nuclear-news

The News That Matters about the Nuclear Industry Fukushima Chernobyl Mayak Three Mile Island Atomic Testing Radiation Isotope

Ecological Justice group explains  impacts of the nuclear project on Alberta

Except from our Ecological Justice group:

The Project Affects Alberta
The Guidelines do not address the scope of impacts to the province.
This nuclear project proposed for Peace River has ramifications for the future of Alberta in that it would lock the province into
● the financial burden of this very expensive energy option with on-going post-operative costs
● the diversion of money and other resources from cleaner, safer, cheaper energy options and grid modernization to rapidly support climate action
● the on-site security risks
● the risk of nuclear reactors as stranded assets
● the risk of the nuclear reactors being diverted to military use
● the long-term storage of low and intermediate radioactive wastes
● the radiologic impacts on life and the environment not only locally but far-reaching should a severe event occur
● the issue of nuclear fuel waste for which no method of containment is known that will isolate it for the timeframe of its inherent risk of chemical and radiological toxicity:
○ Alberta may be required to host a nuclear fuel waste deep geological disposal site with the timeframe of “indefinitely” or
○ Alberta and other provinces may suffer the transportation-related consequences of moving Alberta’s nuclear fuel waste to an out-of-province disposal site
Require the proponent to address the scope of impacts to the province.

August 30, 2025 Posted by | Canada, opposition to nuclear | Leave a comment

PATRICK LAWRENCE: Trump & the Russophobes

There is no faction in Washington on either side of the aisle — if, indeed, any such aisle any longer matters — that does not nurse one or another measure of Russophobic paranoia.

The extent to which Trump’s démarche toward Moscow succeeds will be the extent to which the U.S. can transcend a long, regrettable history and finally embrace the 21st century. 

By Patrick Lawrence, Consortium News, August 25, 2025

There is no saying yet whether Donald Trump will succeed in negotiating the end of the Ukraine war, or a new era of détente between Washington and Moscow, or new security relations between Russia and the West, or cooperation in the Arctic, or all the goodies to come of reopened trade and investment ties.

All this remains to be seen. Trump’s mid–August summit with Vladimir Putin in Anchorage may or may not turn out to be “historic,” a descriptive all presidents in the business of great-power diplomacy long for.

There are all sorts of reasons to harbor doubts at this early moment. Can Trump promise the Russian president peace given the policy cliques, the Deep State, the military-industrial complex, and other such constituencies that have so long and vigorously made certain no such thing breaks out?

Those who craft the Deep State’s subterfuge ops viciously destroyed Trump’s better policy initiatives during his first term — his initial attempt to reconstruct relations with Russia, those imaginative talks — too promising for their own good — with North Korea’s leader. The record suggests we had better brace for the same should Trump and his people do well in negotiations as the weeks — and it will be weeks at the very least — go by.

And so to the question of Trump and his people. Marco Rubio at State, Pete Hegseth at Defense, Steve Witkoff taking time away from his real estate ventures in New York, all subject to the president’s orders, none with any experience in statecraft: Is the Trump regime competent to navigate through a diplomatic process this complex and of this potential consequence?

Let us not count these people out, but it is hard to see it.

And finally to the Russophobia that Trump brought forth as soon as he came to political prominence during the 2016 campaign season. I consider this the most formidable challenge Trump now takes on as he attempts to end a proxy war and bring relations with Russia into a new time.

I say this because Russophobia is about more, much more, than near-term geopolitical strategies and policy choices. This is a question that goes to the ideology that makes America America, to the collective psyche, to Otherness and identity (which are intimately related in the American mind).

It was interesting to hear Trump make reference to the Russiagate rubbish during his post-summit remarks in Anchorage. Here, according to the Kremlin’s transcript, is part of what he had to say as to the disruptive effects of the Russiagate years:

“We had to put up with the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax. He knew it was a hoax, and I knew it was a hoax, but what was done was very criminal, but it made it harder for us to deal as a country in terms of the business and all of the things that we would like to have dealt with. But we will have a good chance when this is over.”

This is fine, true enough so far as it goes. But behind Russiagate there is a century of history — two if you go back to the beginning. Trump may not understand this as he pursues his démarche toward Moscow — almost certainly he doesn’t, actually — but this is the magnitude of his project when viewed in the large. This is the history, in the thought he might accomplish something “historic.”

Can Trump put a long, regrettable past thoroughly into the past, or at least set America on a path such that it may finally embrace the 21st century instead of continuing to fall behind in it?

Of all the questions I pose here, this is by a long way the weightiest.

History’s Ebb & Flow 

This may seem a frivolous line of inquiry given the unrelenting prevalence of anti–Russian fervor abroad among America’s power elites. There is no faction in Washington on either side of the aisle — if, indeed, any such aisle any longer matters — that does not nurse one or another measure of Russophobic paranoia.

But the history of America’s Russophobia is to be read two ways. Animosity toward Russia, from the Czarist Empire to the Soviet Union and now to the Russian Federation, is a sort of basso ostinato in the history of U.S.–Russian relations. But we also find a top-to-bottom ebb and flow among Americans, in policy and popular sentiment alike.

Speaking straight into the poisonous state of U.S.–Russian relations, Putin went to considerable lengths in Anchorage to note the many occasions in the past when Russians and and Americans took harmonious and constructive relations more or less for granted.

This story begins in the first decades of the 19th century, when the United States was but a half-century old and the West began to take note of the modernizations Peter the Great set in motion a hundred years earlier. Here is the ever-perceptive de Tocqueville in the first volume of Democracy in America:

“There are at the present time two great nations in the world, which started from different points, but seem to tend towards the same end. I allude to the Russians and the Americans. Both of them have grown up unnoticed; and whilst the attention of mankind was directed elsewhere, they have suddenly placed themselves in the front rank among the nations, and the world learned their existence and their greatness at almost the same time …. Their starting-point is different, and their courses are not the same; yet each of them seems marked out by the will of Heaven to sway the destinies of half the globe.”

Apposition from the first, then — if not opposition. Indeed, the idea of “the West” as a political construct arose during de Tocqueville’s time precisely in response to the rise of Czarist Russia. It was, thus, a defensive reaction from the first.

Seven decades later America swooned into the first Red Scare in response to the Bolshevik Revolution. And two more decades after that, what? With the World War II alliance against the Axis Powers, F.D.R., clever man, had Americans referring to Stalin as “Uncle Joe.”

Alas, the extraordinary powers of media and propaganda. No sooner was World War II over (and Roosevelt in his grave) than America plunged into the second Red Scare, a.k.a. the McCarthyist 1950s. And after that the détente of the late 1960s and 1970s, and after that Reagan’s “evil empire” nonsense.

After the Soviet Union’s collapse we had the Russia-as-junior-partner years, when the inebriated Boris Yeltsin stood aside while Western capital raped the formidable remains of the Soviet economy. And then to the Putin years. What we live through now would amount to a third Red Scare apart from the fact Russia is no longer Red.

Looked at another way, U.S.–Russian relations are back where they more or less started. “Putin’s Russia,” as the phrase goes, is again America’s great Other, and by easy extension the West’s, just as it was two centuries back. Then as now, the project is to “make Russia great again,” as we might put it; then as now the West drifts into irrational reaction in response to the emergence of a nation of another civilizational tradition.

There is no missing the fungibility inherent in the U.S. stance toward Russia over the years, decades, and centuries — the extent, I mean, to which it is changeable according to changing geopolitical circumstances. It is not merely possible that the reigning Russophobia of our time will at some point pass. History’s lesson is that this is probable — maybe even inevitable.

But one man’s horse-trading and dealmaking will not make this happen, and I would say this is so especially if the man is Donald Trump. History itself will do this work. Its wheel will turn such that America’s alienation from Russia, and by extension the non–West, will prove too costly. This is already the case, providing one is willing to look instead of pretending otherwise.

At a certain point, to put this another way, refusing to accommodate the emergence of the new world order that stares the West in the face as we speak will come at a higher price than accommodating it.

In so many words, Donald Trump proposes an accommodation of just this kind. The extent to which his démarche toward the Russian Federation succeeds will be the extent to which America proves able again to transcend the Russophobia into which it has once more fallen.

Trump may not, once again, understand this, but I don’t see that this matters overmuch. He has taken a step on a path. For now it remains to see how far down America is prepared to go.

Patrick Lawrence, a correspondent abroad for many years, chiefly for the International Herald Tribune, is a columnist, essayist, lecturer and author, most recently of Journalists and Their Shadows, available from Clarity Press or via Amazon.  Other books include Time No Longer: Americans After the American Century. His Twitter account, @thefloutist, has been restored after years of being permanently censored.

August 29, 2025 Posted by | politics international, USA | Leave a comment

Unaudited Power: The Military Budget That Nobody Controls

 August 26, 2025 By Ellen Brown ScheerPost, https://scheerpost.com/2025/08/26/ellen-brown-unaudited-power-the-military-budget-nobody-controls/

The U.S. federal debt has now passed $37 trillion and is growing at the rate of $1 trillion every five months. Interest on the debt exceeds $1 trillion annually, second only to Social Security in the federal budget. The military outlay is also close to $1 trillion, consuming nearly half of the discretionary budget.  

As a sovereign nation, the United States could avoid debt altogether by simply paying for the budget deficit with Treasury-issued “Greenbacks,” as Abraham Lincoln’s government did. But I have written on that before (see here and here), so this article will focus on that other elephant in the room, the Department of Defense.

Under the Constitution, the military budget should not be paid at all, because the Pentagon has never passed an audit. Expenditures of public funds without a public accounting violate Article 1, Section 9, Clause 7of the Constitution, which provides:

“No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law; and a regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and Expenditures of all public Money shall be published from time to time.” 

The Pentagon failed its seventh financial audit in 2024, with 63% of its $4.1 trillion in assets—approximately $2.58 trillion—untracked. From 1998 to 2015, it failed to account for $21 trillion in spending. 

As concerning today as the financial burden is the wielding of secret power. Pres. Dwight Eisenhower warned in his 1961 farewell address, “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”  

Pres. John F. Kennedy echoed that concern, warning in 1961 that “secret societies” and excessive secrecy are “repugnant in a free and open society,” threatening democracy by withholding truth from the public. He warned that excessive concealment, even for national security, undermines democracy by denying citizens the facts needed to hold power accountable. “No expenditure is questioned, no rumor is printed, no secret is revealed,” he said.  If untracked billions fund classified programs, citizens are left powerless, governed by a shadow entity answerable to no one. 

Those concerns persist today. On Aug. 13, 2025, Joe Rogan interviewed U.S. Representative Anna Paulina Luna, who leads a House Oversight Committee focused on government transparency regarding various topics, including UAPs (Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena, formerly UFOs). Luna said the committee had been formed after she and two other congressmen were denied access at Eglin Air Force Base to information on UAPs provided by whistleblowers. The problem, she said, was that Congress was supposed to represent the public and be an investigative body for it, “and you have unelected people operating basically in secrecy. … I think this goes all the way back even to JFK, with how they basically have operated outside of the purview of Congress and basically… have gone rogue ….” 

A Behemoth Without Oversight

The Department of Defense’s $885.7 billion budget for 2025, approved by the House of Representatives, dwarfs the military spending of China ($296 billion), Russia ($84 billion), and the next eight nations combined. Managing $4.1 trillion in assets—from aircraft carriers to secret drones—along with $4.3 trillion in liabilities (e.g. personnel costs and pensions), the federal government’s largest agency oversees a military empire spanning over 4,790 sites worldwide. Yet it operates with minimal oversight. 

The Chief Financial Officers Act of 1990 mandated audits for all federal agencies, but the National Defense Authorization Act of 2018 delayed the Pentagon’s first department-wide audit to 2018 due to its unwieldy size, its decentralized systems, and its outdated software. The DOD has failed every audit since that time. In 2024, it could not account for its $824 billion FY 2024 budget, with 2,500 new audit issues identified. Of 24 reporting entities, only nine received clean opinions, while 15 received disclaimers due to insufficient data. In fact the Government Accountability Office (GAO) has flagged DoD financial management as high-risk for waste, fraud, and abuse ever since 1995. 

As observed in a January 2019 article in Rolling Stone by Matt Taibbi, openly secret budgets were first legalized in 1949 with the passage of the Central Intelligence Agency Act, which exempted that newly created agency from public financial disclosure. The Act stated, “The sums made available to the Agency may be expended without regard to the provisions of law and regulations related to the expenditure of Government funds.” 

The aim of the Chief Financial Officers Act of 1990 was to curb billions of dollars said to be lost each year through fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement of public budgets. Despite the mandated audits for all federal agencies, the DoD – the only major agency without a clean audit – has received $3.9 trillion in congressionally approved funding since 2018. “Every year that members of Congress vote to boost Pentagon spending with no strings attached,” observed federal budgeting expert Lindsay Kosgharian, “they choose to spend untold billions on weapons and war with no accountability.”


The Audit the Pentagon Act of 2023, backed by Sens. Bernie Sanders and Chuck Grassley, proposes docking 0.5–1% of budgets for audit failures, but the measure has not received a vote.

The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), launched with promises to strip waste, fraud, and abuse from federal agencies, has conspicuously sidestepped the Pentagon. A June 2025 article titled “Why DOGE Was Always Doomed: The Pentagon Problem,” points out that the DOGE mission was seriously hampered by the Pentagon’s exemption from auditing:

In FY 2024, total discretionary spending was about $1.6 trillion. Of that, the Pentagon alone received $842 billion. In other words, it got more funding than all other departments combined. You read that right: one (very special) department received more than all the rest put together.

Funds that are not accounted for divert resources from critical needs like troop readiness, healthcare, and infrastructure. Overbilling by contractors enriches corporations while taxpayers foot the bill. And the lack of transparency erodes public confidence, as Americans struggle with domestic priorities. 

The Missing $21 Trillion: Fraud, Waste or Something Worse?

The Pentagon’s audit failures mask not just inefficiency and waste but pervasive fraud and corruption. Between 1998 and 2015, Inspector General reports show that the DoD could not account for $21 trillion in spending—65% of federal spending during that period. For perspective, the entire U.S. GDP in 2015 was $18.2 trillion. In 2023, the agency failed to document 63% of its $3.8 trillion in assets, up from 61% the prior year. A 2015 DoD report identifying $125 billion in administrative waste was suppressed to protect budget increases.

There is plenty of verified waste to support the case for mismanagement. Military contractors, who receive over half of the Pentagon’s budget, are a major culprit. The F-35 program, managed by Lockheed Martin, was reported in 2021 to be $165 billion over budget, with $220 billion in spare parts poorly tracked. A 2023 CBS News investigation found that contractors routinely overcharged by 40–50%, with some markups reaching 4,451%. A 2016 report in the Nation highlighted $640 for a toilet seat and $7,600 for a coffee pot.  

It is no longer even necessary to cover up fraud and corruption by wildly inflated prices. In 2017, former HUD official Catherine Austin Fitts collaborated with Mark Skidmore, an economics professor at Michigan State University, to document the missing $21 trillion in unsupported journal voucher adjustments at the DoD and HUD. In a June 2025 article published in Fitts’ journal The Solari Report titled “Should We Care about Secrecy in Financial Reporting?,” Dr. Skidmore discussed how the government responded to the publication of his research with Fitts. Its response was to immediately eliminate the paper trail leading to its covert financial operations. In particular, “Pentagon officials turned to the Federal Accounting Standards Advisory Board (FASAB) for advice. Several months later, FASAB posted a new document (FASAB 56), which recommended that the government be allowed to misstate and move funds to conceal expenditures if it is deemed necessary to protect national security interests.” 


Fitts remarked, “The White House and Congress just opened a pipeline into the back of the US Treasury, and announced to every private army, mercenary and thug in the world that we are open for business.”

Speculation Run Rampant

In a widely-viewed interview by Tucker Carlson on April 28, 2025, Fitts expressed her belief that the missing trillions had been funneled into classified projects involving advanced technologies, including massive underground bunkers to protect elites from a “near-extinction event;” and that they were using advanced energy systems and hidden transit networks possibly linked to extraterrestrial tech. She discussed “interdimensional intelligence” and a secret space program linked to a “breakaway civilization.” The latter term was coined by UFO researcher Richard Dolan and is defined by Google as “a theoretical, hidden society that operates outside of mainstream civilization with advanced technology, often linked to UFO phenomena and secret space programs.” 

In a Danny Jones interview in May 2025, Fitts alluded to Deep Underground Military Bases (“DUMBs”), perhaps used for “advanced technology or off-world operations.” Existence of these bases was confirmed two decades earlier by whistleblower Philip Schneider, a U.S. government geologist and engineer involved in their construction. In his last presentation in 1995, Schneider said there were 131 of these cities connected underground by mag-lev rail, built at a cost of $17-26 billion each. According to his biographer, Schneider was assassinated in 1996 by a U.S. intelligence agency for disclosing the government cover-up of UFOs and aliens. 

Too over the top? Perhaps, but the Pentagon is so secretive that the public is left to speculate. Are we dealing with a scenario like that in such Hollywood movies as the 1997 film Men in Black, in which hidden forces—human or alien—control our fate?

The Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) contends that no verifiable evidence supports extraterrestrial activity. But other prominent figures support the UFO/UAP narrative. In 2017, the New York Times exposed the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP), said to be a $22 million DoD initiative run by Luis Elizondo investigating UAPs from 2007–2012. 

According to BBC News, Haim Eshed, former head of Israel’s space security program, claimed in a 2020 interview with the Yediot Aharonot newspaper that the U.S. government has an “agreement” with a “Galactic Federation” of extraterrestrials. He alleged aliens have been in contact with the U.S. and Israel, with secret underground bases where they collaborate on experiments. Eshed claimed the United States was on the verge of disclosing this under President Trump but withheld it to avoid “mass hysteria.” The claims were unverified but provocative. 

In recent years, Congress has increased its focus on UAPs, with high-profile hearings in 2022, 2023, and 2024. In 2023, whistleblower David Grusch, a former intelligence officer, testified that the U.S. possesses “non-human origin” craft and “dead pilots,” based on classified briefings. On November 13, 2024, the House Oversight Committee’s hearing, “Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena: Exposing the Truth,” featured testimony from Luis Elizondo, retired Navy Rear Admiral Tim Gallaudet, journalist Michael Shellenberger, and former NASA official Michael Gold, who claimed the U.S. possesses UAP technologies and has harmed personnel in secret retrieval programs. Shellenberger alleged that a covert “Immaculate Constellation” program hides UAP data from Congress.

Some lawmakers, including Rep. Luna and Rep. Tim Burchett, continue to criticize Pentagon secrecy and to push for transparency. In May 2024, Burchett introduced the UAP Transparency Act, requiring the declassification of all UAP-related documents within 270 days. He stated:

This bill isn’t all about finding little green men or flying saucers, it’s about forcing the Pentagon and federal agencies to be transparent with the American people. I’m sick of hearing bureaucrats telling me these things don’t exist while we’ve spent millions of taxpayer dollars on studying them for decades. 

Secrecy Undermines Democracy

With $21 trillion unaccounted for historically, $165 billion in F-35 overruns, and $125 billion in buried waste, the DoD’s financial mismanagement needs urgent reform. Congress is primarily responsible for overseeing the DoD budget, exercising its constitutional “power of the purse” under Article 1 of the U.S. Constitution. So why isn’t it enforcing this mandate? 

The chief excuse given is the need for secrecy for security reasons, but a congressional committee could be given access to the Pentagon’s financial data in closed session in order to exercise public oversight and enforce accountability. Other factors are obviously at play, including political influence, lobbying, campaign contributions from the defense sector, and a lack of penalties for noncompliance. 

To restore accountability, Congress needs to enforce the Audit the Pentagon Act, modernize DoD systems, and investigate contractors profiting from lax oversight. UAP transparency is also critical, whether to debunk myths or uncover truths. 

As taxpayers footing the bill, we are entitled to know not only where our money is being spent but who is really in charge of our government. The Pentagon’s secrecy and lack of accountability could be shielding anything from contractor fraud to UAP programs and alien alliances. If there is information so secret that even our elected representatives don’t have access to it, who does have access? Is there a secret government above the government we know? Without fiscal transparency and accountability, we can no longer call ourselves a democracy, as JFK warned. 

August 28, 2025 Posted by | business and costs, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Why has Donald Trump not spoken out about the famine in Gaza? – Inside Story

26 Aug 2025 Al Jazeera

A global hunger monitor, backed by the United Nations, has declared famine in Gaza City and the surrounding areas. The confirmation that Israel has engineered a man-made catastrophe prompted outrage from many nations, with a notable exception.

Neither the White House nor the US State Department has uttered a word in response. While Israel says it’s ‘an outright lie’, how much longer can the US remain silent? Is that silence an implicit go-ahead for the Israeli military’s large-scale assault on Gaza City and the drip-feeding of aid?

August 27, 2025 Posted by | Gaza, Israel, USA | Leave a comment

Chicago Tribune letters again avoid reality of Ukraine’s impending battlefield defeat

Walt Zlotow, West Suburban Peace Coalition, Glen Ellyn IL 25 Aug 25

It’s understandable the Trib would publish letters promoting further aid in weapons, severe economic sanctions, even NATO troops to enable Ukraine to prevail in their war with Russia. But it is not understandable that all 7 August 25th letters advocating that policy are disconnected from the battlefield reality.

Virtually all historians, political scientists and military realists concur that Ukraine’s military is within months, if not weeks of collapse. They also agree there is no way outside of all out war, likely to go nuclear, to reverse that collapse They understand any peace settlement must include Russia’s 3 security objectives including no NATO for Ukraine, neutrality for Ukraine going forward, and no return of the Ukraine oblasts containing Russian leaning Ukrainians seeking peace and separation from the Kyiv government bent on their destruction.

This alternative, reality based assessment of the war, deserves to be provided to the Trib’s readership. But only publishing readers promoting endless war which simply ensures Ukraine’s battlefield defeat, is not responsible journalism. Trib readers deserve a full range of views; indeed ones more connected to reality.

August 26, 2025 Posted by | media, Ukraine, USA | Leave a comment

Trump plans to make Cold War-era plutonium available for nuclear power

By Timothy Gardner, August 23, 2025, https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/trump-plans-make-cold-war-era-plutonium-available-nuclear-power-2025-08-22/

  • Summary
  • Radioactive, fissile plutonium from Cold War a headache for US
  • US wants to halt disposal of it, use 20 metric tons for fuel
  • Trump administration sees it as potential fuel for new reactors
  • Critic points out similar program failed due to costs

The Trump administration plans to make available about 20 metric tons of Cold War-era plutonium from dismantled nuclear warheads to U.S. power companies as a potential fuel for reactors, according to a source familiar with the matter and a draft memo outlining the plan.

Plutonium has previously only been converted to fuel for commercial U.S. reactors in short-lived tests. The plan would follow through on an executive order signed by President Donald Trump in May ordering the government to halt much of its existing program to dilute and dispose of surplus plutonium, and instead provide it as a fuel for advanced nuclear technologies.

The Department of Energy, or DOE, plans to announce in coming days it will seek proposals from industry, said the source who spoke on the condition of anonymity. The source cautioned that because the plan is still a draft, its final details could change pending further discussions.

The plutonium would be offered to industry at little to no cost — with a catch. Industry will be responsible for costs of transportation, designing, building, and decommissioning DOE-authorized facilities to recycle, process and manufacture the fuel, the memo said.

The details on the volume of the plutonium, industry’s responsibilities in the plan and the potential timing of a U.S. announcement, have not been previously reported. The 20 metric tons would be drawn from a larger, 34-metric-ton stockpile of weapons-grade plutonium that the United States had previously committed to dispose of under a non-proliferation agreement with Russia in 2000.

The Department of Energy did not confirm or deny the Reuters reporting, saying only that the department is “evaluating a variety of strategies to build and strengthen domestic supply chains for nuclear fuel, including plutonium,” as directed by Trump’s orders.

Boosting the U.S. power industry is a policy priority for the Trump administration as U.S. electricity demand rises for the first time in two decades on the boom in data centers needed for artificial intelligence.

The idea of using surplus plutonium for fuel has raised concerns among nuclear safety experts who argue a previous similar effort failed.

Under the 2000 agreement, the plutonium was initially planned to be converted to mixed oxide fuel, or MOX, to run in nuclear power plants. But in 2018, the first Trump administration killed the contract for a MOX project that it said would have cost more than $50 billion.

The U.S. Energy Department holds surplus plutonium at heavily guarded weapons facilities including Savannah River in South Carolina, Pantex in Texas, and Los Alamos in New Mexico. Plutonium has a half-life of 24,000 years and must be handled with protective gear.

Until Trump’s May order, the U.S. program to dispose of the plutonium has involved blending it with an inert material and storing it in an experimental underground storage site called the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico.

The Energy Department has estimated that burying the plutonium would cost $20 billion.

“Trying to convert this material into reactor fuel is insanity. It would entail trying to repeat the disastrous MOX fuel program and hoping for a different result,” said Edwin Lyman, a nuclear physicist at the Union of Concerned Scientists.

“The excess plutonium is a dangerous waste product and DOE should stick to the safer, more secure and far cheaper plan to dilute and directly dispose of it in WIPP.”

Reporting by Timothy Gardner; Editing by Richard Valdmanis and Lisa Shumaker

August 25, 2025 Posted by | - plutonium, USA | Leave a comment

Mile High City sparks fury over plan for one of America’s busiest airports

Daily Mail, By ALYSSA GUZMAN, US NEWS REPORTER, 24 August 2025 

Bosses at one of America’s busiest airports have sparked fury by unveiling controversial plans to explore using nuclear energy.

Leaders at Denver International Airport in Colorado made the announcement earlier this month, sparking an immediate backlash from locals who claim they were never consulted.

The airport has since been forced to pause its plans for a feasibility study following the outcry.

Councilwoman Stacie Gilmore, who represents District 11, said the issue was never discussed with her constituents, who have questions about safety and nuclear waste. 

‘It never came up,’ she told Daily Mail. ‘Denver International Airport is trying to put the cart before the horse, and they got called out by the community.’

The airport was planning to pay up to $1.25million for a six to 12-month study to determine if nuclear power is viable for the airport long-term, what are the risks, and how much it would cost, among other things.

But Gilmore said her constituents are unequivocally opposed and highlighted that the proposed nuclear reactor is a relatively new technology which would be located near the two most racially diverse populations in the city and county of Denver.

‘People don’t want something that produces radioactive waste – something that we currently don’t have a way to even store it – in a community of color,’ Gilmore added.

She called Denver Airport CEO Phil Washington’s ‘rushed’ plan ‘half-baked’.

But more than that, she said the airport hasn’t reached out the community to hear their concerns, which include, the heightened risk for cancers, air and noise pollution, and radioactive chemicals being nearby, among others. ……………………………………………………………….

This is brand new technology that nobody really knows long-term issues with,’ she told Daily Mail. ‘That’s irresponsible.’ 

Denver is the third busiest airport in the US and the sixth worldwide. It handles 80million passengers a year and is estimated to see more than 120million by 2045. 

The city is hoping to find a more sustainable way to generate electricity to become ‘energy independent’ and to have the ‘greenest airport in the world,’ a press release stated. ………………………….

small reactors are still in the development stage in the US and it could be up to a decade before operations begin. 

Another drawback to nuclear power is that waste is stored on site as the US does not have a national disposal site. …………………… https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15015601/denver-international-airport-fury-nuclear-power-busy.html

August 25, 2025 Posted by | safety, USA | Leave a comment

Workers who developed cancer while building America’s nuclear weapons struggle to make medical claims after Trump cuts

Unless the Trump administration chooses to renew the compensation program former nuclear weapons employees who are hoping to receive assistance with their medical payments will no longer have the opportunity.

Ariana Baio, New York, Friday 22 August 2025, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/nuclear-facility-cancer-government-compensation-trump-b2812678.html

Former government employees who contracted cancers while working on America’s nuclear weapons are unable to get the government to review their medical claims in order to obtain compensation after the administration made rollbacks.

The Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, part of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is composed of doctors, nuclear experts, former nuclear weapon employees, and others, who dedicate their time to understanding if a specific ailment is tied to a worker’s exposure to radiation and advising the Department of Health and Human Services about potential compensation.

Their findings help determine whether former nuclear employees at U.S. facilities qualify for government compensation.

But the board has been effectively shut down because of President Donald Trump’s plan to reduce the size of the federal government and streamline processes.

That means those including Steve Hicks are left in limbo. The 70-year-old, who spent 34 years working as a nuclear mechanist at the Y-12 National Security Complex, which enriched uranium for the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, is battling skin cancer and seeking compensation.

“I made a good living there, but I am not happy that I am this sick,” Hicks told Reuters in an interview published Friday. “And there are people who worked there that are sicker than me.”

Hicks is one of the thousands of former nuclear employees who suffer from cancers associated with radiation exposure.

He previously had kidney cancer, which is one of the 22 cancers the government recognizes, and provides a $150,000 lump-sump payment and medical expense compensation.

But skin cancer is not on that list.

Hicks has spent a lot of time petitioning the government to provide coverage for his skin cancer treatment and for them to add the cancer to the “Special Exposure Cohort” which are cancers the government does compensate.

The “Special Exposure Cohort” was established by a congressional act in 2000, to compensate former nuclear weapons workers who were diagnosed with cancer due to high radiation exposure. To qualify, an employee must have worked at least 250 days, before February 1992, at three gaseous diffusion plants in Kentucky, Ohio, or Tennessee and have one of the 22 cancers.

But to add another cancerto the list is an extremely arduous process and can take years.

When it was first established, Congress had 13 cancers on the list and have added to it over the years through the petition process.

“I’ve contacted politicians and the White House and haven’t heard anything back,” Hicks told Reuters.

But the process has now become virtually impossible because the board has been inactive since the start of the Trump administration.

The Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health was in the process of reviewing eight petitions from former nuclear workers when HHS suspended its activities in January.

The board is supposed to meet six times per year, according to law. But its 10 members told Reuters that it has not met since December 2024.

“Meetings of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health are currently paused due to outstanding administrative requirements, which the program is actively working to resolve,” a CDC spokesperson told Reuters.

The Independent has asked the CDC for comment.

As of last year, the U.S. had given $25 billion in compensation and medical benefits to the more than 100,000 atomic weapons workers who made claims, according to the Department of Energy.

But that could end for good soon because it has a statute expiration of September 2025.

Unless the Trump administration chooses to renew the compensation program those former nuclear weapons employees who are hoping to receive assistance with their medical payments will no longer have the opportunity. 

August 25, 2025 Posted by | health, USA | Leave a comment

Western Media Manufactured Consent for Israel’s Murder of Palestinian Journalists.

The BBC (8/11/25) wrote, “More than 61,000 people have been killed in Gaza since the Israeli military operation began, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.” Western media have taken it upon themselves to seemingly rename the Gaza Health Ministry (GHM) in order to cast doubt on the extent of Israel’s atrocities.

Emma Lucia Llano, 22 Aug 25, https://fair.org/home/western-media-manufactured-consent-for-israels-murder-of-palestinian-journalists/

Israel’s targeted assassination of six Palestinian media members in the Gaza Strip on August 10 sent shockwaves through the journalism community. Though the murder of journalists has been a common tool of the Israeli’s government’s suppression of information coming out of Gaza, the loss of Al Jazeera‘s Anas al-Sharif was particularly harrowing.

Many of us had been moved by al-Sharif’s heart-wrenching coverage, from watching him remove his press vest in relief when a ceasefire was announced (1/19/25), to seeing a languid al-Sharif reporting on the famine (7/21/25) as people fainted around him. “Keep going, Anas, don’t stop,” said a voice off-camera. “You are our voice.”

Three of the victims were al-Sharif’s colleagues at Al Jazeera, one of the few media outlets that was able to keep journalists reporting in Gaza despite Israel’s blockade. As millions around the world grieved not just for al-Sharif but for his colleagues Mohammed Qreiqeh, Mohammed Noufal and Ibrahim Zaher, and freelancers Moamen Aliwa and Mohammad al-Khaldi, we were also gravely concerned about the vacuum their murders created of on-the-ground coverage of the genocide.

Establishment media, however, used these courageous journalists’ murders as an opportunity to continue parroting the same Zionist talking points that contributed to manufacturing consent for their killings. FAIR looked at 15 different news outlets’ initial coverage of the murders: the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox, BBC, Politico, Newsweek, Associated Press and Reuters.

We found that they overwhelmingly centered Israel’s narrative, attempted to delegitimize pro-Palestinian sources, and failed to contextualize the killings within the larger context of the genocide.

Prioritizing Israel’s pretext

All of the articles mentioned Israel’s allegation that al-Sharif was a member of Hamas posing as a journalist, a claim that the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), the Foreign Press Association and the United Nations have all found to be baseless.

Four of the 15 articles (New York Times, 8/10/25; NBC, 8/10/25; Fox, 8/11/25; Wall Street Journal, 8/11/25) mentioned the allegations in either the headline or subhead. “Israel Kills Al Jazeera Journalists in Airstrike, Claiming One Worked for Hamas,” was NBC‘s headline, with Israel’s smear that al-Sharif “posed as a journalist” in the subhead. Fox offered “Israel Says Al Jazeera Journalist Killed in Airstrike Was Head of Hamas ‘Terrorist Cell.’”

Reuters’ original headline (8/11/25) was “Israel Kills Al Jazeera Journalist It Says Was Hamas Leader,” only later changed to “Israel Strike Kills Al Jazeera Journalists in Gaza.”

Al-Sharif had been targeted and smeared by the Israeli Defense Forces for months prior to his murder, and had written a statement in anticipation of his killing. “If these words reach you, know that Israel has succeeded in killing me and silencing my voice,” he wrote. He asked the world to continue fighting for justice in Palestine: “Do not forget Gaza.”

Six of the articles (ABC, 8/11/25; BBC, 8/11/25; New York Times, 8/10/25; NBC, 8/10/25; Fox, 8/11/25; Wall Street Journal, 8/11/25) completely omitted references to or quotes from al-Sharif’s final statement. Of those six articles, the New York Times, BBC, NBC and Fox did include quotes from Israeli government representatives—perplexingly choosing to prioritize the voices of al-Sharif’s killers over his own.

Coverage by the Wall Street Journal and New York Times devoted the most space to advancing Israel’s pretext for the killings. The Journal’s Anat Peled dedicated the first three paragraphs of her article to detailing al-Sharif’s supposed Hamas affiliation. Ephrat Livni of the Times also spent three paragraphs on the bogus allegations, allowing only one paragraph for a rebuttal from Al Jazeera and CPJ.

Every article except the ones from the New York Times (8/10/25) and Fox (8/11/25) cited the historically high number of Palestinian journalists that have been killed since October 7, 2023. The death toll currently stands at 192, according to the CPJ. However, only four articles (ABC, 8/11/25; CNN, 8/10/25; Politico, 8/11/25; Wall Street Journal, 8/11/25) listed Israel as the primary perpetrator of these murders. More typically, the AP (8/11/25) wrote that “at least 192 journalists have been killed since Israel’s war in Gaza began,” leaving the identities of both these journalists and their killers unmentioned.

Six (ABC, 8/11/25; BBC, 8/11/25; Newsweek, 8/10/25; Fox, 8/11/25; CBS, 8/11/25; Wall Street Journal, 8/11/25; LA Times, 8/11/25) of the 15 articles failed to mention Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and none mentioned the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant against him for war crimes and crimes against humanity, including murder and intentionally directing attacks against a civilian population.

Critically, only two articles (Wall Street Journal, 8/11/25; Washington Post, 8/11/25) even noted the fact that the other five slain journalists had not been accused of belonging to Hamas. With this omission, the other outlets accepted and transmitted to audiences Israel’s premise that any number of bystanders can legitimately be killed in order to target a supposed Hamas member.

Unnecessary qualifiers

A common practice for Western media has been the use of unnecessary qualifiers to delegitimize information that comes from Palestinian sources. The coverage of al-Sharif’s assassination was no exception.

The BBC (8/11/25) wrote, “More than 61,000 people have been killed in Gaza since the Israeli military operation began, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.” Western media have taken it upon themselves to seemingly rename the Gaza Health Ministry (GHM) in order to cast doubt on the extent of Israel’s atrocities.  They rarely note that a Lancet study (2/8/25) has found that the death toll could be up to 40% higher than what the GHM is reporting. The New York Times (8/10/25) and Reuters (8/11/25) also utilized “Hamas-run” to describe figures from the Gazan government.

These outlets also showed a clear bias as to how they characterize casualties. The New York Times (8/10/25), when reporting on the death toll in Gaza, wrote that the GHM doesn’t “distinguish between civilians and combatants.” Later on, the Times reported on Israeli deaths—and failed to distinguish between Israeli civilian and combatant deaths.

The implication is that some Palestinian deaths might be considered to be of lesser importance, or even justified, based on victims’ potential “combatant” status. Israeli deaths, meanwhile, are to be counted simply as human beings. The Washington Post (8/11/25) exhibited the same double standard in its reporting.

NBC (8/10/25) wrote, “Many of the targets of [the October 7] attacks were civilians, including people attending a music festival.” When reporting Palestinian deaths, NBC made no mention that over half of those killed by Israel have been women, children and the elderly. A more recent investigation found that civilians make up 83% of deaths, according to the IDF’s own data. The report also didn’t describe what Palestinian victims might have been doing when they were killed, such as the almost 1,400 who have been shot while seeking aid.

In addition to the usual rhetoric, eight of the 15 articles cast doubt on Al Jazeera by repeatedly mentioning its ownership by the Qatari government. (Qatar, like Israel, is one of 20 countries worldwide officially designated as a “major non-NATO ally” by the United States.) Three of the articles (New York Times, 8/10/25; Wall Street Journal, 8/11/25; LA Times, 8/11/25) mention the Israeli government’s adversarial relationship with Al Jazeera, with the New York Times and the Journal dedicating several paragraphs to the outlet’s alleged ties to Hamas as the presumed basis for the conflict, rather than Al Jazeera‘s critical coverage of Israeli actions.

False equivalences

Only three of the articles use the word “famine” (Financial Times, 8/10/25; CNN, 8/10/25; Newsweek, 8/10/25), and only the Financial Times mentions the word outside of quotes. Reuters (8/11/25) and the Wall Street Journal (8/11/25) called the situation “a hunger crisis” and “a humanitarian crisis that has pushed many Palestinians toward starvation,” respectively.

Media outlets continue to push the narrative that this so-called conflict began less than two years ago, as when NBC (8/10/25) wrote, “Israel launched the offensive in Gaza, targeting Hamas, after the Hamas-led terror attacks against Israel on October 7, 2023.”

Though the rate of killing greatly escalated after the October 7 operation, Israeli violence against Palestinians goes back to before the founding of the state, as many historians have carefully explained. In the decades immediately prior to the Hamas operation, the Israeli human rights group B’tselem counts more than 10,000 Palestinians killed by Israeli forces between September 2000 and September 2023—most of them noncombatants, over 2,400 of them children under 18. (Over the same period, some 1,300 Israelis—civilians and military—were killed by Palestinians.)

The Financial Times (8/10/25) described the ongoing genocide as “triggered” by the October 7 attacks, as if the al-Aqsa Flood operation were a random act of violence unrelated to the apartheid system that Israel imposes on Palestinians. The BBC (8/11/25) described Israeli violence as a “response to the Hamas-led attack,” completely erasing Israel’s history of occupation and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians that long precedes the existence of Hamas. Obscuring this sort of context is part of the motivation for Israel’s systematic murder of Palestinian journalists, including al-Sharif and his colleagues.

August 24, 2025 Posted by | Israel, media, USA | Leave a comment

How did cs137, a fission product get into the Indonesian shipping container?

Dennis LENEVEU, 22 Aug 25,

Re: [Nuclear Waste Watch] US FDA guidance on health impacts of cesium exposure.

 Indonesia has only research reactors. If the cs137 contamination came from these small reactors what about all the large reactors such as CANDUs that have continual measured stack releases of beta gamma particulate that would contain cs137 that is volatile?

CANDUs emit large amounts of carbon 14 that has been measured at elevated levels in tree rings around Pickering. Cs137 would also be expected to be in tree rings wood. Wood is used as shipping containers and many other uses such as furniture and interior housing lumber and wood.

Both carbon 14 and cs147 are known to off gass. C14 is particularly a problem being a beta emitter that would never be measured. Cs137 is a gamma emitter that is easily measured with a Geiger counter. Carbon 14 off gassing has been documented in the Bruce low and intermediate level waste facility but is not routinely measured.

Huge amounts of carbon 14 has been deposited around reactors for years. Carbon14 accumulates in the biosphere. With a half life of 5730 years it’s all still around gradually building up in the environment. The stack releases allowed for reactors are based on airborne exposure only. The carbon 14 is greatly dispersed in the air but settles out and deposits in the environment. Gradual bioaccumulation is ignored in regulations for emission standards. 

August 24, 2025 Posted by | Canada, environment, Indonesia | Leave a comment

The Trump Administration’s Halt on Medical Evacuations From Gaza Is a Death Sentence for Palestinian Children

 August 21, 2025 , By Bilal Irfan and Alyssa Seliga / Mondoweiss, https://mondoweiss.net/2025/08/the-trump-administrations-halt-on-medical-evacuations-from-gaza-is-a-death-sentence-for-palestinian-children/

The Trump administration’s decision to halt all visitor visas for Palestinians from Gaza, which came after pressure from right-wing activists, will be a death sentence for children who require life-saving medical treatment.

The U.S. State Department’s decision this weekend to halt all visitor visas for people from Gaza, which includes the medical-humanitarian visas that have brought injured children to American hospitals, will cost Palestinian lives. Officials say this process will be subject to a “full and thorough review”. For a child with infected burns or a deep trauma wound, a pause is a verdict on their life. The freeze did not arise from new intelligence or any novel identification of problems in the temporary visitor visa pathway. It followed a social-media panic with the circulation of mischaracterized videos of injured children arriving under the care of a U.S. nonprofit being labeled as a “security threat,” rhetoric amplified by political allies. The State Department then announced it was stopping visas while it re-examines procedures.

The racism and misinformation at the heart of that panic deserve naming. Some have labeled the process of evacuating children with amputations and burns as being potentially linked to terrorism and even characterized their joyful cries as “jihadi chants.” That is textbook dehumanization: take a population of wounded kids and code them as a threat to justify exclusion. Many have commented on the chain reaction from such posts to the administrative action. The line from a viral smear to a federal policy that blocks chemotherapy, skin grafts, or prosthetics for children should shame us, and the speed with which it occurred. 


It also wildly overstates the scale of what has actually happened. In total, many of the NGOs running these U.S. transfers report a few dozen total children to date, not a “flood”. Individual city stories have been about twos and threes: a pair treated in Dallas; several children welcomed in Boston. This is the opposite of a large-scale pipeline; it’s a narrow, highly vetted corridor that exists because Gaza’s health system has been shattered.

To understand how few make it here, you have to understand the pathway. First, a physician in Gaza refers a child for care that no longer exists at home. The case goes to a Ministry of Health committee, then to the World Health Organization (WHO) for medical triage. Only after a receiving hospital issues a formal acceptance, often after weeks of back-and-forth with surgeons, translated records, and imaging, does the family usually even begin the paper chase: passports, exit permissions from the Israeli military’s Coordinator for Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), Jordanian clearances when the bridge route is used, U.S. visa appointments, and finally a WHO-escorted convoy. Each step is a separate queue with its own failures and reversals; a single “not yet” in any queue can kill the case. 

The numbers give us a picture of why this corridor matters. According to WHO and OCHA, as of mid-August more than 14,800 people in Gaza need urgent medical evacuation outside the Strip. Since October 2023, about 7,560 patients, including roughly 5,248 children, have been medically evacuated abroad, with most of those transfers occurring before Israel’s closure of Rafah last year made departures far rarer and slower – in fact, a 92% decrease was recorded in successful evacuations thereafter. On August 13, the WHO managed to move 38 patients, 32 of them children, to care options in Belgium, Italy, and Türkiye. Such operations are far smaller than the need. Pausing the U.S. share of that global effort may look like a minor adjustment from Washington, yet for an injured child in Gaza, it reads as a door slammed shut – and possibly a death sentence. 

American hospitals have long accepted international charity cases. Pediatric centers have taken on many cases from around the world, because these are areas where some U.S. teams are among the best in the world and where outcomes can be life-changing and transformative. Now, it is only anti-Palestinian racism and Islamophobia that are preventing U.S. hospitals from playing a similar role with children from Gaza. Other countries and regions have been accepting far more cases than the United States. Since October 2023, the top five referral destinations have been Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Turkey, and EU countries. The cases include children with trauma wounds, patients with cancer, congenital anomalies, cardiovascular issues, and even ophthalmology-related needs. 

Behind every statistic is a child and a clock. We have seen and heard of many such cases. For example, Fatima (anonymized name for safety), a child with multiple burn injuries, cleared one hurdle after another: hospital acceptance in the U.S., COGAT approval, a slot on a convoy list. Starvation and infection outpaced the paperwork. 

 She died just days ago, after being pushed from one evacuation list date to another as her body gave way. Another girl whose cases moved with unusual speed from referral to hospital acceptance to even getting family clearances was now seeking an expedited passport to submit her DS-160s when the U.S. freeze hit. Try explaining to her mother that a stranger’s tweet now stands between her child and a reconstructive surgeon. 

And yet, these are not isolated incidents or tragedies. Gaza’s health system has been bombed, besieged, and starved into dysfunction. Key Palestinian medical specialists have been killed or abducted by the Israeli military, and hospitals where care could have been provided have been repeatedly attacked. That is why children who could once be treated locally now need referrals abroad for prosthetics, complex orthopedics, neurosurgery, oncologic care, and skin reconstruction. The pathway is not some loophole, rather it is one of the only viable medical options for these children. Prior to the current genocide, 50-100 patients were leaving Gaza daily for medical treatment abroad. 

The pathway is, in fact, fraught with ethical dilemmas. Children are frequently separated from their caregivers or loved ones, and families are separated or torn apart as some relatives are denied exit approval (often men) by Israel, leaving others to stay behind. We have met such families and children who have come to the U.S., have heard from their stories and the trauma they have endured – the physical scars and the psychological ones – and the ones that cannot even be named. 

What should happen now is simple. First, immediately reinstate the processing of medical-humanitarian visas for children and their companions. Second, we should push towards affirming the right of return for these children – many families fear never being able to return to Gaza after accepting treatment abroad, with some even choosing to stay in Gaza out of such fears. Third, restoration of medical corridors for Palestinian patients in Gaza to occupied East Jerusalem and the wider occupied West Bank, so that they do not need to leave their country and homeland just for treatment if it is available. Finally, stop letting demagogues dictate whether a Palestinian child gets to live. The moral bar here is not high.

How sad it is that the government in Washington can be spurred by a bad-faith tweet to close a lifeline for children, any shred of decency as Americans should compel us to open it.

August 23, 2025 Posted by | Gaza, USA | Leave a comment

Jeffrey Sachs: The US Can End the Gaza Genocide Now

 August 21, 2025, By Jeffrey D. Sachs and Sybil Fares / Common Dreams, https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/how-to-end-gaza-genocide

President Donald Trump wants a Nobel Peace Prize, and his efforts toward peace in Ukraine, if successful, could possibly help him earn one—but only if he also ends US complicity in the ongoing genocide in Gaza. Under Trump, as under former President Joe Biden, the US has served as Israel’s partner in mass murder, annexation, starvation, and the escalating torment of millions of Palestinians. The genocide can, and will, stop if Trump wills it. So far he has not.

Israel is committing genocide—everyone knows it, even its staunchest defenders. The Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem has recently made a poignant acknowledgment of “Our Genocide.” In Foreign Affairs, former U.S. Ambassador to Israel Jack Lew recently admitted that extremist parties in Netanyahu’s government openly aim to starve Palestinians in Gaza. Lew frames his piece as praise for the former Biden administration (and for himself) for their supposedly valiant efforts to prevent mass starvation by pressuring Israel to allow minimal food entry, while blaming Trump for easing that pressure.

Yet the actual importance of the piece is that an ardent Zionist insider certifies the genocidal agenda sustaining Netanyahu’s rule. Lew recounts that in the aftermath of October 7, Israelis frequently pledged that “not a drop of water, not a drop of milk, and not a drop of fuel will go from Israel to Gaza,” a stance that still shapes Israel’s cabinet policy. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) can use Lew’s article as confirmation of Israel’s genocidal intent.

The genocide in Gaza, coupled with the annexation in the West Bank, aims to fulfill the Likud vision of a Greater Israel that exercises territorial control between the Sea and Jordan. This will destroy any possibility of a Palestinian state, and any possibility of peace. Indeed, Bezalel Smotrich, the extremist minister of finance and minister in the ministry of defense, recently vowed to “permanently bury the idea of a Palestinian state” while the Knesset has recently called for annexation of the occupied West Bank.

The US aids and protects Israel every day in these horrific crimes against the Palestinian people. The US provides billions of dollars in military support, goes to war alongside Israel, and offers diplomatic cover for Israel’s crimes against humanity. The vacuous mantra that “Israel has the right to defend itself” is the US pat excuse for Israel’s mass murder and starvation of innocent civilians.

Generations of historians, psychologists, sociologists, philosophers, and inquiring minds will ask how the descendants and co‑religionists of the Jews murdered by Hitler’s genocidal regime came to become genocidaires. Two factors, deeply intertwined, come to the fore.

First, the Nazi Holocaust lent credence among Jews to the Zionist claim that only a state with overwhelming military power and ready to use it can protect the Jewish people. For these militarists, every Arab country opposed to Israel’s ongoing occupation of Palestine became a dire foe to be crushed by war. This is Netanyahu’s doctrine of violence, which was first unveiled in the Clean Break strategy, and which has produced nonstop Israeli mobilization and war, and a society now gripped by implacable hatred even of innocent women and children in Palestine, Lebanon, and Syria. Netanyahu has dragged the US into countless devastating and futile wars out of Netanyahu’s blindness to the reality that only diplomacy, not war, can achieve Israel’s security.

Second, this non-stop resort to violence reignited a dormant strain of Biblical Judaism, notably based on the Book of Joshua, which presents God’s covenant with Abraham as justification for genocides committed in conquering the Promised Land. Ancient zealotry of this kind, and the belief that God would redeem his chosen people through violence, fueled suicidal revolts against the Roman Empire between 66 and 135 AD. Whether the genocides in the Book of Joshua ever occurred (probably not ) is beside the point. For today’s zealots, the license to commit genocide is vivid, immediate, and biblically ordained.

Aware of the danger of self-destructive zealotry, the rabbis who shaped the Babylonian Talmud proscribed Jews from attempting to return en masse to the promised land (Ketubot 111a). They taught that Jews should live in their own communities and fulfill God’s commandments where they are, rather than seeking to recapture a land from which they had been exiled following decades of suicidal revolt.

Whatever the fundamental reasons for Israel’s murderous turn, Israel’s survival among nations is at risk today as it has become a pariah state. For the first time in history, Israel’s Western allies have repudiated Israel’s violent ways. France, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada have each pledged to formally recognize the State of Palestine at the upcoming UN General Assembly in September. These countries will finally join the will of the overwhelming global majority in recognizing that the two-state solution, enshrined in international law, is the true guarantor of peace.

The majority of the American people, are rightly revulsed by Israel’s brutality and are also turning their support massively to the Palestinian cause. In a new Reuters poll released today, 58% of Americans now believe that the UN should recognize the State of Palestine, against just 32% who oppose that. American politicians will surely note the change, at Israel’s peril, unless the two-state solution is rapidly implemented. (Logical arguments can also be given for a peaceful one-state, bi-national solution, but this alternative has essentially no backing among UN member states and no basis in the international law regarding the Israel-Palestine conflict that has developed over more than seven decades.)

This Israeli government will not change course on its own. Only the Trump administration can end the genocide through a comprehensive settlement agreed by the world’s nations at the UN Security Council and UN General Assembly. The solution is to stop the genocide, make peace, and salvage Israel’s standing in the world by creating a Palestinian state alongside Israel on the June 4, 1967 borders.

Trump must force Israel to see reality: that Israel cannot continue to rule over the Palestinian people, murder them, starve them, and ethnically cleanse them. For decades, the entire Arab and Islamic world has supported the two-state solution, and advocated to normalize relations with Israel and guarantee security for the entire region. This solution is in full accordance with international law, and was again espoused clearly by the UN General Assembly in the NY Declaration last month at the conclusion of the United Nations High-Level International Conference on the Peaceful Settlement of the Question of Palestine and the Implementation of the Two-State Solution (July 29, 2025).

Trump has come to understand that to save Ukraine, he must force it to see reality: that NATO cannot expand to Ukraine as that would directly threaten Russia’s own security. In the same way, Trump must force Israel to see reality: that Israel cannot continue to rule over the Palestinian people, murder them, starve them, and ethnically cleanse them. The two-state solution thereby saves both Palestine and Israel.

An immediate UN Security Council vote to grant Palestine permanent membership in the UN next month would put an end to Israel’s zealous delusions of permanent control over Palestine, as well as its reckless territorial ambitions in Lebanon and Syria. The focus of the crisis would then shift to immediate and practical issues: how to disarm non-state actors within the framework of the new state and regional peace, how to enable mutual security for Israel and Palestine, how to empower the Palestinians to govern effectively, how to finance the reconstruction, and how to provide urgent humanitarian assistance to a starving population.

Trump can make this happen at the UN in September. The US, and only the US, has vetoed the permanent membership of Palestine in the UN. The other members of the UN Security Council have already signalled their support.
Peace in the Middle East is possible now—and there is no time to lose.

August 23, 2025 Posted by | Gaza, politics, USA | Leave a comment

LANL Silences Public and Tribal Voices While Pushing Radioactive Tritium Venting

This week’s so-called public meeting about the proposed venting of radioactive tritium into the air from Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) showed once again how LANL silences communities while fast-tracking nuclear weapons projects.

In-person attendees were allowed three minutes to speak. Over 100 online participants—including many land-based community members who were not able to travel to the meeting in Los Alamos for health, distance or work reasons—were blindsided to find they were barred from giving verbal comments and limited to submitting just one emailed question. LANL gave no prior notice of this change.

Marissa Naranjo, with Honor Our Pueblo Existence, said, “This is not meaningful participation. It is deliberate exclusion.”  https://shuffle.do/projects/honor-our-pueblo-existance-h-o-p-e

The stakes could not be higher. Tritium —used in nuclear weapons development — is a radioactive gas that travels quickly through air, water, soil, and food. It can cause cancer, genetic damage, and health impacts across generations.  LANL insists venting is the only safe path forward—but their own “independent” technical review – one of four requirements ordered by the New Mexico Environment Department before it would review LANL’s request – exposed that claim as problematic.

August 23, 2025 Posted by | environment, USA | Leave a comment

Angry Denver International Airport neighbors quash nuclear power idea in 48 hours flat.

Why waste money on an unproven, enormously expensive, extremely toxic nuclear power plant, with no place in the nation accepting the eventual radioactive waste, in a spot with hundreds of thousands of neighbors and 100 million visiting passengers a year? 

Airport shelves $1.5 million study of “modular” nuclear power after local district uproar.

Michael Booth The ColoradoSun, Aug 20, 2025

If you have a snazzy new idea for miniature nuclear power plants in the middle of Denver International Airport that could be forced to store their spent nuclear waste onsite for centuries, maybe check with the neighbors first? 

Denver’s mayor and airport chief touted a whiz-bang, $1.5 million exploratory study of small, “modular” nuclear power plants buried underground somewhere on DIA property to fuel decades of economic and passenger growth. The rah-rah news conference happened to be on a Wednesday that was also the 80th anniversary of the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima. 

By that Friday, the study was back on the shelf, not to be revisited until city and airport officials completed some of the explaining they needed to do for local city council members and residents, who said they’d never been consulted on the (big) (radioactive) idea. 

“I’m proud to say that community advocacy still works, but you really have to be within the community,” said City Council member Stacie Gilmore, whose northeast District 11 includes DIA. “People are paying attention, and they don’t trust the airport, and they don’t trust this administration, unfortunately.” 

Gilmore said her constituents’ objections and questions were the same as those of reporters and environmental justice advocates who queried DIA chief Phil Washington and Mayor Mike Johnston at the Aug. 6 news conference launching the study: Why waste money on an unproven, enormously expensive, extremely toxic nuclear power plant, with no place in the nation accepting the eventual radioactive waste, in a spot with hundreds of thousands of neighbors and 100 million visiting passengers a year? 

Especially at a time when Johnston is having to fire hundreds of current Denver city employees to make up for a major budget deficit? The airport can argue its funding for the study comes from airline and other fees, not city tax money, but still, opponents said … the optics?

“The optics are really crazy,” Gilmore said Tuesday. The date of the nuclear-curious news conference did not escape the notice of Gilmore, who has family members with parents who were in Japan when the first A-bomb dropped. “And it was just tone deaf to anything about the community, or the close proximity to Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge and its Superfund site,” Gilmore said.  …………………………………………………………………………

Clean energy advocates said that none of the new generation of small modular reactors are actually plugged in and working yet, and that only a small handful of new nuclear power units have been approved nationwide since the 1970s. Cost overruns are the norm with nuclear, they add, and all existing nuclear power plants in the U.S. must store their highly radioactive spent nuclear fuel onsite because no federal repository has been opened. ………………………………… https://coloradosun.com/2025/08/20/dia-nuclear-power-study-shelved/

August 22, 2025 Posted by | opposition to nuclear, Small Modular Nuclear Reactors, USA | Leave a comment

Israelis Understand That Trump Can End The Nightmare In Gaza. Americans Should Know This Too.

Caitlin Johnstone, Aug 19, 2025, https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/israelis-understand-that-trump-can?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=171337355&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

It’s so revealing how Israelis keep begging Trump to end the killing in Gaza, because they understand that the US president has the power to force Israel to stop. It seems like Israelis understand this far better than Americans do.

Six former Israeli hostages and the widow of a slain hostage have released a video pleading with President Trump in English to support a comprehensive deal to make peace in Gaza so that the remaining hostages can be freed.

“You have the power to make history, to be the president of peace, the one who ended the war, ended the suffering, and brought every hostage home, including my little brother,” implores one of the hostages.

“President Trump, please act now before it’s too late for them, too,” pleads the widow.

This is not the first time Israelis have begged Trump to force an end to the slaughter. Earlier this month more than 600 former senior Israeli security officials from Mossad and Shin Bet sent Trump a letter urging him to compel Netanyahu to make peace in Gaza. They did this because they understand something that many Americans do not: that the US president has always had the power to end the Gaza holocaust.

It’s crazy how many times I’ve encountered Americans telling me that this is “Israel’s war” and there’s nothing the president can do to end it. It was mostly Democrats doing this back when Biden was president and I was slamming Genocide Joe for continuing this mass atrocity, and now that Trump is in office it’s his supporters who show up in my comments section white knighting for the president.

“It’s not our war and we should stay out of it,” they sometimes claim, mistakenly thinking that critics of the US-backed genocide are asking for some kind of US intervention.

But the call isn’t for the US to intervene, it’s for the US to stop intervening. To end the US interventionism that has been underway for two years. The Gaza holocaust can be ended by the US simply ceasing to add wood to the fire.

Israeli military insiders have been saying again and again that the onslaught in Gaza would not be possible without US support.

A senior Israeli air force official told Haaretz last year that “without the Americans’ supply of weapons to the Israel Defense Forces, especially the air force, Israel would have had a hard time sustaining its war for more than a few months.”

In November 2023 retired Israeli Major General Yitzhak Brick told Jewish News Syndicate that, “All of our missiles, the ammunition, the precision-guided bombs, all the airplanes and bombs, it’s all from the US. The minute they turn off the tap, you can’t keep fighting. You have no capability. … Everyone understands that we can’t fight this war without the United States. Period.”

Former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert wrote the following last year:

“The entire Israel Air Force relies completely on American aircraft: fighter planes, transport planes, refueler planes and helicopters. All of Israel’s air power is based on the American commitment to defend Israel. We have no other reliable source for essential supplies of equipment, munitions and advanced weapons that Israel cannot manufacture on its own. In recent months, hundreds of American transport planes have landed at IAF bases carrying thousands of tons of advanced, vital military equipment and munitions.”

The Israelis clearly understand that they’ve been entirely dependent on the US for the IDF’s acts of butchery in Gaza this entire time, and they clearly understand that the US president has the ability to turn off the tap whenever he wants.

And now they are begging the president to do so with increasing urgency, because it’s been made clear to them that their own government isn’t going to stop until it is forced to stop. They can’t stop the gunman, so they’re turning to the man who’s feeding him the ammo.

It would be good if Americans understood this as well. Trump is committing genocide in Gaza, just as surely as Netanyahu is, and he could end it at any time. The fact that he still has not chosen to do so makes him one of the most evil people on earth.

August 22, 2025 Posted by | Israel, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

« Previous Entries     Next Entries »