nuclear-news

Catholic bishops remind political leaders that nuclear weapons are immoral.

our new Pope Leo XIV said, “Nuclear arms offend our shared humanity and also betray the dignity of creation, whose harmony we are called to safeguard.”

Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago. “We strongly urge both the world and the Japanese government to take this ‘sign of the times’ deeply to heart, and to take immediate steps toward the signing and ratification of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapon

Bulletin, By John Wester | December 14, 2025

In August, a group of American Catholic Church leaders—including Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago, Cardinal Robert McElroy of Washington, DC, Archbishop Paul Etienne of Seattle, and me, the Archbishop of Santa Fe—traveled to Japan to mark the 80th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. There, we joined our Japanese counterparts—Bishop Mitsuru Shirahama of Hiroshima, Archbishop Emeritus Mitsuaki Takami of Nagasaki, and Archbishop Michiaki Nakamura of Nagasaki—in commemorating the destruction of their cities. Takami is a hibakusha (atomic bomb survivor); he was in his mother’s womb on August 9, 1945, when his city of Nagasaki was bombed. His maternal aunt and grandmother were both killed in the blast.

Eighty years have passed. But the existential threat posed by nuclear weapons is still with us—and it is growing worse every day. In 2019, Pope Francis elevated the Catholic Church beyond conditional acceptance of so-called deterrence. He declared that the mere possession of nuclear weapons is immoral. Nevertheless, the nuclear powers are now spending enormous sums of money on “modernization” that will keep nuclear weapons virtually forever. Meanwhile, in the United States, taxes are being cut to benefit the rich, and economic inequality and homelessness are exploding. This situation is deeply immoral and counter to the Catholic Church’s teachings on social justice.

Today, the United States has entered a new arms race involving multiple nuclear powers, new cyber weapons, and artificial intelligence. Former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara said the world survived the Cuban Missile Crisis only thanks to luck. This is not a sustainable survival strategy: Luck is not eternal. Even the remote possibility of “nuclear winter” makes nuclear disarmament a profound pro-life issue on an immense scale.

The word “deterrence” has been used by successive US presidents to justify nuclear weapons. But that one word is only a half-truth. The United States has always rejected minimal deterrence and, instead, preferred to include nuclear warfighting capabilities—capabilities that can end civilization overnight. Russia has followed the same course. That is why both sides still have thousands of nuclear weapons instead of only a few hundred, with China now racing to expand its own arsenal. That is why the United States plans to spend nearly $1 trillion “to operate, sustain, and modernize current nuclear forces and purchase new [nuclear weapons] forces” in the next 10 years alone.

This is contrary to the 1970 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, or NPT, in which the non-nuclear weapon states pledged never to acquire nuclear weapons. In return, the nuclear powers promised to enter into negotiations leading to disarmament—a promise that has never been honored. From that betrayal sprang the 2021 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), which the Vatican was the first nation-state to sign and ratify. The nuclear-weapon states oppose the TPNW, arguing that it does not effectively advance disarmament and could instead fuel further proliferation. But the treaty does nothing more than ban nuclear weapons, just like previous treaties that enjoyed universal support banned biological and chemical weapons, which are also weapons of mass destruction.

A prime example of this nuclear immorality is right in my own backyard of New Mexico.

A whopping $1 billion is being added to the Los Alamos National Laboratory’s annual $4 billion nuclear weapons budget, largely for the expanded production of plutonium “pit” bomb cores. However, no future pit production is to maintain the existing stockpile. Instead, it is all for new-design nuclear weapons that will fuel the new arms race. The development of new weapon systems could prompt the United States to return to explosive nuclear testing, which would have severe proliferation consequences. Meanwhile, the lab’s science, nonproliferation, and cleanup programs are being cut, and research on renewable energies is being zeroed out.

Jobs are often cited by the New Mexico congressional delegation as justification for expanding nuclear weapons programs in New Mexico. But jobs at Los Alamos and Sandia National Laboratories would be far better directed toward peaceful purposes. Nuclear weapon “modernization” diverts money from helping the poor and feeding the hungry—two far more important moral objectives than feeding warheads and war plans. In FY 2026, the Energy Department plans to spend $10.8 billion in New Mexico alone—the same amount as the state government’s entire operating budget. Of that federal money, 84 percent is for nuclear weapons research and production programs. Still, New Mexico remains the third poorest state in the nation and is ranked dead last in the quality of public education and the lives of our children.

People of all faiths—as well as people of no faith at all—need to know that the American Catholic Church is deeply engaged in nuclear disarmament issues. In a message addressed to Bishop Shirahama of Hiroshima on the 80th anniversary of the atomic bombing, our new Pope Leo XIV said, “Nuclear arms offend our shared humanity and also betray the dignity of creation, whose harmony we are called to safeguard.” The Vatican’s Holy See delegation to the United Nations recently called “on all nuclear-armed States to fulfill their obligations under Article VI of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons by engaging in good faith negotiations [and] to ratify the NPT, the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, as well as the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.” In that same spirit, two years ago, the dioceses of Santa Fe, Seattle, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki joined together to form the Partnership for a World without Nuclear Weapons to work on nuclear disarmament. We invite other Catholic entities to join us.

On August 5, the two American Cardinals present in Japan delivered stirring words from the Hiroshima World Peace Memorial Cathedral, whose bricks contain ashes from the atomic bomb. “We pray that this award [the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize to the hibakusha organization Nihon Hidankyo] may become a light of hope toward a world without nuclear weapons,” said Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago. “We strongly urge both the world and the Japanese government to take this ‘sign of the times’ deeply to heart, and to take immediate steps toward the signing and ratification of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.”

“If our gathering here today is to mean anything, it must mean that in fidelity to all those whose lives were destroyed or savagely damaged on August 6, 80 years ago, we refuse to live in such a world of nuclear proliferation and risk-taking,” said Cardinal Robert McElroy of Washington. “We will resist, we will organize, we will pray, we will not cease, until the world’s nuclear arsenals have been destroyed.”

December 17, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Religion and ethics | Leave a comment

The Nuclear Cult

ever since the first test of an atomic device, “the diabolically-named ‘Trinity’ atomic blast, when Manhattan Project scientists placed bets on whether or not it would ignite the Earth’s atmosphere, it’s been clear something pathological afflicts many in the ‘nuclear priesthood.’

“Step-by-step, they turned to an atomic religion, closed societies, a ‘state inside a state.’”

Karl Grossman, June 18, 2012, https://www.counterpunch.org/2012/06/18/the-nuclear-cult/

Nuclear scientists and engineers embrace nuclear power like a religion. The term “nuclear priesthood” was coined by Dr. Alvin Weinberg, long director of Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and the laboratory’s website proudly notes this.  It’s not unusual for scientists at Oak Ridge and other U.S. national nuclear laboratories to refer to themselves as “nukies.” The Oak Ridge website describes Weinberg as a “prophet” of “nuclear energy.”

This religious, cultish element is integral to a report done for the U.S. Department of Energy in 1984 by Battelle Memorial Institute about how the location of nuclear waste sites can be communicated over the ages. An “atomic priesthood,” it recommends, could impart the locations in a “legend-and-ritual…retold year-by-year.” Titled “Communications Measures to Bridge Ten Millennia,” the taxpayer-funded report says: “Membership in this ‘priesthood’ would be self-selective over time.”

Currently, Allison Macfarlane, nominated to be the new head of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, says she is an “agnostic” on nuclear power—as if support or opposition to atomic energy falls on a religious spectrum.  Meanwhile, Gregory Jaczko, the outgoing NRC chairman, with a Ph.D. in physics, was politically crucified because he repeatedly raised safety concerns, thus not revering nuclear power enough.

Years ago, while I was working on a book about toxic chemicals, the publisher asked that I find someone who worked for a chemical company and get his or her rationale. I found someone who had been at American Cyanamid, the pesticide manufacturer, who said he worked there to better support his growing family financially.

But when it comes to nuclear power, it’s more than that—it’s a religious adherence.

Why?  Does it have to do with nuclear scientists and engineers being in such close proximity to  power, literally?  Is it about the process through which they are trained—in the U.S., many in the nuclear navy and/or in the insular culture of the
government’s national nuclear laboratories? These laboratories, originally under the Atomic Energy Commission and now the Department of Energy and managed by corporations, universities and scientific entities including Battelle Memorial Institute, grew out of the World War II Manhattan Project crash program to build atomic bombs. After the war, the laboratories expanded to pursue the development of all things nuclear. And is it about nuclear physics programs at universities serving as echo chambers?

Whatever the causes, the outcome is nuclear worship.

And this is despite the Chernobyl or Fukushima Daiichi catastrophes. It’s despite the radioactive messes exposed at the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons production facility and at Los Alamos and other national nuclear laboratories most of which have been declared high-pollution Superfund sites where cancer on-site and in adjoining areas is widespread. It’s despite the  continuing threat of nuclear war and the horrific loss of life it would bring and nuclear proliferation spreading the potential for atomic weapons globally. Still, they press on with religious fervor.

“Most of them are not educated about radiation biology or genetics, so they are fundamentally ignorant,” says Dr. Helen Caldicott, a founder of Physicians for Social Responsibility whose books include Nuclear Madness. “They are ‘brought up’ in an environment where they are conditioned to support the concept of all things nuclear.” Further, “nuclear power evokes enormous forces of the universe, and as Henry Kissinger said, ‘Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac.” And “they practice denial because I think many of them in their heart really know that what they are doing is evil but they will defend it assiduously, unless they themselves or their child is diagnosed with cancer. Then many of them recant.”Linking the “nuclear priesthood” to the Manhattan Project is Michael Mariotte, executive director of Nuclear Information and Resource Service. “The scientists involved weren’t really sure what they were unleashing, and had to have a certain amount of faith that it would work and it would not destroy the world in the process. After they saw the destructive power of the bomb, they were both proud and horrified at what they had done, and believed they had to use this technology for ‘good.’ Thus nuclear power was born,” says Mariotte. “The problem is when you have this messianic vision that you are creating good out of evil, it is very difficult to turn around and realize that the ‘good’ you have created is, in fact, also evil.”

Kevin Kamps, radioactive waste watchdog at Beyond Nuclear, says ever since the first test of an atomic device, “the diabolically-named ‘Trinity’ atomic blast, when Manhattan Project scientists placed bets on whether or not it would ignite the Earth’s atmosphere, it’s been clear something pathological afflicts many in the ‘nuclear priesthood.’ Perhaps it’s a form of ‘Faustian fission’—splitting the atom gave the U.S. superpower status with the Bomb and then over a 100 commercial atomic reactors, so the ‘downsides’ have been entirely downplayed to the point of downright denial. Perhaps the power, prestige and greed swirling around the ‘nuclear enterprise’ explains why so many in industry, government, the military, and even apologists in academia and mainstream media, engage in Orwellian ‘Nukespeak’ and monumental cover ups….The ‘cult of the atom’ has caused untold numbers of deaths and disease downstream, downwind, up the food chain, and down the generations from ‘our friend the atom’ gone bad.”

A parallel situation exists in Russia, the other nuclear superpower. Dr. Alexey Yablokov, a biologist, member of the Russian Academy of Sciences and environmental advisor to Presidents Yeltsin and Gorbachev, says the nuclear scientists there refer to themselves “atomschiky” or “nuclearists” and “think and act as a separate, isolated caste.” From the beginning of nuclear technology in the Soviet Union, they “were enthusiastic about the great, the fantastic discoveries of splitting the atom and developing enormous power. This ‘secret knowledge’ was magnified by state secrecy and a deep belief—in the Soviet Union as in the United States—of atomic energy ‘saving the globe’…There is a remarkable similarity in the argumentation of these groups here and in the United States. Step-by-step, they turned to an atomic religion, closed societies, a ‘state inside a state.’”

Dr. Heidi Huttner, who teaches sustainability at Stony Brook University, explains:

“As in so many parts of our industrialized and mechanized culture, there is no thought of consequences, or connections to the larger web of science, health, and human and nonhuman life…The nuclear culture becomes absolutely caught up in its own language and story. This self-enclosure feeds, validates and perpetuates itself. Without an outside critique or ‘objective’ third eye, any such culture loses the ability to self-regulate and self-monitor.  This is where things become dangerous.”

Russell Ace Hoffman, author of The Code Killers, Why DNA and Ionizing Radiation Are a Dangerous Mix, says: “It is a cult. It fits all the classic definitions of a cult. It’s an elitist, war-mongering, closed society of inbred, inwardly-thinking, aggressively xenophobic, arrogant pseudo-nerds stuck in ideas that are at least half a century out of date…Another cult-like behavior is they don’t care about the suffering of their victims.  Not one bit.”

Dr. Barbara Rose Johnston, an anthropologist and senior research fellow at the Center for Political Ecology in Santa Cruz, recounts spending three days at a U.S. Department of Energy-sponsored conference for people involved in the atmospheric monitoring program at the nuclear weapons test site in Nevada. “Many of the scientists and technicians in attendance were from southern Utah and St. Georges County area where the heaviest atomic fallout from the Nevada test site occurred…I did not find a single man who saw a connection between fallout and cancer rates, despite the fact that most had suffered. My initial reaction was that these folks truly ‘drank the Kool-Aid’—true believers through and through.”

“The nuclear industry requires buying into an orthodoxy,” explains nuclear engineer Arnie Gunderson. “I know, as I was in it as a senior VP.” He tells of how, after he voiced concerns and criticism, an industry lawyer “told me, ‘Arnie, in this industry, you are either for us or against us, and you just crossed the line.’ The same thing happened to [outgoing NRC Chairman] Jaczko  I know of one nuclear engineer with 40 years of experience who committed suicide five days after Fukushima because he simply could not accept that his life’s work was based on erroneous assumptions.  He had worked on the Mark 1 design [the GE design of the Fukushima Daicchi plants].”

Alice Slater, New York representative of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, says the “nuclear scientists are out of touch with reality. They talk about ‘risk assessment’—as though the dreadful, disastrous events at Chernobyl and Fukushima are capable of being weighed on a scale of ‘risks and benefits.’ They’re constantly refining their nuclear weapons—Congress has budgeted $84 billion for over the next 10 years to maintain the …’reliability of the nuclear arsenal,’ and $100 billion for new ‘delivery systems’—missiles, submarines and airplanes. After the horrendous effects on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, everyone knows these catastrophic weapons are unusable and yet we’re pouring all this money into perpetuating the national nuclear weapons laboratories. They’re not including the Earth in their calculations and the enormous damage they are doing. They’re involved in the worst possible inventions with lethal consequences that last for eternity. Still, they continue on. They’re holding our planet hostage while they tinker in their labs without regard to the risks they are creating for the very future of life on Earth.”

Dr. Chris Busby of the Health and Life Sciences faculty at the University of Ulster in Northern Ireland and author of Wings of Death, Nuclear Pollution and Human Health, says:

“What we are seeing with nuclear scientists is a desperate need to control their environment and their lives and the forces that may affect their lives by creating a virtual universe which they can deal with by mathematics and by drawing straight lines on paper.”

It’s the “cult of the nuclearists,” says Busby. And this construct of the nuclear scientists seeking to “control nature with mathematical equations that make them feel safe” sets up a “collision with reality”—and a “way we are going to destroy ourselves.”  The belief in nuclear power is “far beyond anything scientific or rational,” says Busby, who has a Ph.D. in chemical physics.

Joseph Mangano, executive director of the Radiation and Public Health Project, says the “religious passion for nuclear technology” started with the “guilt” of those in the Manhattan Project. “Those in the ‘nuclear priesthood’ knew that these horrible bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki destroyed hundreds of thousands of lives and they wanted to make up for that…They developed atomic energy for warfare and then thought it had other uses—and they would do anything to make that work.” But the civilian nuclear technology they devised was also deadly, and this realization was too “devastating to be accepted” by the “nuclear originators” or those who followed who “spend their days with their buddies, their colleagues, all thinking the same way.”

Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer, scientific director of the Manhattan Project, in his 1955 book The Open Mind, wrote: “The physicists felt a peculiarly intimate responsibility for suggesting, for supporting, and in the end, in large measure, for achieving the realization of atomic weapons….In some sort of crude sense…the physicists have known sin.”

Whether out of indoctrination, misguided belief, an obsession to “control nature,” the lure of the cult, closeness to power, job security, or their seeking to perpetuate a vested interest, the “nuclearists” have a religious allegiance to their technology. On a moral level, they have indeed sinned—and continue to do so. On a political level, they have corrupted and distorted energy policy in the U.S. and elsewhere in the world. On an economic level, they are wasting a gargantuan portion of our tax dollars.

Choices of energy technology should be based on the technology being safe, clean, economic and in harmony with life. Instead, we are up against nuclear scientists and engineers pushing their deadly technology in the manner of religious zealots.

Karl Grossman, professor of journalism at the State University of New York/College of New York, is the author of the book, The Wrong Stuff: The Space’s Program’s Nuclear Threat to Our Planet. Grossman is an associate of the media watch group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR). He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion.

November 28, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Religion and ethics | Leave a comment

They Tell Us To Fear Muslims While The US Empire Terrorizes The World

Caitlin Johnstone, Oct 25, 2025, https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/they-tell-us-to-fear-muslims-while?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=177062499&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

The other day I published an essay titled “Zionists Push Islamophobia Because It’s Easier Than Getting People To Like Israel,” based on the conspicuous overlap between virulent Israel supporters and people who promote hatred of Muslims.

What I didn’t know at the time until readers alerted me was that Drop Site News had put out an article last month about a leaked polling report commissioned by the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs which actually found that promoting Islamophobia is the most effective way of combatting the way worldwide public opinion has been turning against Israel.

“Israel’s best tactic to combat this, according to the study, is to foment fear of ‘Radical Islam’ and ‘Jihadism,’ which remain high,” Drop Site’s Ryan Grim writes. “By highlighting Israeli support for women’s rights and gay rights while elevating concerns that Hamas wants to ‘destroy all Jews and spread Jihadism,’ Israeli support rebounded by an average of over 20 points in each country.”

So this is an actual, planned tactic. The shrieking vitriol we’ve been seeing about Islam and Muslims lately is being deliberately and systematically fomented as a calculated strategy.

One of the moronic things about this latest wave of Islamophobic hysteria is that the US and Israel and their allies are vastly more murderous and tyrannical than the entire Muslim world combined.

The Trump administration is currently sending the world’s largest aircraft carrier and a bunch of warships to the waters off Latin America, where they’ve been waging a bogus new war on terror with increasingly frequent attacks on boats carrying alleged “narco-terrorists”. They’re not even disguising the fact that this is actually about preparing for regime change interventionism in Venezuela, a government that Washington has long sought to topple because of its massive oil reserves and noncompliance with the capitalist world order.

The US power alliance is constantly doing things like this. Waging wars, bombing countries, imposing starvation sanctions, staging coups, backing proxy conflicts, meddling in foreign elections — all with the goal of total planetary domination. It’s accepted as the baseline norm and the western press often barely even reports on its abuses (did you know Trump has bombed Somalia more than 80 times this year?), but that doesn’t make it any less murderous and tyrannical.

And we’re being told day in and day out that we all need to be afraid of Muslims, who even with a worldwide population of two billion still manage to be far, far less violent and destructive than the US-centralized power alliance.

Hell, the most abusive Muslim states are US partners in crime like Saudi Arabia and the UAE, whose genocidal butchery in Yemen was backed by the US and its allies from 2015–2022. The UAE is funding genocidal atrocities in Sudan right this very moment. The US-centralized empire is the most destructive power structure on earth, and the most destructive Muslim states are backed by that same western power structure.

The empire we live under is everything we’re trained to fear. Our own rulers are the murderers. Our own rulers are the terrorists. Our own rulers are the tyrants. Our own rulers are the problem.

Our rulers want us shaking our fists at Muslims, immigrants, disobedient governments, and members of the other mainstream political party so that we don’t start shaking our fists at them.

October 26, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Religion and ethics | Leave a comment

Criminalising an idea: the dangerous fiction of “ANTIFA, the organisation”

19 October 2025 Michael Taylor, https://theaimn.net/criminalising-an-idea-the-dangerous-fiction-of-antifa-the-organisation/

Let’s talk about a magic trick. Not the kind with rabbits and hats, but the political kind, where a complex idea is made to vanish, only to be replaced by a simple, monstrous caricature. The latest magicians? Pam Bondi, U.S. Attorney General, and the broader Trump administration, who are attempting to pull off the dangerous illusion of criminalising ANTIFA.

The premise of their act is that ANTIFA is a unified, hierarchical terrorist organisation – a domestic version of ISIS – that can be neatly listed, proscribed, and its members prosecuted. This is a profound and likely deliberate misunderstanding. ANTIFA, short for “anti-fascist,” is not an organisation; it is a political belief and a movement, no more a single entity than “conservatism” or “environmentalism.”

To be anti-fascist is to hold a conviction. It is to believe, based on the brutal lessons of the 20th century, that fascism – with its nationalism, authoritarianism, and intolerance – is a societal poison. This is not a radical notion. It is a principle that sent Americans and Allies to fight in World War II. Believing fascism is evil is simply logical: it is a conclusion based on observable evidence and a moral stance.

So, how do you criminalise a belief? You don’t. Instead, you criminalise the people who hold it.

This is the heart of the trick. The administration and its allies focus exclusively on the most extreme, visible, and often condemnable acts associated with the label of antifa: black-clad individuals engaging in property destruction or street brawls with far-right groups. They amplify these images relentlessly, creating a brand. They take the broad, decentralised ethos of anti-fascism and shrink-wrap it into the fictional, singular “ANTIFA” – a designated villain for their political narrative.

This branding exercise serves several purposes:

1. 
   It Creates a Boogeyman: A tangible enemy is a powerful political tool. It unifies a base, distracts from other issues, and allows a leader to position themselves as the nation’s sole protector. The vaguer the enemy, the more potent the fear.
2. It Equates Dissent with Terrorism: By framing anti-fascism as an extremist threat, the administration attempts to delegitimise all opposition. If you protest against policies you see as authoritarian or xenophobic, you risk being lumped in with a “terrorist organisation.” This has a chilling effect on the right to assembly and free speech.
3. It Absolves the Actual Far-Right: This false equivalence is perhaps the most damaging part of the trick. While loudly condemning the violent fringe of the anti-fascist movement, the administration consistently downplays the documented, and often deadlier, threat of white supremacist and neo-fascist violence. It creates a moral parallax where both sides are presented as equally bad, obscuring the fact that one side’s ideology is inherently rooted in hatred and elimination.

The legal and philosophical implications of this are staggering. In a free society, actions are criminalised, not beliefs. Assault, vandalism, and inciting violence are already illegal. The laws to address them exist. The push to designate “ANTIFA” is not about upholding law and order; it is about creating a legal pretext to target political opponents.

When Pam Bondi and the Trump administration talk about ANTIFA, they are not describing a reality. They are constructing a narrative. They are taking a legitimate political stance – opposition to fascism – and attempting to paint it as inherently violent and un-American.

We must not be fooled by the trick. The goal is not to make people safer. The goal is to silence dissent and redefine the boundaries of acceptable thought. To be anti-fascist is not to be a terrorist; it is to be on the right side of history. The real danger isn’t a black-clad protester breaking a window; it’s a government that seeks to break the foundational principle that in America, people are free to believe, and to protest, what they see fit.

October 20, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Religion and ethics | Leave a comment

Trump’s visit proved the utter corruption of our political and media class.

19 September 2025, https://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2025-09-19/trump-visit-corruption-politics/

Aside from the spectacle of our leaders openly prostrating before Trump, the truth of Britain’s “special relationship” with the US was mostly found in unscripted moments around his visit.

I don’t know about you, but I find myself increasingly at a loss to put into words the extraordinary times we are living through.

Even the best satirists cannot compete with the astonishing, comic scenes offered to us by the British and US ruling classes during Donald Trump’s visit to Windsor Castle and Chequers.

King Charles giving Trump the run-around of his taxpayer-funded mansion and grounds simply served to underscore Britain’s vassal status.

But the king’s flaunting of his, and our, servitude to the US imperial order somehow failed – as it might have done in times of old – to contribute any greater stature to the perma-tanned gangster-in-chief. He just looked even more the spoilt, giant toddler in need of constant distraction and pacification.

Stuff him in the golden carriage-pram and let him roll around the grounds, out of sight, for an hour or so. Let him play with some soldiers and watch fast planes flying overhead. Let him dress up and have a party in the big dining hall.

All of this in the hope that he wouldn’t throw a temper tantrum and stick nasty tariffs on our goods.

Maybe his scriptwriter understood that postmodern irony was the only proper response. He slipped into Trump’s after-dinner speech an approving reference to George Orwell, the author of the dystopian novel 1984 about a society where everyone is enslaved to Big Brother.

What might Orwell have made of that?

Aside from the spectacle of our ruling class openly prostrating before Trump, the truth of Britain’s “special relationship” with the US was mostly found in the unscripted moments around his visit.

It was Trump explaining to a rogue Australian reporter, who tried to question the US President about his corrupt personal affairs, the implicitly transactional relationship between world leaders and the media: journalists get access to the centres of power but only if they don’t probe too deeply.

Trump made clear: “You are hurting Australia very much right now. They want to get along with me. Your leader is coming to see me soon. I’m going to tell him about you.”

Which career-minded journalist wants to lose their job – or to be held personally responsible for the imposition of a new round of US tariffs?

Which perhaps explains why, when Trump and Starmer faced the press after their meeting today, the journalists selected to address the pair obediently delivered only softball questions.

Those not in fear of their professional standing – that is, ordinary people – were free to take to the streets to protest the visit. So long as there was no danger Trump might be exposed to their clamour.

Four members of the group Led By Donkeys who dared to organise a protest that might actually be heard were arrested for “malicious communication”. They projected onto one of Windsor Castle’s towers a nine-minute documentary charting the decades-long, intimate relationship between Trump and notorious child-sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

According to the 1988 law, a communication is malicious if it is “threatening, indecent, grossly offensive, or a known falsehood”. As the film was entirely truthful and nothing in it indecent or threatening (except to the US President’s reputation), the British police are presumably interpreting “grossly offensive” to mean anything that might offend Trump – which covers a huge number of truthful things.

It is not just journalists who have an entirely transactional, principle-free relationship with power. The visit was a potent reminder that politicians do too.

Yvette Cooper, the new foreign secretary, warmly greeted Trump as he stepped off his Air Force One plane in London. That is the same Cooper who a few years ago, when safely in opposition of course, made an impassioned speech denouncing Trump in no uncertain terms as a sexual predator we should have nothing to do with.

If that turnaround seemed baffling, Tory politician Penny Mordaunt was on hand to remind us what political principle looks like.

Questioned by the new Green Party leader Zack Polanksi, she called out as “student politics” his – and presumably most reasonable people’s – opposition to Trump banning books, militarising the police and reversing women’s long-fought-for reproductive rights.

Mordaunt, like King Charles, Keir Starmer and Yvette Cooper, is an adult in the room. They understand that principles are a luxury we cannot afford.

Let genocide in Gaza roll on. Describe the starvation of children as “self-defence”. Define anyone trying to stop it a “terrorist”.

Because the worst crime in the world is to behave like principles matter, and to imagine that saving innocent lives is more than just silly “student politics”.

September 22, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Religion and ethics | Leave a comment

Holy See tells nations at UN to end threat of nuclear weapons, even as deterrence.

Vatican Vatican News by Gina Christian, United Nations — September 8, 2025, https://www.ncronline.org/vatican/vatican-news/holy-see-tells-nations-un-end-threat-nuclear-weapons-even-deterrence

Amid a global arms race, ending the threat of nuclear war — and even the testing of nuclear weapons — is imperative, said the Holy See’s diplomat to the United Nations.

Archbishop Gabriele Caccia, the Holy See’s U.N. permanent observer, shared his thoughts in a statement he delivered Sept. 4 at U.N. headquarters in New York, during the General Assembly High-level Plenary Meeting to Commemorate and Promote the International Day Against Nuclear Tests, observed that same day.

“The pursuit of a world free of nuclear weapons is not only a matter of strategic and vital necessity, but also a profound moral responsibility,” Caccia in his remarks.

He pointed to the introduction of nuclear weapons — first detonated by the U.S. in 1945 over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing an estimated 110,000 to 210,000 people, during World War II — as unveiling to the world “an unprecedented destructive force.

“This event changed the course of history and cast a long shadow over humanity, unleashing grave consequences for both human life and creation,” Caccia said in his statement.

“The devastating aftermath of this dramatic event led to the problematic assumption that peace and security could be maintained through the logic of nuclear deterrence — a notion that continues to challenge moral reasoning and the international conscience,” he said.

That challenge has intensified in recent years, with more than 120 conflicts now taking place throughout the world, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Military spending has soared worldwide, with the global total reaching a record high of close to $2.5 trillion in 2024, up more than 7% from 2023 and averaging just under 2% of nations’ gross domestic product. The European Union, United Kingdom and Canada have accelerated defense investments, as the U.S. under the Trump administration has unsettled longstanding defense alliances.

The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, adopted by the U.N. in 2017, serves as a legally binding instrument towards the total elimination of nuclear weapons. But while there are 94 state signatories and 73 states party to the treaty, neither the U.S. nor Russia, which together account for approximately 88% of the world’s nuclear weapons, have signed on.

That trend is “particularly concerning,” said Caccia.

“Rather than advancing towards disarmament and a culture of peace, we are witnessing a resurgence of aggressive nuclear rhetoric, the development of increasingly destructive weapons and a significant rise in military expenditure,” he said, “often at the expense of investment in integral human development and the promotion of the common good.”

The very prospect of nuclear testing is problematic, he said, noting that since the first nuclear weapons test in 1945, more than 2,000 tests have been conducted “in the atmosphere, underground, beneath the oceans and on land.”

“These actions have affected everyone, particularly indigenous peoples, women, children, and the unborn,” he said. “The health and dignity of many continue to be affected in silence, and all too often without redress.”

The archbishop stressed the Holy See’s call to reflect on “the urgent shared responsibility to ensure that the terrible experiences of the past are not repeated.”

He affirmed the Holy See’s support for the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, which bans all nuclear test explosions, whether for military or civilian purposes, as well as the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.

“It is imperative that we move beyond a spirit of fear and resignation,” said Caccia.

The archbishop quoted the exhortation of Pope Leo XIV in his June 18 general audience, saying, “We must never become accustomed to war. Indeed, the temptation to place our trust in powerful and sophisticated weapons must be firmly rejected.”

September 10, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Religion and ethics | Leave a comment