REDUNDANCY

China has just announced that its solar exports in March (the first month’s figures since Trump decided to blow up both Iran and the global economy) surpassed its previous best month (August 2025) by a staggering 49%. 50 different countries set all-time records for solar imports from China, including India (up 141 %), Malaysia (391 %) and Nigeria (519 %).

This is primarily a response to the Trump-driven fossil fuel crisis. But even nuclear renaissance groupies should be able to work this out: you get new solar capacity ordered, installed and generating precious electrons in months (instead of an average of eight years for nuclear), at a cheaper price per MWh than any fossil option (let alone ludicrously expensive nuclear power!), giving your grid operators greater flexibility and contributing immediately to increased energy security.

There is nothing nuclear can do to counter that.

2. NUCLEAR’S VULNERABILITY

In February 2025, a Russian Geran-2 drone with a high-explosive warhead struck the roof of the protective shield preventing radiation leaks from the Chernobyl plant, ripping out a 15m² hole. A fortnight ago, a dramatic report from Greenpeace highlighted the risks arising from this insanely irresponsible Russian attack — emphasising that it’s still impossible to carry out the repairs that are so urgently needed because of the constant threat of further attacks.

You won’t have heard much about this. Every single country with nuclear facilities wants to keep a lid on any discussion; compliant nuclear-friendly media toe the line. The International Atomic Energy Agency holds its increasingly laboured breath, just hoping that Russia decides to keep the vast nuclear power plant at Zaporizhzhia off its target list – on the grounds that it still hopes to switch it back on one day as a 100% Russian-controlled asset.

Again, work it out: every single Defence Department in every country with nuclear power stations is urgently revising its risk register after the attack on Chernobyl – given everything we now know about drone warfare from Ukraine.

Forget the reactors themselves (theoretically engineered to withstand a Twin Towers-style attack); think used but still highly radioactive nuclear fuel rods stored in situ at hundreds of reactors. Barely protected, let alone hard engineered.

REDUNDANCY + VULNERABILITY = DECLINE AND DEMISE.

How utterly appropriate, therefore, that the grandiosely-styled Policy Exchange Nuclear Enterprise Commission should choose this moment to release a new report, ‘The Nuclear State’, to turn all today’s bombastic rhetoric about a ‘nuclear renaissance’ into solid ‘anti-drift mechanisms and hard-wired institutional reforms’. Bless!

Sorry to have to repeat the obvious for anybody extolling the wonders of a nuclear renaissance on the 40^th Anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster, but the truth about zombies is that they are actually dead. They may still be walking around, often quite scarily, but they are – definitively – dead.

April 28, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics international | Leave a comment