UN genocide report puts Starmer in the dock.
Declassified UK , 19 Sept 25.
This week, the UN commission of inquiry concluded on reasonable grounds that “the Israeli authorities and Israeli security forces have committed and are continuing to commit [acts] of genocide against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip”. The acts include killing members of the group, causing serious bodily or mental harm, deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction, and imposing measures intended to prevent births.UN member states are consequently urged to employ all means reasonably available to them to prevent genocide in Gaza, including the cessation of arms transfers and the facilitation of legal investigations into Israel’s actions. The commission of inquiry was set up four years ago by the UN human rights council, and is staffed by three independent experts. While it does not speak officially for the UN, it strongly reinforces the growing consensus around the genocidal nature of Israel’s war. So what are the implications for Britain? Perhaps most significantly, the commission flatly rejects the UK government’s argument that the duty to prevent genocide is only triggered when an international court has established that a genocide has taken place. “Since at least January 2024, when the International Court of Justice ordered its first provisional measures, all states… have been on notice of a serious risk that genocide was being or would be committed”, the report notes. |
The UK government, in other words, has misconstrued its obligations under the Geneva Convention to prevent and punish genocide. Indeed, how is it possible to prevent genocide if you wait until it has taken place? The report also notes how “Israeli security forces shot at and killed civilians, including children who were holding makeshift white flags”. Days before, a Dutch newspaper found that at least 114 Palestinian children had been hit with single gunshot wounds to the head or chest. The UK government is clearly aware this is occurring, but it has covered up its own evidence on Israel’s killing of minors. |
In June, the government’s lawyers refused to submit a research report to court on “Long-Range Shootings or Shootings of Minors”. Subsequent requests from MPs and the media for the report have been repeatedly refused.
And then there’s the Israeli president, Isaac Herzog, who was welcomed to London last week by prime minister Keir Starmer.
The report found that Herzog, alongside Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defence minister Yoav Gallant, “incited the commission of genocide and that Israeli authorities… failed to take action against them to punish this incitement”.
These are serious findings, and they require a serious response from the UK government. Yet ministers, unsurprisingly, have largely shied away from talking about the report – perhaps unwilling to incriminate themselves further.
US Bombs Another Boat Near Venezuela.
President Trump claimed without evidence that the boat was running drugs and that the strike killed three ‘terrorists’
by Dave DeCamp | September 15, 2025 , https://news.antiwar.com/2025/09/15/us-bombs-another-boat-near-venezuela/
The US military on Monday bombed a boat near Venezuela and killed three people, according to a statement released by President Trump on Truth Social.
President Trump claimed without providing evidence that the boat was carrying drugs and that the three people who were killed were “narcoterrorists.” He made similar claims about the first US military strike on a boat near Venezuela that occurred on September 2, which he said killed 11 “narcoterrorists.”
The president also posted a video that purported to show the Monday strike. It showed what appeared to be a boat that was drifting at sea, followed by an explosion.
“This morning, on my Orders, US Military Forces conducted a SECOND Kinetic Strike against positively identified, extraordinarily violent drug trafficking cartels and narcoterrorists in the SOUTHCOM area of responsibility,” Trump said. “The Strike occurred while these confirmed narcoterrorists from Venezuela were in International Waters transporting illegal narcotics (A DEADLY WEAPON POISONING AMERICANS!) headed to the US.”
The president also signaled that more US strikes on boats in the region were coming. “BE WARNED — IF YOU ARE TRANSPORTING DRUGS THAT CAN KILL AMERICANS, WE ARE HUNTING YOU!” he wrote.
The second US bombing in the region came after the Venezuelan government said that personnel from a US warship boarded a Venezuelan tuna boat that was in Venezuelan waters. Venezuelan Foreign Minister Yván Gil said 18 armed US troops were on the vessel for 8 hours, a claim that hasn’t been confirmed by the US military.
“Those who give the order to carry out such provocations are seeking an incident that would justify a military escalation in the Caribbean,” Gil said.
While Trump and other US officials claim the military action and pressure on Venezuela’s government is about drug trafficking and a response to overdose deaths in the US, fentanyl doesn’t come from or through Venezuela, and the majority of the cocaine that is transported to the US comes through the Pacific, not the Caribbean. Gil said that the real purpose of the US operations was for the US to “persist in their failed policy” of regime change in Venezuela.
The Venezuela policy is being largely driven by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who has long pushed for regime change in Venezuela. Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro on Monday called out Rubio in response to the US boarding the tuna boat, calling him a “lord of death and war.”
The dangerous new Washington consensus for more nuclear weapons
What are all these nuclear weapons for? What would happen if we used them? Or a fraction of them? How many would die? Would our nation survive? What would be the impact on global climate?
These are topics that are assiduously avoided by nuclear weapons proponents,
“We’re going to go on offense, not just on defense. Maximum lethality, not tepid legality. Violent effect, not politically correct.”
By Joe Cirincione | September 9, 2025
Two former Biden administration defense officials warn of a “Category 5 hurricane of nuclear threats” rapidly approaching. Their solution? Build more nuclear weapons.
The officials, Vipin Narang and Pranay Vaddi, develop their strategy in a July 17 article in Foreign Affairs. From their perches at the Department of Defense and the National Security Council, they helped guide President Joe Biden’s nuclear policies that kept—and even increased—the weapons programs and budgets inherited from the first Trump administration. Now, they say, we need more.
Much more.
Attempting to chart a course for “how to survive the new nuclear age,” they instead repeat the oldest strategic mistake of the nuclear age: seeking security through numbers.
Eighty years ago, before the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, a team of Manhattan Project scientists led by James Franck and Eugene Rabinowitz (who would later found The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists) warned that the United States could not rely on its current advantage in atomic weaponry. Nuclear research would not remain an American monopoly for long. Staying ahead in production, they said, also gave a false sense of security: “The accumulation of a larger number of bigger and better atomic bombs… will not make us safe from sudden attack.”
They were ignored. During its first nuclear build-up, the United States sprinted from two atomic weapons in 1945 to 20,000 atomic and thermonuclear weapons by 1960, over twenty times the number of weapons held by the Soviet Union. It didn’t matter. We were ahead but afraid, with false fears of “missile gaps” dominating security debates.
Twenty years later, with the US arsenal at 24,000 warheads and the Soviets with 30,000, Ronald Reagan was swept into office with the backing of the Committee on the Present Danger and their fears that a “window of vulnerability” was opening that would allow the Soviets to launch a deadly first strike unless we vastly increased our forces. Committee members filled top defense posts and began the second nuclear build-up with new weapons and the false promise of missile defense shields. The “launch on warning” policy they adopted on an “interim basis” to protect US ICBMs from Russian attack still haunts us today, argues Princeton professor Frank von Hippel. This policy has contributed to several close calls when missiles were almost mistakenly launched.
Narang and Vaddi channel these past prophets of doom. The authors cite nuclear programs in North Korea, Pakistan, and Iran as justification for increasing the size of the US arsenal, largely ignoring diplomatic efforts that in the past effectively contained some of these programs and prevented others.
They also cite the interest of US allies in Europe and Asia in considering their own national nuclear programs as a proliferation risk that can only be addressed by “more, different, and better nuclear capabilities” and “more advanced missile defense… to intercept small or residual adversary nuclear forces.” They argue that if confronted by nuclear threats in Europe in the near future, “the United States might need to respond with nuclear use, and potentially with a larger nuclear exchange if it is unable to reestablish nuclear deterrence in Europe.”…………………………….
They fully endorse the third nuclear build up now underway, with an estimated cost of $2 trillion and rising. But it is not enough. “Washington needs to deploy not only more warheads but also more systems than originally planned under the modernization program,” they urge.
It is true that China’s force may grow, but as experts at the Federation of American Scientists point out, these projections are based on some questionable assumptions, including that future growth will follow recent growth on a straight line, that all the ICBM silos that we observe will be filled by new missiles, that China will be able to produce enough plutonium for all these new warheads, and that all the new warheads will be operational and deployed—which they currently are not.
Secondly, the authors understate the current US nuclear arsenal, which is more than 3,700 operational warheads, not 1,500. The United States currently has about 1,770 nuclear weapons deployed. (The New START treaty counts only 1,550 because it assumes each US bomber is loaded with only one weapon rather than the 8 to 20 they can carry.)
But that is only the deployed force. Approximately 1,930 nuclear warheads are held in reserve, ready to be deployed if needed. Finally, there are 1,477 retired but still intact warheads awaiting dismantlement—making for a total of more than 5,177 warheads in all, including those deployed, those on reserve, and those which are formally retired but intact. So, even if China does produce 1,500 weapons in ten years, it will still have only one-third the US force.
The real problem with the authors’ analysis, however, is not threat exaggeration or funny numbers. It is the war-fighting doctrine that it openly embraces.
What are all these nuclear weapons for? What would happen if we used them? Or a fraction of them? How many would die? Would our nation survive? What would be the impact on global climate?
These are topics that are assiduously avoided by nuclear weapons proponents, whether they be the corporations that realize large profits from the now $100 billion annual nuclear budget, or by the academics and policy operatives who provide the strategic justification for the indefinite continuation of the nuclear balance of terror.
Thus, the authors say “Congress will need to back an accelerated effort to overhaul the U.S. arsenal with significant funding and give the project urgent priority” because in addition to the standard rational that the United States must maintain a large nuclear arsenal “able to survive a first strike and impose assured destruction on its attacker in retaliation,” they argue the US must have weapons and policies “to meaningfully limit the amount of damage the attacker can inflict on the United States and its allies. To do this, the United States must maintain the capability to destroy as many of the attacker’s nuclear weapons as practicable before or after they are launched.”
This “damage limitation” strategy is key to the argument for larger forces. The authors seem to favor using US nuclear weapons first, to destroy the enemy’s weapons “before” they are launched, as well as believing without evidence that there could be a national missile defense system so effective that it could destroy missiles “after” their launch.
Former dean of the Georgetown University School of Foreign Affairs Robert Gallucci writes in his brief rebuttal to the authors: “One is left to wonder how the pursuit of all the ‘counterforce’ capability required of the second part of the strategy—an extraordinary characterization of the traditional goal of ‘damage limitation’ laid out in past U.S. nuclear posture reviews—can be distinguished from the pursuit of a disarming, preemptive, ‘first strike’ capability.”
Indeed, that is precisely what may be motivating the Chinese increases that the authors claim as the justification for an urgent US build-up. Narang and Vaddi do not discuss the impact on other nations of the massive US investment in offensive and defensive nuclear systems over the past ten years, or its withdrawal form the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002 that began the deterioration of the arms control regime.
From the Chinese perspective, however, the new, more capable and proliferated offensive nuclear weapons (especially those close to their borders) must indeed appear to be first-strike weapons, particularly when combined with a massive proposed national missile defense system erected to intercept any missiles not destroyed by an initial barrage of the United States.
China expert Fiona Cunningham of the University of Pennsylvania believes that it is very possible that “China is reacting to the continued development of some of the U.S. capabilities that could hold its nuclear arsenal at risk.” These include national missile defense, “its development of conventional strike capabilities that might be able to degrade its nuclear forces,” and the “idea that you would try and attack an adversary’s nuclear forces before they end up being launched.”
The Trump administration’s decision to “go on the offense” will further exacerbate these concerns. As the newly renamed Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, said: “We’re going to go on offense, not just on defense. Maximum lethality, not tepid legality. Violent effect, not politically correct.”
The Chinese increase in forces may indeed be malevolent. But it also looks very similar to what one would do if trying to create exactly the kind of survivable force the authors say the United States must have for a credible deterrent. As Cunningham notes, “We should expect that if adversary capabilities change, then Chinese nuclear forces are going to change in tandem.”
The authors may intend to pave new ground, to develop a strategy for the “new nuclear age,” but they end up mirroring the failed policies of the past. In many ways, their article echoes the 1980 Foreign Policy article by nuclear hawks Colin Gray and Keith Payne, “Victory is Possible.” In support of that era’s nuclear modernization, they argued that “the United States must possess the ability to wage nuclear war rationally.” They, too, thought arms control was unattainable and out-of-date with current threats. They, too, thought “parity or essential equivalence is incompatible with extended deterrence.” They, too, claimed that “war-fighting… is an extension of the American theory of deterrence.”
Gray and Payne said that a war that resulted in 20 million dead Americans could still save 200 million or more. Narang and Vaddi are not as cavalier, but at the core, they are embracing the idea that the ability to fight and win a nuclear war is essential for national security.
The worst news is that they are not alone. Their views may be the dominant views in Washington now, in both parties. Cloaked in ominous strategic rhetoric, ignoring inconvenient truths, and backed by a formidable nuclear weapons lobby and massive budgets, these ideas are the new consensus. Without a vibrant, persistent pushback, these policies will not only prevail in the current Trump administration but in future governments as well. https://thebulletin.org/2025/09/the-dangerous-new-washington-consensus-for-more-nuclear-weapons/
Israel bombed Qatar to assassinate Hamas’s lead ceasefire negotiators
Amid ongoing ceasefire talks, Israel attempted to assassinate the Hamas negotiating team in an airstrike on the Doha office of its lead negotiator, senior Hamas leader Khalil al-Hayya. Hamas officials say the negotiating team survived the attack.
By Qassam Muaddi September 9, 2025 , https://mondoweiss.net/2025/09/israel-bombed-qatar-to-assassinate-hamass-lead-ceasefire-negotiators/
Amid ongoing ceasefire talks, Israel attempted to assassinate the Hamas negotiating team in an airstrike on the Doha office of its lead negotiator, senior Hamas leader Khalil al-Hayya. Hamas officials say the negotiating team survived the attack.
By Qassam Muaddi September 9, 2025
Israel attempted to assassinate top Hamas leaders in Qatar on Tuesday, after large explosions were heard in the capital city of Doha, and smoke columns rose from the building targeted in the attack. A joint statement by the Israeli army and Israel’s internal intelligence agency confirmed that it was targeting Hamas’s senior leadership in a “precise strike.” The statement added that the targeted leaders were “directly responsible” for the October 7 attack and that “measures were taken in order to mitigate harm to civilians.”
Israeli media said that the strike targeted the office of the lead Hamas negotiator in the ongoing ceasefire talks, Khalil al-Hayya, in addition to other members of the negotiating team. Hamas politburo member Suheil al-Hindi told Al Jazeera on Tuesday evening that the negotiating team led by al-Hayya had survived “the cowardly assassination attempt.” Al-Hindi also told the Qatari news network that Hamas “will not raise the white flag.”
Al Jazeera reported that five “lower-ranked members were killed.”
The Israeli strike occurred as the Hamas negotiating team met to discuss the latest ceasefire proposal presented by U.S. President Donald Trump, al-Hindi told Al Jazeera.
The Qatari Foreign Ministry strongly condemned the attack, calling it “criminal” and “cowardly.” The Ministry added that Qatar “will not tolerate” attacks that “threaten the safety of Qatar’s citizens and residents.”
An unnamed White House official told AFP that the U.S. was notified in advance of Israel’s planned attack in Qatar.
The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement that the attack was a “wholly independent Israeli operation.”
“Israel initiated it, Israel conducted it, and Israel takes full responsibility,” the statement added.
The Israeli PM and Israeli Defense Minister, Israel Katz, said in a joint statement that they had given the green light to attack the Hamas leadership following a shooting attack in Jerusalem yesterday that left six Israelis dead. Hamas’s armed wing, the Qassam Brigades, had claimed responsibility for the shooting, which was carried out by two Palestinians from the West Bank towns of Qatanna and Qebeibeh.
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres condemned the Israeli attack on the Qatari capital as a “flagrant violation of sovereignty.”
Targeting negotiators during ceasefire negotiations
The Israeli attack comes after Trump had put forward a proposal for a 60-day ceasefire that would see the release of all Israeli captives in the first 48 hours of the agreement. In exchange, negotiations to permanently end the war on Gaza would commence, with personal guarantees from the U.S. President that Israel would engage in the negotiations “in good faith.”
Trump’s proposal would also see Hamas relinquish control over Gaza and give up its arms. Hamas has repeatedly said that it is willing to relinquish control over the Strip and allow for an independent technocratic government to rule in its stead, but has maintained that disarming remains a “red line” for the group.
A previous ceasefire proposal last August was accepted by Hamas and awaited Israel’s approval, but Israel did not respond before Trump presented his most recent proposal.
The August proposal had included a 60-day ceasefire in which Israeli captives would be released in exchange for the release of 1,700 Palestinian prisoners, the entry of humanitarian aid, and the withdrawal of the Israeli army to specified areas at the edges of the Strip.
Continuous assassinations across the region
Last month, Israel killed 12 top officials in the Yemeni government, including Yemen’s Prime Minister, Ahmad al-Rahawi.
Since October 7, Israel has assassinated several top Hamas leaders in exile across the region, including Hamas’s previous politburo chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, and senior Hamas politburo member Saleh Aruri in Beirut.
Israel has also assassinated several top commanders of the al-Qassam Brigades, including its longtime commander, Muhammad al-Deif. Two weeks ago, Hamas confirmed the death of Deif’s successor, Muhammad Sinwar, the brother of Hamas’s slain Gaza leader Yahya Sinwar, who was killed by accident in October 2024 when he was struck by a tank shell during combat in Rafah.
At the end of August, Israel claimed to have assassinated Abu Obeida, the military spokesperson of the Qassam Brigades, in a strike on a residential building in Gaza City. Hamas has neither confirmed nor denied Abu Obeida’s fate.
Attempt to derail ceasefire negotiations ahead of Gaza City invasion
The attack on Doha comes as Israel continues to advance its offensive against Gaza City, levelling several high-rise buildings housing thousands of refugees, who were forced to leave the towers after receiving evacuation orders from the Israeli army. In recent weeks, the Israeli army’s offensive has flattened entire neighborhoods in eastern Gaza City, including the Shuja’iyya, Sabra, and Zeitoun neighborhoods.
The Israeli army has also dropped leaflets over the city ordering its entire population to evacuate to the overcrowded Mawasi area on the coast of Khan Younis in southern Gaza. The Israeli army says its occupation of the city will last for at least a year.
The Palestinian Civil Defense said that if the invasion of the city proceeds as announced, it expects a daily casualty count of around 300 Palestinians.
US Considers Bombing Venezuela as It Deploys F-35 Fighter Jets to Puerto Rico
ANTIWar.com, by Dave DeCamp | September 7, 2025
The Trump administration is considering multiple options for launching military strikes against alleged drug cartels in Venezuela, including hitting targets that could weaken Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, as it is deploying F-35 fighter jets to Puerto Rico, CNN has reported.
US officials told CNN that the US bombing of a boat near Venezuela last week was just the beginning of a much larger effort against drug trafficking that could lead to the ouster of Maduro. US officials claim the pressure on Venezuela and Maduro is about drug trafficking and a response to overdose deaths in the US, but fentanyl doesn’t come from or through Venezuela, and the majority of the cocaine that is transported to the US comes through the Pacific, not the Caribbean……………………
The US deployed F-35s to Puerto Rico after it claimed that two Venezuelan F-16 fighter jets flew over a US Navy vessel. The Department of Defense, now known as the Department of War, said in a press release that the Venezuelan flight was “provocative” despite the fact that the US deployed a large number of naval vessels near Venezuela’s coast…………………….https://news.antiwar.com/2025/09/07/us-considers-bombing-venezuela-as-it-deploys-f-35-fighter-jets-to-puerto-rico/
Could Australia defend itself?
by Rex Patrick | Sep 7, 2025 , https://michaelwest.com.au/could-australia-defend-itself/
Supporters of the Australian Defence Force being more closely integrated with the US military, and of AUKUS, seem convinced that we need the US to defend ourselves. Former senator and submariner, Rex Patrick, explains why they’re wrong.
While there are clear concerns in the US and Australia with China’s growing military power and how that power might be utilised, no-one reasonably thinks China has aspirations of attacking Australia. But, for defence purposes, we plan for worse-case, and so in assessing whether Australia could defend itself, a Chinese attack is a convenient scenario to explore.
Nuclear attack
It’s estimated China possesses more than 500 operational nuclear warheads, and by 2030, they’ll have over 1,000. Most of those will be aimed at US targets – US air and military bases in Guam and Hawaii, US bases in the territories of America’s allies in north-east Asia – Japan and South Korea; as well as a growing list of strategic facilities and cities in the continental United States itself.
And as China enters an era of nuclear weapon abundance, there’ll be long-range missiles and warheads to spare for US-related targets down under – the signals intelligence facility at Pine Gap near Alice Springs, the submarine communications station near Exmouth, the RAAF base at Darwin and naval facilities at Garden Island south of Perth.
It’s clear that an expanding US military presence in Australia has increased the likelihood of nuclear weapons being directed at us by China.
Our best protection against the risk of nuclear war is a government policy of support for the system of mutual deterrence and effective arms control. In this, the AUKUS program isn’t helpful, as Australia’s past diplomatic engagement on nuclear arms control and non-proliferation has been downgraded. We are trying to persuade other nations that Australia should be permitted to receive weapon-grade plutonium in the reactors of our anticipated US- and UK-sourced submarines.
Conventional conflict and the tyranny of distance
Launching a conventional attack on Australia is a very hard thing to do.
Geography is our great advantage. What historian Geoffrey Blainey called the “tyranny of distance” is a big problem for any country wanting to attack Australia. In World War II, the invasion of Australia was operationally and logistically a bridge too far for the Imperial Japanese Army and Navy. During the Cold War, Australia enjoyed defence on the cheap because there was no direct conventional military threat from the Soviet Union.
We’re a long way from China, surrounded by a ‘moat’ and are further assisted in our defence by an inhospitable vastness between a hostile force landing on our northern shores and our major population centres.
We can also afford to defend ourselves if we sensibly reallocate the $365B cost of eight AUKUS submarines to focus on the defence of Australia first.
Here’s how.
Keeping a watch
An intelligence capacity, focused on areas of primary strategic interest to support an independent defence of Australia, is crucial. This would involve cooperation with other nations (including as part of 5Eyes), defence-focused spying by the Australian Secret Intelligence Service and eavesdropping by the Australian Signals Directorate, covert submarine intelligence missions and intelligence collection by deployed RAN surface ships and RAAF surveillance aircraft.
Open source intelligence should not be discounted.
We also need a highly capable surveillance capability for detecting, identifying and tracking potentially hostile forces moving into our military area of interest.
Australia should invest in satellite surveillance system ($5B, leaving $363B in available funds from cancelling the $368B AUKUS program) to complement our three Over-The-Horizon Radars at Longreach in Queensland, Laverton in WA and at Alice Springs in the NT and double the size of our P-8 Maritime Patrol and Response fleet from 8 to 20 aircraft ($6B, $357B).
We should also invest in deployment of long-range acoustic systems ($1B, $356B), e.g. in places like Christmas Island to detect and identify foreign submarines transiting the Lombok Strait.
We need to ensure we have reliable ships and submarines with well-trained crews deployed in our northern approaches, particularly near the many southern exit points of the Indonesian archipelago.
Defending the moat
Defence of Australia, in the lead-up to conflict, would require sea and air denial.
To do this, we need all relevant defence assets to be capable of launching stand-off anti-shipping missiles, in particular the Naval Strike Missile and Joint Strike Missile, which will be made in a Kongsberg facility being built in Newcastle.
These missiles would be an essential capability in our 20 air-independent propulsion submarines ($30B, $326B), our expanded surface fleet with a further 10 frigates ($10B, $316B), our F-35 Joint Strike Fighters and P-8 Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft.
We also need to boost our airborne capabilities with additional fighter aircraft ($25B, $291B) oriented towards maritime strike, land, and more air-to-air refuelling capacity ($1B, $290B) to support these fighter jets. We also need to enhance our land-based anti-air defences ($1B, $289B).
Closer to shore, we should expand our capability to utilise sea mines. Since World War II, mines have damaged and sunk more vessels than any other means; they are a highly effective asymmetric weapon that the ADF has only recently reintroduced into its inventory, and we should expand our capabilities and capacity in this area. ($1B, $288B).
At the same time, we need to beef up our anti-submarine warfare capabilities to protect our sea lanes, stop foreign submarines passing through choke points in our northern approaches and to protect our new strategic fleet ($20B, $268B), which Prime Minister Albanese promised but has not delivered on, critical for supporting continued economic activity and our defence effort in our northern coastal waters
Protecting defence, economic and population assets
In protecting Australia, we would need to have regard to keeping open our northern, naval and major ports, which would be vulnerable to enemy mines. Australia’s mine countermeasures have atrophied. This would have to be reversed ($5B, $263B).
Turning to ground forces, we need to be able to deal with lodgements on our territory or major raids. We need to be able, assisted by our geography, to oppose any march south, whilst also being able to supply our forces to the north. We need to double our heavy airlift capability with a further large transport aircraft ($4B, $259B).
Lessons from Ukraine are particularly relevant; the rise of drone systems and their effects on force architectures and land warfare, the effects of electronic warfare on the modern battlefield, the challenges of sustaining logistics in a contested environment (mindful of the huge distances involved in supporting Australian forces in the top end) and air defence.
In addition to existing Army programs, Australia must spend money to capitalise on the lessons learned. We need to be investing in drone and anti-drone capabilities ($2B, $257B), indigenous electronic warfare capabilities ($5B, $252B), 12 additional tactical transport aircraft ($2B, $250B), 48 additional utility helicopters ($2B, $248B), unmanned ground logistics vehicles ($2B, $246B) and shoulder fired anti-aircraft missiles ($2B, $244B).
Other priorities
Distance is not a barrier to effective cyber warfare. Australia must ensure our highly electronic and network-connected utilities are not disrupted by conflict. We need to increase investment in our cyber warfare capabilities ($5B, $239B).
We also need to address a huge deficit in our fuel security. ensuring we have a minimum 90 days in-country fuel supplies ($8B, $231B) and that we have a resilient general industry capability and self-sufficiency of critical commodities ($60B, $171B) that can keep the country running during conflict (or a pandemic).
We need to further learn the lessons of our Ukrainian friends and boost the capability and capacity to produce missiles and other munitions here. That includes the full gamut of weapons we use, from small arms to missiles to bombs to torpedoes, and many of the other consumables of war that can quickly run out. An investment in the order $10B is required ($5B, $166B).
Finally, the Government must stop embarking on highly costly and risky defence programs that don’t work out. It should be buying off-the-shelf capabilities, some built here where it makes sense, and enhanced by Australian industry. Industry would need to be configured to properly sustain all of our critical military capabilities onshore.
Yes, we can
With the US becoming more and more unreliable, it’s time for Australia to tilt to independence in defence. No-one can believe we are the US’s most important friend (the PM is still trying to get a meeting with Trump), or that they will stand by us in conflict. Those days have passed.
While China attacking Australia is a remote possibility, we must plan for the worst, an invasion of Australia. The good news is that the tyranny of distance is working in our favour. With determination and reform in Defence procurement, Australia can independently defend itself. We can make ourselves such a hard and difficult target that no one will try it on, or try to coerce us.
The numbers throughout this article show that we can cancel AUKUS and do what’s required, and walk away with over $150B left in consolidated revenue to do more for education, increasing productivity, economic advancement and social support.
Rex Patrick
Rex Patrick is a former Senator for South Australia and, earlier, a submariner in the armed forces. Best known as an anti-corruption and transparency crusader, Rex is also known as the “Transparency Warrior.”
Spain Announces Arms Embargo on Israel and Other Steps ‘to Stop the Genocide in Gaza’
“This is not self-defense,” Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez asserted, “it is the extermination of a defenseless people and a violation of every international law.”
Brett Wilkins, Common Dreams, Sep 08, 2025
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez on Monday announced a series of nine new measures—including a total arms embargo—aimed at pressuring the government of fugitive Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “to stop the genocide in Gaza.”
Sánchez, who leads the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE), announced the steps during a speech in which he first acknowledged the historical suffering of the Jewish people, which includes the 1492 ethnic cleansing of Jews from Spain.
“The Jewish people have suffered countless persecutions, deserve to have their own state, and to feel secure,” Sánchez said. “That is why the Spanish government has condemned Hamas’ attacks from day one.”
However, “there is a difference between defending your country and bombing hospitals or starving innocent children,” the prime minister continued. “This is an unjustifiable attack on the civilian population, which the [United Nations] rapporteur has described as genocide.”
“Sixty thousand dead, two million displaced, half of them children,” Sánchez said. “This is not self-defense, it is not even an attack—it is the extermination of a defenseless people and a violation of every international law.”
The nine measures—which must be approved by lawmakers and the Cabinet—include:
- A “legal and permanent prohibition” on the purchase and sale of weapons, ammunition, and military equipment;
- A ban on transit through Spanish ports for all ships carrying fuels destined for Israel’s military;
- Denial of entry into Spanish airspace for all state aircraft carrying military equipment to Israel;
- A ban on entry to Spain for “all persons directly involved in genocide, human rights violations, and war crimes” in Gaza;
- Prohibition of imported products from illegal settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories;
- Limitation of consular services for Spanish citizens residing in illegal Israeli settlements;
- Strengthened support for the Palestinian Authority;
- An additional €10 million in support for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA); and
- An increase in overall humanitarian spending for Gaza, to reach €150 million by 2026……………………………………………………………………………….. https://www.commondreams.org/news/spain-arms-embargo-israel
Israel Bombs Doha, Reportedly Targeting Hamas Negotiators Discussing US Proposal
Israel has been known to sabotage ceasefire deals just as they are reaching completion, effectively prolonging the genocide. Israeli officials have long said that their goal is to take over Gaza, and that they will stop at nothing to achieve this objective.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office claimed full responsibility for the strike in a statement on social media.
The strike came as Hamas officials were in Qatar to discuss a ceasefire proposal put forth by the Trump administration.
By Sharon Zhang , Truthout, September 9, 2025
srael struck the capital of Qatar on Tuesday, targeting senior Hamas political officials as they gathered in Doha to discuss the latest ceasefire proposal put forth by the U.S.
Loud explosions were heard in the capital city, with pictures of smoke plumes rising. Israel took responsibility for the strikes, saying that they were targeting Hamas leaders.
“The [Israel Defense Forces] and [Israeli Security Agency] conducted a precise strike targeting the senior leadership of the Hamas terrorist organization,” the military said in a statement. “For years, these members of the Hamas leadership have led the terrorist organization’s operations, are directly responsible for the brutal October 7 massacre, and have been orchestrating and managing the war against the State of Israel.”
Hamas has said that five of its members were killed in the strike, including the Hamas lead negotiator’s son. However, it said the strike failed to kill any of their negotiating team. Israel has already assassinated Hamas leaders in Lebanon and Iran, as well as in Gaza.
Qatar’s interior ministry said that a member of Qatar’s Internal Security Force was also killed at the site, and several others were injured.
The attack comes just as Hamas officials were meeting in Doha to discuss a ceasefire proposal put forth by the U.S. this weekend. A Hamas source told Al Jazeera that the strike specifically targeted the negotiation team.
This is the first known time that Israel has struck Qatar — a key party in the ceasefire negotiations between Israel and Hamas — amid its genocide in Gaza. Just in the past month, Israel has struck at least five Arab countries: Palestine, Yemen, Syria, Lebanon, and Qatar. On Monday, a Gaza-bound aid flotilla was struck by an aerial projectile in a Tunisian port, and activists have pointed the finger at Israel.
Israel has also escalated its siege on Gaza City in recent weeks, and ordered an estimated 1 million Palestinians in Gaza City to evacuate on Tuesday.
The strike comes just after Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar claimed that Israel accepted the U.S. ceasefire proposal. Hamas officials had accepted a separate, similar ceasefire deal put forth by Qatar last month, that Israel never responded to.
Israel has been known to sabotage ceasefire deals just as they are reaching completion, effectively prolonging the genocide. Israeli officials have long said that their goal is to take over Gaza, and that they will stop at nothing to achieve this objective.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office claimed full responsibility for the strike in a statement on social media. “Today’s action against the top terrorist chieftains of Hamas was a wholly independent Israeli operation. Israel initiated it, Israel conducted it, and Israel takes full responsibility,” his office said.
However, Qatar is an ally of the U.S., and commentators have said it’s unlikely that the strike would not be done in coordination with the U.S. Qatar hosts the largest military base in the Middle East, the regional headquarters of U.S. Central Command.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said that the White House was informed of the strike before it happened, and sought to alert Qatari officials of it. However, Qatari officials denied this account as “completely false.”
“The call that was received from an American official came during the sound of the explosions that resulted from the Israeli attack in Doha,” said Qatar Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Majed al-Ansari.
Axios’s Barak Ravid, citing a U.S. official, said that Israel only notified the U.S. of the strike right before it happened.
Qatar condemned the strike, saying that it targeted residential buildings where Hamas political officials were staying.
“This criminal assault constitutes a blatant violation of all international laws and norms, and poses a serious threat to the security and safety of Qataris and residents in Qatar,” said al-Ansari. “While the State of Qatar strongly condemns this assault, it confirms that it will not tolerate this reckless Israeli behavior and the ongoing disruption of regional security, nor any act that targets its security and sovereignty.”
The Military-Industrial Complex
How the permanent armaments industry keeps the United States of America engaged in endless conflict
Grant Klusmann, Sep 10, 2025, https://ddgeopolitics.substack.com/p/the-military-industrial-complex?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=1769298&post_id=173240478&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
“This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence-economic, political, even spiritual-is felt in every city, every state house, every office of the federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources, and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.”
These were the words of then-President Dwight D. Eisenhower in his 1961 farewell address in which he warned the American people of the perils of the military-industrial complex. Such a relationship between the military and defense industry increased the incentives for endless war. As Eisenhower campaigned on ending combat operations on the Korean peninsula and favored an overall cautious foreign policy, it would not come as a surprise then that Eisenhower would be concerned by the heightened influence held by the armaments industry.
The military-industrial complex is a relationship in which lawmakers are motivated by campaign contributions from the defense industry to provide funding to the Department of Defense for military spending, and the defense industry profits from their lobbying due to the Department of Defense paying various defense firms for the production of military hardware and other services. Such a state of affairs incentivizes an interventionist foreign policy due to conflict generating demand for the equipment produced by the defense industry. Throughout the second half of the twentieth century and the first two decades of the twenty-first century, there had been no shortage of conflicts that were motivated, at least in part, by the military-industrial complex.
The Vietnam War, which the United States entered into over a false flag in which the American government accused North Vietnamese forces of launching two unprovoked attacks on the U.S.S. Maddox, saw President Johnson’s personal wealth increase due to his investing in the kinds of products required to wage war. In 1992, President George H.W. Bush ordered American forces to Somalia under the guise of humanitarianism to justify maintaining the size and expenditures of the post-Cold War military establishment. Nearly a decade later, America would engage in a global campaign across the Greater Middle East in which the objectives and the enemy were left poorly defined, seemingly to drag the conflict out so the defense industry could make as large a profit as possible.
What’s more, is that the military-industrial complex continues to guide our foreign policy in the present. As it stands, the defense establishment and their allies in corporate media are in the process of manufacturing a new ideological bogeyman to justify defense spending. With tensions rising with Russia, China, and Iran, there is a real danger that the powers that be may lie our nation into yet another forever war to justify their wages.
Israel has officially moved on from destroying Hamas to erasing Palestine
By Murad Sadygzade, President of the Middle East Studies Center, Visiting Lecturer, HSE University (Moscow), 5 Sept 25, https://www.rt.com/news/624181-israel-hamas-erase-palestine/
Despite objections from across the world, Netanyahu’s government is redrawing the map with tank tracks.
In early August, Benjamin Netanyahu dispelled any lingering ambiguity. In a direct interview with Fox News, he made explicit what had long been implied through diplomatic euphemisms: Israel intends to take full military control of the Gaza, dismantle Hamas as a political and military entity, and eventually transfer authority to a “non-Hamas civilian administration,” ideally with Arab participation.
“We’re not going to govern Gaza,” the prime minister added. But even then, the formula of “seize but not rule” read more like a diplomatic veil for a much harsher course of action.
The very next day, Israel’s security cabinet gave formal approval to this trajectory, initiating preparations for an assault on Gaza City. The UN secretary-general responded swiftly, warning that such an operation risked a dangerous escalation and threatened to normalize what had once been an avoidable humanitarian catastrophe.
August exposed the war in its most unforgiving clarity. Strikes on Zeitoun, Shuja’iyya, Sabra, and operations in the Jabalia area became a part of the daily rhythm. The encirclement of Gaza City tightened slowly but relentlessly. Brigadier General Effi Defrin confirmed the launch of a new phase, with troops reaching the city’s outskirts. At the same time, the government called up tens of thousands of reservists in a clear signal that Israel was prepared to take the city by force, even if the window for a negotiated pause technically remained open.
In this context, talk of “stabilization” rings hollow. Infrastructure lies in ruins, the healthcare system is on the verge of collapse, aid lines often end under fire, and international monitoring groups are recording signs of impending famine. The conflict is no longer a conventional war between armies. It is taking on the contours of a managed disintegration of civilian life.
But Gaza is not the whole picture. On the West Bank, the logic of military control is being formalized both legally and spatially. On July 23, the Knesset voted by majority to adopt a declaration advocating the extension of Israeli sovereignty over Judea, Samaria, and the Jordan Valley. While framed as a recommendation, the move effectively normalizes institutionalizing the erosion of previously drawn red lines.
It is within this framework that the E1 plan of Israeli settlements in the West Bank must be understood as a critical link in the eastern belt surrounding Jerusalem. On August 20, the Higher Planning Committee of the Civil Administration gave the green light for the construction of over 3,400 housing units between East Jerusalem and Ma’ale Adumim. For urban planners, it’s about “filling in the gaps” between existing developments. For policymakers and military officials, it represents a strategic pivot.
First, E1 aims to create a continuous Jewish presence encircling Jerusalem and to merge Ma’ale Adumim into the city’s urban fabric. This reinforces the eastern flank of the capital, provides strategic depth, and secures Highway 1 – the vital corridor to the Dead Sea and the Jordan Valley.
Second, it severs East Jerusalem from its natural Palestinian hinterland. E1 physically blocks the West Bank’s access to the eastern part of the city, cutting East Jerusalem off from Ramallah in the north and Bethlehem in the south.
Third, it dismantles the territorial continuity of any future Palestinian state. Instead of a unified space, a network of isolated enclaves emerges – linked by bypass roads and tunnels that fail to compensate for the loss of direct access to Jerusalem, both symbolic and administrative.
Fourth, it seeks to shift the debate over Jerusalem’s status from the realm of diplomacy into the realm of irrevocable facts. Once the eastern belt is built up, the vision of East Jerusalem as the capital of a Palestinian state becomes almost impossible to realize.
Finally, E1 embodies two opposing principles: for Israelis, a “managed continuity” of control; for Palestinians, a “managed vacuum” of governance. One side gains an uninterrupted corridor of dominance, the other is left with a fragmented territory and diminished prospects for self-determination.
It is no surprise, then, that international reaction was swift and unambiguous from the UN and EU to London and Canberra. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, commenting on the launch of E1, said out loud what the maps had already suggested: the project would “bury” the idea of a Palestinian state.
In an August broadcast on i24News, Netanyahu said he feels a “strong connection” to the vision of a “Greater Israel.” For Arab capitals this was a confirmation of his strategic maximalism. The military campaign in Gaza and the planning-led expansion in the West Bank aren’t two parallel tracks, but parts of a single, integrated agenda. The regional response was swift and uncompromising from Jordanian warnings to collective condemnation from international institutions.
The broader picture reveals deliberate design: In Gaza, forced subjugation without any credible or legitimate “handover of keys”; in the West Bank, a reconfiguration of political geography via E1 and its related projects, translating a diplomatic dispute into the language of roads, zoning, and demography. The language of “temporariness” and “no intention to govern” functions as cover, in practice, the temporary hardens into permanence, and control becomes institutionalized as the new normal.
As the lines converge in Gaza’s shattered neighborhoods, in the planning documents for East Jerusalem, and in statements from Israeli leadership, the space for any negotiated outcome narrows further. What began as a pledge to dismantle Hamas is increasingly functioning as a mechanism to erase the word ‘Palestine’ from the future map. In this framework, there is no “day after.” What exists instead is a carefully prearranged aftermath designed to leave no room for alternatives. The map is drawn before peace is reached, and in the end, it is the map that becomes the decisive argument, not a treaty.
The current military operation, referred to as Gideon’s Chariot 2, has not been officially declared an occupation. However, its character on the ground strongly resembles one. IDF armored units have reached Sabra and are engaged in ongoing combat at the Zeitoun junction, a strategic point where fighting has continued for over a week. Military descriptions of these actions as operations on the periphery increasingly resemble the opening phase of a full assault on Gaza City. In the last 24 hours, the pattern has only intensified. Artillery and airstrikes have been systematically clearing eastern and northern districts, including Zeitoun, Shuja’iyya, Sabra, and Jabalia, in preparation for armored and infantry advances.
The military effort is now reinforced by a large-scale mobilization of personnel. A phased conscription has been approved. The main wave, composed of 60,000 reservists, is expected to report by September 2, with additional groups to follow through the fall and winter. This is not a tactical raid but a prolonged urban combat campaign that will be measured not by military markers on a map but by the ability to sustain logistical flow and personnel rotations under intense conditions.
Diplomatic efforts are unfolding alongside the military campaign. On August 18, Hamas, through Egyptian and Qatari intermediaries, agreed to the outline of a ceasefire known as the Witkoff Plan. It proposes a 60-day pause, the release of ten living hostages, and the return of the remains of eighteen others in exchange for Israeli actions concerning Palestinian detainees and humanitarian access. The Israeli government has not officially agreed to the plan and insists that all hostages must be included. Nonetheless, Hamas’s offer is already being used by Israel as leverage. It serves more as a tactical pressure point than a genuine breakthrough.
This context gives meaning to Netanyahu’s latest directive calling for a shortened timeline to capture Hamas’s remaining strongholds. The accelerated ground campaign aims to pressure Hamas into making broader concessions under the framework of the proposed deal. If Hamas refuses, Israel will present a forceful seizure of Gaza City as a justified action to its domestic audience.
Observers close to the government interpret the strategy in exactly these terms. The objective is not only to dismantle Hamas’s infrastructure but also to escalate the stakes and force a binary choice between a truce on Israeli terms and a full military entry into the city. Even the most carefully designed military strategy eventually confronts the same dilemma: the challenge of the day after. Without a legitimate mandate and without a coherent administrative framework, even a tactical victory risks resulting in a managed vacuum. In such a scenario, control shifts hands on the map, but the underlying threat remains unresolved.
Ideology also plays a central role in shaping this campaign. . In August, Netanyahu publicly affirmed his strong personal identification with the vision of the Promised Land and Greater Israel. This statement provoked strong reactions in Arab capitals and further discredited Israel’s narrative that it seeks to control Gaza without governing it. The on-the-ground reality is more complex and sobering. After nearly two years of conflict, the IDF has not eliminated the threat. It has suffered significant losses, and there is no clear consensus within the officer corps on launching another ground offensive in Gaza.
According to reports by Israeli media, Israel’s top military leadership had warned that a complete takeover of Gaza would come with heavy casualties and heightened risks to hostages. For this reason, earlier operations deliberately avoided areas where hostages were likely being held. Leaked assessments suggest that the General Staff had proposed a strategy centered on encircling Gaza City and applying incremental pressure over time. However, the political leadership opted instead for speed and direct assault. The casualties already number in the hundreds, and major urban combat has yet to begin.
The domestic opposition has made its stance clear. After a security briefing, opposition leader Yair Lapid stated that a new occupation of Gaza would be a grave mistake and one for which Israel would pay a high price. Pressure on the government is mounting both internally, through weekly demonstrations demanding a hostage deal, and externally. Countries such as France, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and Malta are preparing to take steps toward recognizing Palestinian statehood at the United Nations General Assembly in September. In the language of international diplomacy, this move signals a counterbalance to both Hamas’s hardline stance and Israel’s rightward territorial ambitions. The more forcefully Israel insists on capturing Gaza at all costs, the stronger the global response becomes in favor of formalizing Palestine’s status.
However, the situation now transcends local dynamics. Against the backdrop of worldwide instability, including regional conflicts, disrupted global trade routes and rising geopolitical risk, the Gaza campaign increasingly appears to be part of a broader, long-term war of attrition. Within Israel’s strategic thinking, the ultimate objective seems to be the closure of the Palestinian question altogether. This entails dismantling all political structures and actors that might, in any combination, threaten Israeli security. Under this logic, humanitarian consequences are not considered constraints.
A recent UN report illustrates the magnitude of the crisis. For the first time, the Food and Agriculture Organization officially declared catastrophic hunger in Gaza, reaching the fifth and highest level of the Integrated Food Security Classification, or IPC. By the end of September, more than 640,000 people are expected to face total food deprivation. Yet even this alarming assessment has not shifted the current trajectory. Western European declarations of intent to recognize Palestinian statehood have also failed to become decisive turning points.
Israel now faces a rare and difficult crossroads. One path leads through diplomacy. It includes a 60-day pause, an initial exchange of captives, and a broader acknowledgment that lasting security is achieved not only through military force, but also through institutions, legal rights, and legitimacy. The other path leads into a renewed spiral of urban warfare. It involves the deployment of more reservists, increasingly severe military orders, and objectives that grow less clearly defined with each passing day. In Sabra, the physical tracks of tanks are already visible before any clear political statement has been made. Ultimately, though, the outcome will be determined not by battlefield reports, but by legal, diplomatic, and institutional formulas. These will decide whether the fall of Gaza marks the end of the war or simply the beginning of a new chapter.
As assault plans are finalized, mobilization lists expand, and ideological rhetoric intensifies, the sense of inevitability grows stronger. This operation resembles less an isolated campaign and more a component of a much longer-term project to reconfigure geography and status. If that logic continues to dominate, the day after will already be written, and it will allow no room for alternatives. In that scenario, the map will carry more weight than any agreement. Facts on the ground will become the ultimate authority, overshadowing diplomatic recognitions, international reports, and humanitarian data alike.
Ending a War That Never Should Have Started.
09/02/2025•Mises Wire•Kevin Rosenhoff
Six months after Zelenskyy’s historic humiliation in the Oval Office, Trump’s meeting with Putin hopefully signals an end of the Russia-Ukraine war. From a moral point of view, this is to be welcomed, as the war—from both sides—has been morally illegitimate from the outset.
A Morally Justified War Must Be Proportionate
The central framework for evaluating the morality of war is the so-called just war theory—an ancient tradition shaped by various philosophers. Within it, a fundamental requirement for starting and continuing a war is proportionality. Generally, this means the evils caused must stand in due proportion to the evils prevented. American philosopher Jeff McMahan differentiated this idea with his distinction between narrow and wide proportionality. Simply put, while narrow proportionality concerns the appropriate harms inflicted on aggressors (e.g., Russian soldiers), wide proportionality deals with harms inflicted on innocents (e.g., Ukrainian and Russian civilians)……………………………………………………………………………
“To the Last Man”—Why Ukraine’s War is Disproportionate
The reasons for Russia’s invasion are contested. Some point to Putin’s imperial ambitions and fear of Ukrainian democracy, others to NATO’s expansion. Still, there is broad agreement: Russia’s invasion is not only a violation of international law but also of morality. Waging war in the absence of a prior or imminent attack is reprehensible from every perspective. Participating Russian soldiers who threaten innocent lives can neither complain about being harmed nor demand compensation or an apology. Since they are therefore not wronged, their killing is proportionate in the narrow sense and, in principle, also morally legitimate as a means of warding off the threat……………………………………………………………………..
The problem of Ukraine’s war is not the harming of Russian invaders, but the harming of innocents by the Ukrainian state—that is, wide proportionality. These innocents include, not only the over 7,000 civilians in Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine presumably injured or killed by Ukrainian bombing attacks, but especially the many men forcibly recruited and held trapped. Since the war’s beginning, men between the ages of 18 and 60 have not only been prevented from fleeing the country but have increasingly been seized from their families and sent to the front—where they are highly likely to be killed or wounded. “A woman screamed for the army to spare her husband from conscription. A soldier slapped her and took her husband,” reported US journalist Manny Marotta, describing one of the forced mobilizations at the war’s outbreak. His account stands pars pro toto for the broader problem of the widespread unwillingness to fight and die for the Ukrainian state. According to former presidential adviser, Oleksiy Arestovych, half of Ukrainian men have refused to submit their data to recruitment centers. Over half a million men of military age have fled to the EU—and thousands more have been caught while trying to escape.
While initially there were still volunteers, their numbers have dwindled to zero. “There are no more volunteers,” complained military police officer Roman Boguslavskyi to Der Spiegel in November 2023. To avoid running into people like Roman, Ukrainians use Telegram channels to warn each other. The Kyiv-based group—Kyiv Povestka—alone now has close to 250,000 members. However, dodging the recruiters does not always work: the internet is flooded with videos showing military officers grabbing men off the street and trying to force them into minibuses like cattle. Accordingly, the term coined for this practice—“busification”—was named Ukraine’s Word of the Year in 2024. The cutesy term, however, should not obscure the repressive reality. In her 2024 essay Mobilisation, Ukrainian writer Yevgenia Belorusets reveals the world behind the videos—a world in which women hide their husbands and a brutal state no longer spares even those suffering from cancer or HIV. Ukrainians are thus not only victims of Russia, but also of their own state. Or, to quote the Ukrainian doctor Semyon from Belorusets’s essay: “We are in a situation we never imagined. We are devouring ourselves. Shelled by Russia, at war with Russia, and now at war with those who have decided we must question nothing.”
How should the actions of the Ukrainian state be judged morally? Unless the civilians harmed by Ukrainian bombing have consented, the state is wronging them—no differently than someone who injures or kills bystanders while fending off a mugger in the street. The same applies to the forcibly conscripted men: anyone who sees and hears how they are hunted down and torn from their loved ones should intuitively judge the state’s actions as a violation of their moral rights—and those of their families. After all, such conduct would be regarded in virtually any other context as an injustice requiring justification.
If I were attacked in my home and abducted you to defend me at risk to your life, I would be committing a moral wrong, both against you and your loved ones. Consistently, the actions of the Ukrainian state should be judged in the same way. It treats human beings as material to be used and consumed—a clear violation of their dignity and rights. The possible counterargument of a “duty to fight” seems unconvincing given the risk involved. According to reports by the Financial Times, Ukrainian commanders estimate that between 50 and 70 percent of new frontline soldiers are killed or wounded within just a few days. Yet we are normally not required to take significant personal risks to save others. If you could save my life by playing Russian roulette, doing so would be noble—but not your duty. To compel you anyway would still be a rights violation.
the Ukrainian war suffers from a more fundamental problem. Zelenskyy declared—both before and during the war—his intention to fight “to the last man” and “whatever the cost,” thereby rejecting proportionality itself. The Ukrainian state acts like someone who deliberately diverts a runaway train onto a track without caring how many people are on it. On this premise, all Ukrainians—and potentially humanity—become fair game to be sacrificed for Ukraine’s cause. Such conduct, which explicitly denies proportionality, can hardly be considered proportionate and morally justified. Under Zelenskyy, Ukraine has waged a war that has been morally unbounded from the start, with no regard for any losses.
It would therefore be right to end this war. Two morally illegitimate wars should be brought to a close—Russia’s war under Putin and Ukraine’s war under Zelenskyy. https://mises.org/mises-wire/ending-war-never-should-have-started
UK Labour must not award Elbit a £2 billion military deal
Why are Israel’s largest arms firm and a company mired in a corruption scandal even being considered for training British troops?
DECLASSIFIED UK, ANDREW FEINSTEIN, PAUL HOLDEN and JACK CINAMON, 28 August 2025
Britain’s Ministry of Defence might imminently award a 15 year contract, worth £2.5bn, to a consortium headed by the British subsidiary of the Israeli arms firm Elbit Systems and including the US management consultancy firm, Bain and Company.
If successful, Elbit’s consortium would be responsible for training as many as 60,000 members of the UK military.
The consortium seems well-placed to win the contract; it is, in fact, one of only two shortlisted and preferred bidders.
The Ministry of Defence has already given the consortium a £2m contract so that it can develop its proposals further.
This is unacceptable. And it is frankly unbelievable that this consortium is even in the running considering its track record.
Elbit Systems UK is the fully-owned subsidiary of Elbit Systems Limited. Elbit Systems Limited is headquartered in Tel Aviv and is listed on both the Israeli and US stock exchanges.
Elbit is one of the two largest Israeli weapons manufacturers and is central to the IDF’s operations, providing 85% of its drones. Elbit International is also a major contributor to the F-35 fighter jet program, bragging that it plays a ‘critical role’ in the ‘success of the world’s most advanced fighter jet.’
In July 2025, Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur for the Occupied Palestine Territories, published an excoriating report setting out corporate complicity in Israel’s “plausibly” genocidal conduct in Gaza – for which she was subsequently sanctioned by Donald Trump.
Her report is clear that Elbit forms a central part of Israel’s military-industrial complex, which has become “the economic backbone of [Israel].”
“Elbit has cooperated closely on Israeli military operations, embedding key staff in the Ministry of Defence,” Albanese points out, further noting that Elbit provides “a critical domestic supply of weaponry.”
Bain
But we’re also deeply concerned about Elbit’s partner, Bain and Company.
Bain and Company (not to be confused with the mega hedge fund Bain Capital, which confirmed to us that it is not involved in the Elbit consortium) is a US-based management consultancy firm.
Bain’s inclusion in the consortium’s bid was first reported in 2023 by the UK military magazine, Shephard News, based on unpublished behind-the-scenes documents.
Bain has a sordid and shocking history. In August 2022, the Cabinet Office placed Bain and Company on a ‘blacklist’, preventing it from getting any Cabinet Office contracts. ………………………………………………………………………………………………
In July this year it was confirmed that Bain had shut down its South African consultancy operations, with the Financial Times reporting insiders saying that the company’s local reputation had been destroyed by the scandal.
The carcass of Bain’s South African business would be repurposed as a ‘hub’ to support Bain’s other international work.
These are the types of companies that the UK is poised to mainline into the very DNA of the British military and the British state: Elbit, its parent company one of the most important partners to the IDF in Gaza; and Bain and Company, only recently blacklisted for serious professional misconduct for its role in undermining the fabric of South Africa’s democracy.
The idea that the UK would award this consortium, and these companies, any sort of contract, never mind a 15 year contract of such importance, is an outrage. It must be stopped. https://www.declassifieduk.org/labour-must-not-award-elbit-a-2-billion-military-deal/
Pakistan nuclear weapons, 2025
Bulletin, By Hans M. Kristensen, Matt Korda, Eliana Johns, Mackenzie Knight-Boyle | September 4, 2025
Pakistan continues to slowly modernize its nuclear arsenal with improved and new delivery systems, and a growing fissile material production industry. Analysis of commercial satellite images of construction at Pakistani army garrisons and air force bases shows what appear to be newer launchers and facilities that might be related to Pakistan’s nuclear forces, although authoritative information about Pakistan’s nuclear units is scarce.
We estimate that Pakistan has produced a nuclear weapons stockpile of approximately 170 warheads, which is unchanged since our last estimate in 2023 (see Table 1). The US Defense Intelligence Agency projected in 1999 that Pakistan would have 60 to 80 warheads by 2020 (US Defense Intelligence Agency (1999, 38), but several new weapon systems have been fielded and developed since then, which leads us to a higher estimate. Our estimate comes with considerable uncertainty because neither Pakistan nor other countries publish much information about the Pakistani nuclear arsenal.
With several new delivery systems in development, four plutonium production reactors, and an expanding uranium enrichment infrastructure, Pakistan’s stockpile has the potential to increase further over the next several years. The size of this increase will depend on several factors, including how many nuclear-capable launchers Pakistan plans to deploy, how its nuclear strategy evolves, and how much the Indian nuclear arsenal grows. We estimate that the country’s stockpile could potentially grow to around 200 warheads by the late 2020s. But unless India significantly expands its arsenal or further builds up its conventional forces, it seems reasonable to expect that Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal will not grow significantly, but might level off as its current weapons programs are completed.
………………………………….. Analyzing Pakistan’s nuclear forces is particularly fraught with uncertainty, given the lack of official state-originating data. The Pakistani government has never publicly disclosed the size of its arsenal and does not typically comment on its nuclear doctrine. Unlike some other nuclear-armed states, Pakistan does not regularly publish any official documentation explaining the contours of its nuclear posture or doctrine. Whenever such details emerge in the public discourse, they usually originate from retired officials commenting in their personal capacities. The most regular official source on Pakistani nuclear weapons is the Inter Services Public Relations (ISPR), the media wing of the Pakistan Armed Forces, which publishes regular press releases for missile launches and occasionally couples them with launch videos.
Occasionally, other countries offer official statements or analysis about Pakistan’s nuclear forces. ……………………………………………………………………
Pakistan’s nuclear doctrine
Pakistan has historically maintained a deliberately ambiguous nuclear doctrine, including through refusal to endorse or reject a no-first-use policy.
…………………………..Within its broader philosophy of “credible minimum deterrence,” which seeks to emphasize a defensive and limited but flexible nuclear posture, Pakistan operates under a nuclear doctrine that it calls “full spectrum deterrence.” This posture is aimed mainly at deterring India, which Pakistan identifies as its primary adversary.
…………………………..Pakistan’s nuclear posture—particularly its development and deployment of tactical nuclear weapons—has created considerable concern in other countries, including the United States, which fears that it increases the risk of escalation and lowers the threshold for nuclear use in a military conflict with India.
…………………………..Nuclear security, command-and-control, and crisis management
Over the past decade-and-a-half, the US assessment of nuclear weapons security in Pakistan appears to have changed considerably from confidence to concern, particularly because of the introduction of tactical nuclear weapons in the Pakistani arsenal. ……………………………………………………………………..
2025 India-Pakistan conflict
In May 2025, India and Pakistan engaged in a brief conflict, during which India launched conventional missile strikes against several Pakistani military facilities. The conflict, which lasted days, included an escalatory exchange of fire from both sides following the April 22 terrorist attack in Pahalgam, Indian-administered Kashmir.
In the aftermath of the conflict, the Pakistan Air Force (PAF) and the Military Engineer Services—which conducts construction and maintenance operations for all branches of the Pakistani military—issued a series of public procurement contracts for post-strike repairs at a variety of military bases, indicating which facilities suffered damage due to the conflict (Mishra 2025). ……………………
……………………….One study concluded that although the “mutual possession of nuclear weapons heavily conditioned the response of both sides” and “overt nuclear signaling was lower than in many prior India-Pakistan crises, … the crisis underscores that South Asia is one of the most likely theaters for nuclear war, even if that prospect was not imminent in this instance” (Clary 2025).
Fissile materials, warheads, and missile production
Pakistan has a well-established and diverse fissile material production complex that is expanding. This includes four heavy-water plutonium production reactors at the Khushab Complex, three of which were completed in the past 15 years. ………………………………………….
We estimate that Pakistan currently is producing sufficient fissile material to build 14 to 27 new warheads per year, although we estimate that the actual warhead increase in the stockpile probably averages around 5 to 10 warheads per year.[2]…………………………………………..
Nuclear-capable aircraft and air-delivered weapons…………………………………………………………………………………..
Land-based ballistic missiles…………………………………………………………………………….
Land-based missile garrisons…………………………………………………………………………..
Ground- and sea-launched cruise missiles…………………………………………………………………….. https://thebulletin.org/premium/2025-09/pakistan-nuclear-weapons-2025/?utm_source=ActiveCampaign&utm_medium=email&utm_content=Pakistan%20s%20nuclear%20arsenal&utm_campaign=20250904%20Thursday%20Newsletter%20%28Copy%29
Is Israel quietly expanding its nuclear arsenal? Satellite images raise suspicion.
Given the secrecy of Israel’s programme, it remains difficult to estimate just how many nuclear weapons it possesses. The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists in 2022 put the number at around 90 warheads.
Israel is among nine countries confirmed or believed to have atomic weapons and among just four that have never joined the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
Construction work has intensified on a major new structure at a facility linked to Israel’s long-suspected atomic weapons programme, according to satellite images analysed by experts.
They say it could be a new reactor or a facility to assemble nuclear arms — but secrecy shrouding the programme makes it difficult to know for sure.
The work at the Shimon Peres Negev Nuclear Research Center near the city of Dimona will renew questions about Israel’s widely believed status as the Mideast’s only nuclear-armed state.
It could also draw international criticism, especially since it comes after Israel and the United States bombed nuclear sites across Iran in June over their fears that Tehran could use its enrichment facilities to pursue an atomic weapon.
Among the sites attacked was Iran’s heavy water reactor at Arak. Tehran has all along maintained that its nuclear programme is for civilian use only.
Long hidden secret
Reports on Israeli excavations at the facility, some 90 kilometers (55 miles) south of West Jerusalem, first emerged in 2021.
Then, satellite images only showed workers digging a hole some 150 metres (165 yards) long and 60 metres (65 yards) wide near the site’s original heavy water reactor.
Images taken on July 5 by Planet Labs PBC show intensified construction at the site of the dig. Thick concrete retaining walls seem to be laid at the site, which appears to have multiple floors underground. Cranes loom overhead.
Seven experts who examined the fresh images all said they believed the construction was related to Israel’s long-suspected nuclear weapons programme, given its proximity to the reactor at Dimona, where no civilian power plant exists.
However, they split on what the new construction could be.
Three said the location and size of the area under construction and the fact that it appeared to have multiple floors meant the most likely explanation for the work was the construction of a new heavy water reactor.
Such reactors can produce plutonium and another material key to nuclear weapons.
The other four acknowledged it could be a heavy water reactor but also suggested the work could be related to a new facility for assembling nuclear weapons. They declined to be definitive, given the construction was still in an early stage.
“It’s probably a reactor — that judgement is circumstantial but that’s the nature of these things,” said Jeffrey Lewis, an expert at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, who based his assessment on the images and Dimona’s history.
“It’s very hard to imagine it is anything else.”
Israel does not confirm or deny having atomic weapons, and its government did not respond to requests for comment. The White House, which is Israel’s staunchest ally, also did not respond to requests for comment.
An open secret
There’s no containment dome or other features typically associated with a heavy water reactor now visible at the site. However, one could be added later or a reactor could be designed without one.
Dimona’s current heavy water reactor, which came online in the 1960s, has been operating far longer than most reactors of the same era. That suggests it will need to be replaced or retrofitted soon.
“It’s tall, which you would expect, because the reactor core is going to be pretty tall,” Lewis said. “Based on the location, size and general lack of construction there, it’s more likely a reactor than anything.”
Edwin Lyman, a nuclear expert at the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Union of Concerned Scientists, also said the new construction could be a box-shaped reactor that doesn’t have a visible containment dome, though he acknowledged the lack of transparency made it difficult to be certain.
Israel “doesn’t allow any international inspections or verification of what it’s doing, which forces the public to speculate”, said Lyman.
While details about Dimona remain closely held secrets in Israel, a whistleblower in the 1980s released details and photos of the facility that led experts to conclude that Israel had produced dozens of nuclear warheads.
“If it’s a heavy water reactor, they’re seeking to maintain the capability to produce spent fuel that they then can process to separate plutonium for more nuclear weapons,” said Daryl G. Kimball, the executive director of the Washington-based Arms Control Association.
“Or they are building a facility to maintain their arsenal or build additional warheads.”
Policy of nuclear ambiguity
Israel’s programme is thought to rely on byproducts of a heavy water reactor. Israel, like India and Pakistan, is believed to rely on a heavy water reactor to make its nuclear weapons.
The reactors can be used for scientific purposes, but plutonium — which causes the nuclear chain reaction needed in an atomic bomb — is a byproduct of the process. Tritium is another byproduct and can be used to boost the explosive yield of warheads.
Given the secrecy of Israel’s programme, it remains difficult to estimate just how many nuclear weapons it possesses. The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists in 2022 put the number at around 90 warheads.
Obtaining more tritium to replace decaying material may be the reason for the construction at Dimona, as Lyman noted it decays 5 percent each year.
“If they’re building a new production reactor,” he said, “it doesn’t necessarily mean they’re looking to expand the plutonium they have, but to manufacture tritium”.
Israel is believed to have begun building the nuclear site in the desert in the late 1950s.
Its policy of nuclear ambiguity is thought to have helped deter its enemies.
It is among nine countries confirmed or believed to have atomic weapons and among just four that have never joined the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, a landmark international accord meant to stop the spread of nuclear arms.
That means the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog, has no right to conduct inspections of Dimona.
Asked about the construction, the Vienna-based IAEA reiterated that Israel “is not obligated to provide information about other nuclear facilities in the country” outside of its Soreq research reactor.
Renaming Defense Dept. War Dept. wrong but accurately describes deranged US perpetual war policy
7 September 2025 AIMN Editorial By Walt Zlotow, https://theaimn.net/renaming-defense-dept-war-dept-wrong-but-accurately-describes-deranged-us-perpetual-war-policy/
President Trump’s Executive Order renaming the Department of Defense the Department of War disgraces and dishonours everything America should stand for in the community of nations.
What is that? Most importantly, peace and tranquility in our dealings with the other 192 UN states.
Early on Presidents George Washington and John Quincy Adams set the tone for this wise governing agenda.
Washington, in his Farewell Address on September 19, 1796 warned against foreign entanglements and alliances that could lead to war and jeopardise American independence and prosperity.
Before he was President, then Secretary of State John Quincy Adams advised on July 4, 1821 that America:
“… goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own. She will commend the general cause by the countenance of her voice, and the benignant sympathy of her example. She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom. The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force… She might become the dictatress of the world. She would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit.”
Washington and Adams both spoke when America had a Department of War, but not a Military Industrial Complex such as the one that arose following WWII to wage perpetual war. Tho the US embarked on 80 years of senseless wars and regime change operations worldwide, it sugarcoated its belligerence by renaming the War Department, Defense. The only connection to defense was America’s willingness to intervene, even make war, wherever, whenever it suited America’s ‘defense’ of its unipolar world dominance.
So when Trump decreed it’s no longer defense but war at the Pentagon, he truly reflects our foreign policy enabling Israeli genocide in Gaza, destroying Ukraine to weaken, isolate Russia, preparing for war with China over Taiwan, obliterating a Venezuelan ship to “send a massage”, repeatedly bombing imagined bad guys in Somalia… and on and on.
If America doesn’t succeed in triggering nuclear war first, it would be wise to seek a third name change for the folks working at the Pentagon, CIA and a myriad of other perpetual war facilities. How about a Department of Peace? Then make peace, not war, its governing mission.
1 This Month
26 September – International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons
PLEASE OPPOSE HR 8255 AND S.3639 – bills would accelerate satellite deployment, with no environmental review or safeguards – https://ncstd5li.quorum.us/campaign/169331/
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