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A PUBLIC health expert has issued a major warning about Scotland’s AI datacentre boom.

It comes with at least 24 proposed AI data centres currently
in the planning system across the country, with others expected to be
imminent. This includes an £8 billion AI investment zone in North
Lanarkshire, a £5 billion data centre project near the small village of
Auchtertool in Fife, and a £2 billion data centre proposal in the Borders.


While proponents stress the economic opportunity with such developments,
critics, including local campaign groups, have warned of the centres’
impact on the environment, including extremely high electricity and water
usage.

Now, Andrew Watterson – an emeritus professor at the University of
Stirling whose research has focused extensively on occupational health and
safety and environmental health policies – has said that Scotland is
“rushing” to develop AI and that we “do not know whether we can
control it or not”.

“If those that work at the cutting edge of
researching its safety have profound doubts we can control it – and they
have voiced those doubts this week – and prevent harm to society, it’s
astonishing GB governments and local authorities are contemplating
approving hyper data centres at this stage,” he said.

“We have also seen evidence about a wide range of adverse impacts associated with such
developments. This is at a time when global warming is visible to all and
heat islands and mortality and morbidity from ‘rushed’ failed past energy
and economic policies are clear.”

The National 11th Sept 2026, https://www.thenational.scot/news/26542059.public-health-expert-issues-warning-scotlands-ai-data-centres/

September 16, 2026 Posted by | technology, UK | Leave a comment

“UKRAINE WILL BE A CANCER ON BOTH EUROPE AND RUSSIA”

In conversation with Ambassador Chas Freeman

Ian Proud, Sep 13, 2026, https://thepeacemonger.substack.com/p/ukraine-will-be-a-cancer-on-both?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=3221990&post_id=215480162&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

In my latest conversation with Ambassador Chas Freeman, he describes what Ukraine is becoming, and what Europe will be left holding when the war ends. Ukraine will not be the keystone of a whole and free Europe. It will not be a buffer and a bridge between Russia and the rest of the continent. It will be a rump state: poorer, more corrupt, landlocked, unqualified for the EU, shut out of NATO, and dominated by western Ukrainian ultra-nationalists who will not accept defeat. Ukraine will be driven by a more virulent antagonism towards Russia than Britain, Poland and the Baltic States and feeling spurned by a Europe that egged it on to its destruction. Right now, there are no obvious upsides to Ukraine joining the EU and some restoration of relations with Russia may take a generation, if it happens at all.

In Freeman’s words, Ukraine will become “a cancer on both” Europe and Russia. I see no evidence of anyone in London or European capitals thinking about the monumental challenge of rehabilitating Ukraine after the war ends. The reason, I suspect, is that that would also require dialogue with Russia. Because the corrosiveness of Ukraine’s failed statehood is everyone’s problem.

Our conversation ranged more widely into Israel’s diplomatic escalation which has neutered Britain’s ability to engage with Palestinians through its diplomatic network. And, of course, to Iran, where no amount of huffing and puffing by Donal Trump will change the reality that he is failing badly and is trapped by virtue of his ego.

Across all three theatres, Ukraine, Palestine and Iran, the missing ingredient is diplomacy.

You can watch the conversation above.

You can follow Chas on his excellent substack here.

Wherever you are in the world, whatever your nationality and religion, I wish you much peace.

September 16, 2026 Posted by | politics, Ukraine | Leave a comment

Moscow reveals potential timeline for trilateral Ukraine talks

Negotiations between Russian, Ukrainian, and US representatives could begin in October, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said

13 Sep, 2026, https://www.rt.com/russia/645646-moscow-reveals-potential-timeline-trilateral-ukraine-talks/ 

Trilateral talks between Russian, Ukrainian, and US representatives could begin in October, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said.

Speaking to reporters on Sunday, the official stated that Moscow “does not rule out such a possibility.”

“We’re specifically talking about the foreseeable future. That is, presumably of course, October,” Peskov clarified.

Earlier this week, the Kremlin spokesman stated that Moscow hopes “for a restart of negotiations between three parties – Russia, Ukraine, and America.”

The trilateral format was last used in Geneva in February, following two earlier rounds in Abu Dhabi. However, the talks later stalled without any significant breakthroughs, as the US shifted its focus to its war against Iran.

Peskov’s recent comments have followed a fresh round of shuttle diplomacy by US President Donald Trump’s special envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, who held a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow last week before visiting Kiev for talks with Vladimir Zelensky.

The Kremlin described the discussions with the US negotiators as constructive and “extremely candid,” while Witkoff said that progress had been made toward scheduling a three-way meeting. The potential resumption of talks in this format was also among the topics Putin and Trump discussed by phone on Tuesday, according to Kremlin aide Yury Ushakov.

At around the same time, Zelensky suggested that the next round of trilateral negotiations could take place in the UAE, Türkiye, Switzerland, or another country as early as September or October.

Moscow has repeatedly said it remains open to diplomacy, as long as the root causes of the conflict are addressed and the new realities on the ground are respected. Ukraine has in turn ruled out making territorial concessions to Russia.

September 16, 2026 Posted by | politics international, Russia, Ukraine | Leave a comment

The New German Militarism

what makes “The Tank” interesting and a sign of the times is not only that it invites its viewers to identify with German soldiers fighting against Soviets, certain to be read as Russians, and for Nazism, but that the film has coincided with the rise of a new German militarism.

This New Militarism is a phenomenon that goes beyond the fact of massive, debt-driven re-armament, disturbing as that may be: by the end of the decade, Berlin is planning to have a defense budget the size of those of France and Britain combined and be in self-asphyxiating debt for it. Half of the state budget will go to the military, while Germans are being shell-shocked by ever more austerity, already including a ruthless pension “reform,” that is, in reality, a demolition. A policy that will produce masses of Germans who are very deprived but also very well armed – what could go wrong?

The delusions come and go, German militarism abides

Tarik Cyril Amar, Sep 13, 2026, https://www.newglobalpolitics.org/the-new-german-militarism/

It is the summer of 1943. After catastrophic defeat in the Battle of Stalingrad, Nazi Germany’s legions are retreating before the Red Army. That’s the backdrop to the German – and Amazon–produced–movie “Der Tiger” (English title: “The Tank”). Officially billed as an antiwar movie, “The Tank” is anything but. Yet the fact that it is really about five tough men on a lonely commando mission is trivial.

For, just like “The Tank,” most so-called “antiwar” movies are, in reality, war movies, fascinating their Homo sapiens primate audiences with the action, suspense, and drama of fighting, while inviting identification with at least some of those who do that fighting, be they cast as heroes or anti-heroes. Consider, for instance, the American films “Platoon” and “Full Metal Jacket” (both set it Vietnam) or the Russian “9th Company” (set in Afghanistan). Indeed, it is hard to think of any genuine and consistent anti-war movies. Two that probably qualify are the American “Paths of Glory” (World War One on what the Germans called the Western Front) and the Soviet “Come and See” (World War Two on what the next generation of Germans called the Eastern Front).

“The Tank” certainly has heroes, and they form a classical “band of brothers,” Hollywood-style. There is the brave stoic (the commander) with ice in his veins but a humane, even self-sacrificing side reserved for his men, the intellectual and – mild – doubter (in civilian life a teacher of Latin with eternal-student glasses), the urban proletarian (the cursing driver, speaking not with a New York accent but in the demotic Berlin version of German), the man from the country (just not Kentucky or Alabama, but the Austrian Wachau and its vineyards), and, of course, the youngster, innocent, frightened, but, ultimately, up to a – German – man’s job (removing a booby-trapped tank mine).

At the end of the movie (spoiler alert), it is true, the fantastically implausible story of the men in the tank on their way to their own heart of darkness on the “Ostfront” has an unsurprising twist: “The Tank” is really a “Schauergeschichte,” a tale of sublime dread, a sort of “Erlkönig with Tanks” or “Sleepy Hollow and Nazis.” The crew’s militarily bizarre special mission is not, it turns out, real but a near-death experience or vision – think “Jacob’s Ladder” (1990) – confronting the commander with his responsibility for burning to death women and children in Stalingrad. The gray zone crossed by the “Tiger” to retrieve a mysterious and inexplicably important German officer holed up in a remote bunker – think Colonel Kurtz from “Apocalypse Now” (1979) – turns into the equivalent of either purgatory or the road to hell.

The horror, the horror: The audience has been watching, in essence, virtual ghosts mistaking themselves for the living – think “The Sixth Sense” (1999) and also the Russian “White Tiger” (2012), another spooky World War Two tank story that must have inspired “The Tank” but is, unsurprisingly, never mentioned.

But before (and despite) these revelations, the men in the tank are stereotypically attractive in a well-worn, macho way, baiting our sympathy. They also, of course, happen to serve Nazi Germany or, as they keep saying, the “Reich.” Indeed, the tank men are not merely members of the regular German military, the Wehrmacht, but the Waffen-SS, skull-and-crossbones emblems included.

Notwithstanding its especially striking form, this plot device is nothing special. In the 1980s, the extremely successful “Das Boot,” for instance, about a German World War Two submarine sinking merchant ships and their sailors while battling the British in the Atlantic, offered the same artless yet effective combination of identification with German soldiers and a plot that signaled some sanitizing distance from the regime they were actually fighting for: Yes, strictly speaking they are fascists burning and drowning literal antifascists, but you can still root for them. In “Das Boot,” as in “The Tank,” the effect is reinforced by everyone or almost everyone dying in the end, adding the pity that spectacles of futility among the brave may inspire.

Finding ways to feature German World War Two soldiers as heroes and victims while adroitly, or not so much, airbrushing their allegiance to a monstrous state waging often genocidal war has been a special skill of postwar (West) German film-making and succeeded with large audiences at home. Not so much Rainer-Maria Fassbinder, as it were, but the very popular kitsch of Peter May’s “08/15” trilogy, for instance.

Film-making in the former East Germany, incidentally, had its own, different, complicated as well as almost touchingly transparent ways of putting victims and even heroes into German World War Two uniforms, such as in the “Geheimkommando” miniseries.

Hence, what makes “The Tank” interesting and a sign of the times is not only that it invites its viewers to identify with German soldiers fighting against Soviets, certain to be read as Russians, and for Nazism, but that the film has coincided with the rise of a new German militarism.

This New Militarism is a phenomenon that goes beyond the fact of massive, debt-driven re-armament, disturbing as that may be: by the end of the decade, Berlin is planning to have a defense budget the size of those of France and Britain combined and be in self-asphyxiating debt for it. Half of the state budget will go to the military, while Germans are being shell-shocked by ever more austerity, already including a ruthless pension “reform,” that is, in reality, a demolition. A policy that will produce masses of Germans who are very deprived but also very well armed – what could go wrong?

September 16, 2026 Posted by | Germany, media | Leave a comment

Erdogan hints at larger nuclear partnership with Russia, unsettling Turkey’s allies

rfi, 12/09/2026

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is signalling a move to expand nuclear power cooperation with Russia, just as his country’s first Russian-built nuclear station prepares to go live later this year. The deepening partnership is likely to unsettle Turkey’s western allies.

On the sidelines of a recent gathering of regional leaders in Kyrgyzstan, Erdogan told his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, that Russia and Turkey “will take steps together to open some new power plants, along with the opening of the Akkuyu nuclear power plant”.

The Akkuyu nuclear power plant, built by Russia’s state nuclear company Rosatom on Turkey’s Mediterranean coast, is due to go online later this year.

Erdogan’s announcement comes amid strained ties with Russia, as the Turkish leader has deepened relations with United States President Donald Trump.

Ozgur Unluhisarcikli, head of the Ankara office of US think tank the German Marshall Fund, describes Erdogan’s move as a “gesture” to Putin.

“Although Turkey is competing with Russia geopolitically, and although Turkey is firmly anchored in NATO and is improving its relationship with the United States, it does not intend to sever all ties with Russia,” Unluhisarcikli explained.

“Indeed, Turkey sees the Turkey-Russia relationship as a long-term strategic one. And this is, by the way, consistent with Turkey’s balancing act.”………………………………………………………………………………… https://www.rfi.fr/en/podcasts/international-report/20260912-erdogan-hints-at-larger-nuclear-partnership-with-russia-unsettling-turkey-s-allies

September 16, 2026 Posted by | politics international, Russia, Turkey | Leave a comment

Drone Attacks On Chornobyl Could Have Endangered The Safety Of Millions: UN

By Joji Xavier   : 9/11/2026, https://www.rttnews.com/3690349/drone-attacks-on-chornobyl-could-have-endangered-the-safety-of-millions-un.aspx

A top UN official has expressed concern that a drone strike on the protective structure at Ukraine’s Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant could have endangered the safety of millions of people.

UN Development Program Administrator Alexander De Croo is visiting Ukraine, with his mission focused primarily on restoring energy infrastructure and preparing the country for its fifth winter of full-scale war.

De Croo was talking to the media after visiting the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant and going inside the protective structure over Reactor Four, which was destroyed in 1986. He saw firsthand the damage caused recently by the drone strike.

“Anyone who’s attacking those protective structures – and those protective structures around a nuclear structure – is really gambling with the safety of millions of people.

“A nuclear installation can never be a target. There can absolutely be no excuse. There can absolutely be no ambiguity. This has to stop,” the UNDP chief said.

According to De Croo, the origin of the drone must be formally established through an investigation. At the same time, military personnel guarding the site told him that Russian drones fly over the facility on a daily basis.

“Whether it was a deliberate attack or an accident, this is something which is unacceptable. Making sure that drones are not flying above that site is one way of avoiding that things like this could happen,” he said.

During his visit to Chornobyl, the head of UNDP also took part in the opening of a new solar power plant. The project was implemented with support from Lithuania and Japan, in cooperation with the Ukrainian authorities and with technical expertise from the UN’s development agency. The plant will supply electricity to the cooling systems of Reactor Four.

Energy was one of the main focuses of De Croo’s visit. Over the past four years, UNDP has mobilised $1.3 billion to assist Ukrainians, with the restoration of the country’s energy system becoming its largest area of work.

September 16, 2026 Posted by | safety, Ukraine | Leave a comment

Britain stands against oppression in Palestine… by supplying F-35s

Finian Cunningham, September 11, 2026, https://strategic-culture.su/news/2026/09/11/britain-stands-against-oppression-in-palestine-by-supplying-f-35s/

Britain is fuelling the genocide by Israel, as it is with the NATO proxy war in Ukraine against Russia.

So, Britain announced with much fanfare this week that it was imposing sanctions on Israel’s illegal settlements in Palestine. Note that the sanctions are not against the Israeli state, but rather a much narrower definition: Israeli entities in the Occupied Territories.

British Prime Minister Andy Burnham claimed that the move was an example of Britain giving international leadership to stand against oppression and injustice.

Addressing the British Parliament, Burnham said: “In this difficult and dangerous world, Britain has to stand for something, Britain has to show leadership, Britain has to stand for fairness against injustice… That is what the British people expect of us, and that is what this government will do.”

Several other European states and Canada have also joined the British-led initiative to ban trade and investment with companies doing business in the Occupied Territories of the West Bank.

Israel’s occupation is illegal under international law, yet Britain, the European Union and the United States have done nothing in the way of imposing sanctions. Sanctions are something the West prefers to impose on Russia, Iran, China, Cuba, North Korea, among others.

In announcing the sanctions, the United Kingdom’s foreign minister Ed Miliband told the House of Commons that “Britain was a country that upholds its values at home and around the world, fighting against oppression and suffering, and standing up for what is right.”

The pious tones from London about Israel’s “ethnic cleansing” are not convincing.

For starters, the supposed sanctions do not cover British components for the F-35 fighter jets that the United States sells to Israel. The British parts are crucial for flying the US-made stealth aircraft. The warplane has played a major role in razing Gaza to the ground. Also not included in the sanctions are drones and surveillance equipment that British firms supply to the Israeli military. All those components are crucial for enabling the nearly three-year genocidal violence that Israel has conducted in Gaza.

If the British government were serious about “standing against oppression,” it would go a lot further than focusing on violations by Israeli settlers in the Occupied Territories. The pogroms and construction of new settlements are carried out with the full assistance of the Israeli state, not just by gun-wielding fanatical settlers. Britain and other Western states have provided the legal and diplomatic cover for Israeli war crimes.

In any case, the supposed measures against Israeli business and exports from the West Bank are minimal. A recent Al Jazeera investigation found that Britain has billions of dollars invested in companies that are intimately involved in illegal settlement building. We can be sure that London is not going to cancel investments.

Total British-Israeli trade is estimated at $8 billion a year, including lucrative military items. The amount of business that Britain does with the Occupied Territories is about 1 per cent of its total trade with Israel.

Burnham and Miliband said the British government did not support boycott and divestment sanctions against the state of Israel. Both of them were at pains to emphasize that the measures are nominally limited to the violations going on in the Occupied Territories, not what Israel is doing right across Palestinian land, including Gaza, which is a genocide.

So there you have it. Britain’s “moral leadership” is nothing but tokenism and duplicity.

Should we expect anything else? After all, as former British diplomat Craig Murray pointed out this week, Burnham’s government has decided to give top-secret information for building cruise missiles to the corrupt Kiev regime. Murray warns that the Storm Shadow missiles will soon end up being sold on the black market, given the rampant corruption of Ukraine under the Zelensky cabal.

Britain is also supplying this NeoNazi regime with long-range drones that are being used to target Moscow and Russian civilians.

Is this standing up against oppression and for supposed British values?

What’s really behind London’s belated show of concern for Palestinians?

As Burnham and Miliband alluded, it’s all about Britain appearing to show international leadership. It’s a cheap way to burnish London’s “moral posturing” as a defender of “humanitarian values.”

Israel has hit back with the usual denunciations of “anti-semitism” and by closing down the British consulate in East Jerusalem. But for London, these repercussions are bearable for the bigger gains of British international PR.

As noted above, the lion’s share of its lucrative trade with Israel will go on, business as usual.

The other key motive for the Burnham government is that it realizes that a majority of the British public has become staunchly opposed to the Israeli regime. The three-year genocide has opened the eyes of many Britons (and those of other Western nations) to the historical injustices and illegal occupation of Palestinian lands. Israel is increasingly seen as a pariah, apartheid state that should be prosecuted for war crimes.

Britain’s role as the former colonial power in the Zionist annexation of Palestine is one of deep complicity and shame.

Andy Burnham was shoehorned into Downing Street to take over from the hopeless and hapless Labour leader Keir Starmer. The British establishment has bet on Burnham to shore up its imperialist interests by boosting military spending and deepening involvement in the NATO proxy war against Russia in Ukraine.

However, Burnham’s popularity has quickly worn off as he looks like Starmer 2.0.

The tokenistic moves to support Palestinian rights and oppose Israeli violations are a cynical electioneering ploy. By talking up sanctions against Israeli illegal settlements, Burnham is calculating that it will garner votes from the growing public anger over the genocide.

But the measures that London is taking are negligible. They amount to a polite tap on the wrist of the Netanyahu regime as it continues its genocide.

Britain is fuelling the genocide by Israel, as it is with the NATO proxy war in Ukraine against Russia. British duplicity is as legion as its hypocrisy.

September 15, 2026 Posted by | UK, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Putin boosts his stock of nuclear warheads to nine-year high as he threatens West that putting troops into Ukraine ‘means war with Russia’

Daily Mail, By WILL STEWART and WILL HALLOWELL, NEWS REPORTER, 12 September 2026

Vladimir Putin has boosted the number of nuclear warheads in his arsenal as he warns Nato countries that sending troops to Ukraine ‘means war’.

Over the past year, Russia has increased its stock of nuclear warheads deployed on missiles and bombers by 78 to 1,796, marking a nine-year high, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

Mr Putin has increased the number every year since the beginning of the war with Ukraine in 2022. 

But the US saw no rise and Britain and France did not deploy additional warheads, with 170 and 280 respectively.

Mr Putin, however, denied that Russia posed a threat to Nato allies in Europe and then warned of war. 

Speaking at the BRICS summit in New Delhi, he said: ‘Now they [the West] are talking about how they are thinking about bringing troops to the territory of Ukraine. This means war with Russia.’

His threat coincides with former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev’s warning that Mr Putin could use nuclear weapons to turn Nato state Lithuania into ‘scorched earth’ and remove it from the ‘world map’.

Mr Putin, who once claimed he had no aggressive intentions against Ukraine, said he had no plan to invade or threaten existing Nato states in Europe.

He said: ‘There is no such threat, and there has never been. We are not threatening European countries, nor are we going to threaten them. Why would we?

‘No one seems to even consider that we have no grounds for any conflict with Europe.’

Yet Mr Medvedev, Mr Putin’s number two on the Russian Security Council, said the deployment of nuclear weapons in Lithuania, a former part of the Soviet Union, could trigger a doomsday response from the president.

He said: ‘They would like to amend their constitution, which stated the non-nuclear nature of this large Baltic state, and thus open the door to the possible deployment of any weapons, including nuclear weapons.

‘No one will stand up for them. Even if it becomes a scorched earth, no other [Western] countries will go to war for them.

‘And the well-known Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty will not be implemented, everyone recognises this……………………https://www.dailymail.com/news/article-16125435/Putin-boosts-nuclear-warheads-nine-year-high.html

September 15, 2026 Posted by | Russia, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Labour delays ordering new attack submarines

Government accused of ‘kicking the can’ after putting off decision on building subs to 2028

Telegraph Pieter Snepvangers Political Reporter. Tony Diver Political Editor, 2 September 2026 

Labour has delayed ordering new attack submarines until 2028, The Telegraph
can reveal. Sir Keir Starmer pledged last year to build “up to 12”
nuclear-powered submarines. He said Labour would decide how many vessels to
commission by the time its defence investment plan (DIP) was published.


Despite finally releasing the delayed DIP in June, the Government has
deferred its deadline for committing to buying the subs until 2028, The
Telegraph has learnt. Wes Streeting, the Defence Secretary, wrote to James
Cartlidge, his Conservative shadow: “The DIP clearly sets out our
intention to buy up to 12 SSN-A submarines, but a decision on exact hull
numbers does not need to be taken at this stage. “The programme is
currently midway through its design phase and we anticipate that the number
of submarines will be confirmed before the end of this phase in 2028.”………………………………………………….
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2026/09/12/labour-delays-buying-new-attack-submarines/

September 15, 2026 Posted by | UK, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Rolls-Royce boss bets big on new engines and small nuclear

he declared that Rolls-Royce was a “burning platform”.

The second big bet is on small modular reactors (SMRs),

analysts say the promised cost savings of SMRs have yet to be proven.

Having led an extraordinary turnaround since 2023, Tufan Erginbilgiç is staking the company’s continued growth on small modular reactors and a return to the single-aisle commercial jet market

Jeevan Vasagar, Observer 6th Sept 2026

he chief executive of Rolls-Royce was in typically forthright form at the Farnborough International Airshow in July. More than a decade after exiting the market for narrow-body aircraft, the British engineering company planned to return to making engines for the single-aisle planes that are the world’s bestselling commercial jets – but the CEO wanted government support to do so.

If it were not forthcoming, Tufan Erginbilgiç added, then Rolls-Royce had other options.

Erginbilgiç, a former BP executive, has led an extraordinary turnaround. At his first town hall meeting as chief executive, he declared that Rolls-Royce was a “burning platform”. The pandemic, which brought global air travel shuddering to a halt, could not be blamed for the engine-maker’s troubles, Erginbilgiç said, telling staff: “We underperform every key competitor out there.”

Rolls-Royce’s share price has soared from about 99p when Erginbilgiç took the helm in January 2023 to £14.67 this week, an increase similar to Nvidia’s surge in that time. “Rolls is a great business, and Tufan has played the City like a piano,” one aviation industry insider said.

The question is: can it last?

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………Rolls-Royce’s defence business, making power and propulsion systems for combat aircraft and submarines, has benefited from the increase in defence spending. The power systems division, supplying diesel generators and gas engines, has thrived with the boom in data centre construction. But here too Rolls-Royce is not just surfing the rising market. Profit margins have gone up as well, analysts point out……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

The second big bet is on small modular reactors (SMRs), a technology that’s meant to reduce the time and cost of delivering nuclear fission at a moment when the uncertainty of fossil fuel markets, soaring electricity demand and emissions goals are driving renewed interest in nuclear power.

Delivering emissions-free energy is a valuable sideline for a company that relies for most of its business on burning kerosene. But analysts say the promised cost savings of SMRs have yet to be proven.

If Erginbilgiç can pull off either of these moonshots, the post-pandemic surge in Rolls-Royce’s valuation might just be the beginning.
https://observer.co.uk/news/business/article/rolls-royce-boss-bets-big-on-new-engines-and-nuclear

September 15, 2026 Posted by | business and costs, Small Modular Nuclear Reactors, UK | Leave a comment

Poland First: Why More Poles Are Turning Against Ukraine and the EU

“Poland first” here does not mean indifference to Russian power. It means refusing to pretend that every demand from Kyiv or every directive from the Commission is automatically a Polish interest.

(and how Radek Sikorski doesn’t have the cojones to defy Anne Applebaum)

In conversation with Dr Mike Krupa

Ian Proud, Sep 12, 2026, https://thepeacemonger.substack.com/p/poland-first-why-more-poles-are-turning?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=3221990&post_id=215255902&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

In 2022 Poland was Ukraine’s most important European ally. Polish families opened their homes to refugees. The state sent weapons and money. Four years on, that story is breaking. In conversation with historian and Do Rzeczy columnist Dr Mike Krupa, the question is no longer whether Polish support has cooled. It is how far the backlash now affects issues beyond the war itself including Ukraine’s future and Poland’s continued EU membership.

Mike makes the case for a Poland first approach. Ordinary Poles, he says, were told that arming Ukraine, hosting refugees and following Brussels was an act of national self-defence. Many no longer believe it.

They see a long war they cannot end, a bill they are still paying, and a political class more fluent in the language of European solidarity than in the language of Polish interest.

Nowhere is that class more visible than in Radosław Sikorski. Poland’s foreign minister talks as if Warsaw were still the engine of the Ukraine war and the conscience of Europe. The unkind version, and it is widely whispered in Warsaw, is that Sikorski does not have the cojones to take a step that has not first been cleared by his wife. Anne Applebaum. She is one of the most connected Atlanticist voices in the English-speaking world, and the Sikorski–Applebaum household is less a marriage than a transatlantic foreign-policy firm.

Whether the joke is fair is almost beside the point. It sticks because Poles can see the product: a foreign ministry that sounds more at home in Washington and Brussels than in provincial Poland. And it is ironic given Sikorski’s remarks in 2014 that were secretly caught on tape, that the US Poland relationship was worthless and that “we’ll get in conflict with the Germans, Russians and we’ll think that everything is super, because we gave the Americans a blow job. Losers. Complete losers.”

History has come back into the room. The 2026 rupture between Warsaw and Kyiv did not come from nowhere. When President Zelenskyy honoured a unit as “Heroes of the UPA”, he touched the rawest nerve in Polish memory: the Volhynia massacres. For most Poles the UPA is not a footnote in someone else’s independence struggle. It is the organisation that murdered their grandparents. President Karol Nawrocki’s decision to strip Zelenskyy of the Order of the White Eagle was not a diplomatic tantrum. It was an attempt to speak for a public that felt insulted.

That public is also tired. Support for Ukrainian refugees has fallen. Sympathy has hardened into irritation. Farmers have already shown what happens when Ukrainian produce and EU rules collide with Polish livelihoods. Krupa’s point is that this is not a fringe mood. It is running ahead of the Tusk government, which still talks as if the Ukraine war is winnable and a defining Polish priority.

The more uncomfortable claim is the second one. Krupa sees the EU as a constraint on Polish sovereignty and prospertiy. In his telling, Warsaw has outsourced strategy to Brussels, Berlin and Washington, then wondered why Polish priorities are often ignored. A country on NATO’s eastern flank that cannot define its own end-state in the war is not a frontline success. It is a frontline client.

“Poland first” here does not mean indifference to Russian power. It means refusing to pretend that every demand from Kyiv or every directive from the Commission is automatically a Polish interest.

I have written before that Poland’s Janus face on Ukraine is untenable: fight Russia to the last, but keep Ukraine out of the EU. That contradiction is now visible to voters

Whether Krupa is right about the scale of the turn will be tested in Polish politics during elections in 2027. What is already clear is that the old script — Poland as the uncomplaining engine of European support for Ukraine — is finished.

The public has moved. The government in Warsaw and the Eurocrats in Brussels have not.

Watch the conversation here:

September 14, 2026 Posted by | EUROPE, politics international | Leave a comment

Witkoff and Kushner Cite Progress in Kyiv Talks, Push for Renewed Russia-Ukraine Negotiations

U.S. envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner described talks with Ukrainian leaders as encouraging after carrying new proposals from Moscow to Kyiv, though major disputes over territory and security remain unresolved.

By yourNEWS Media Newsroom, | Sep 6, 2026

U.S. envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner said they made progress during their first official visit to Kyiv on Sunday, expressing optimism that direct negotiations between Russia and Ukraine can be revived after more than three hours of talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow a day earlier.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy held three rounds of discussions with the Americans, with national security advisers from the United Kingdom, France and Germany joining the final session. The talks covered possible pathways toward ending the more than 4½-year war as well as Ukraine’s immediate military needs, long-term security guarantees and economic support for postwar reconstruction.

Witkoff said Washington remains focused on “a diplomatic resolution to this conflict, not a kinetic resolution.” He said Saturday’s Kremlin discussions produced “new ideas” that he and Kushner brought directly to Kyiv, adding that the participation of advisers from France, Germany and Britain demonstrated that “collaboration is critical” to reaching an agreement.

Both Moscow and Kyiv would have to compromise, Witkoff acknowledged, but he said the administration believes a negotiated settlement remains possible. “We think we have the ingredients to get to that place,” he said.

Kushner similarly said the United States is seeking a “win-win” outcome rather than simply pressuring one side to accept the other’s terms. He said President Donald Trump is focused not only on stopping the fighting but on creating “a framework that could actually lead to a durable peace.” Kushner described Saturday’s meeting with Putin as “constructive and substantive” and said the discussions explored what Russia, Ukraine and the broader international community could gain from a settlement.

The two envoys hope to revive trilateral negotiations involving Russia, Ukraine and the United States, a format last used roughly six months ago. Kushner said Washington has remained in near-daily communication with Ukrainian officials even during the recent slowdown in diplomatic activity, which coincided with the administration’s increased focus on the Iran war.

Zelenskyy said several major issues remain unresolved, particularly territory. He said the territorial question “remains relevant” but argued that such difficult decisions “can only be resolved at the level of leaders.” He also emphasized that any settlement must include lasting security arrangements, saying a strong Ukrainian military remains “one of the main guarantees of security.”


Immediate defense requirements formed another major part of Sunday’s talks. Zelenskyy said Ukraine is seeking “serious volumes” of American support for a winter package combining air defense with protection for energy infrastructure as colder weather approaches. Kyiv is particularly seeking additional Patriot systems and interceptor missiles, with European governments expected to help support the effort.

The Ukrainian president said the United States plans to increase production of Patriot interceptor missiles next year and that Germany is also expanding production under existing licensing arrangements. Ukraine is simultaneously working with 67 domestic companies developing systems capable of destroying Russia’s increasingly common jet-powered drones………………………………………………………………

Zelenskyy said Sunday that Ukraine, the United States and European partners agreed to another meeting, although no location has been selected. The planned session is expected to continue work on territorial questions, security guarantees, military support and the economic framework surrounding any eventual settlement……………………………..

The central obstacles, however, remain substantial. Territory has not been resolved, security guarantees are still being negotiated and the aerial war continues even while diplomats discuss peace. The next test will be whether the “new ideas” carried from Moscow to Kyiv can produce the renewed direct negotiations Washington is now seeking. https://yournews.com/2026/09/06/7187875/witkoff-and-kushner-cite-progress-in-kyiv-talks-push-for/

September 12, 2026 Posted by | politics international, Ukraine, USA | Leave a comment

UK Nuclear Liabilities Fund selects Brookfield to manage initial $1bn

By IPE Staff10 September 2026

The Nuclear Liabilities Fund (NLF) has selected Brookfield to manage a long-term, multi-asset investment mandate, with an initial commitment of $1bn (€850m).

The mandate will be managed by Brookfield’s Investment Solutions Group (ISG), which will draw on the investment capabilities across the firm to construct a portfolio tailored to NLF’s objectives, risk parameters and investment horizon, it was announced.

The portfolio will invest globally across Brookfield’s infrastructure, energy, private equity, real estate and private credit strategies. Investments are expected to comprise fund commitments, direct investments and co-investments.

The mandate is designed around the multi-decade nature of NLF’s liabilities associated with decommissioning eight of the UK’s nuclear power stations.

Brookfield said the investment horizon will be aligned with NLF’s multi-decade funding requirements, with the aim of supporting long-term capital growth and compounding investment returns to help meet future decommissioning costs.

Investment proceeds are expected to be reinvested into new opportunities rather than routinely distributed, allowing capital to remain invested across market cycles.

For NLF, the mandate is intended to ensure that sufficient assets are available to meet future decommissioning costs “without unnecessary reliance on taxpayers”……………………………………………………………….. https://www.ipe.com/news/uk-nuclear-liabilities-fund-selects-brookfield-to-manage-initial-1bn/10138410.article

September 12, 2026 Posted by | decommission reactor, UK | Leave a comment

Google signs up for electricity from Finnish nuclear power plant

 Tech giant Google has signed a long-term power purchase agreement with
Finland’s Fortum covering up to 50% of the Loviisa nuclear power plant’s
capacity and providing financial certainty for power uprates and lifetime
extensions until 2050.

 World Nuclear News 9th Sept 2026 https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/articles/google-signs-up-for-electricity-from-finnish-nuclear-power-plant

September 12, 2026 Posted by | business and costs, Finland | Leave a comment

US to NATO: Keep buying US weapons for lost Ukraine war…it gooses our economy- Walt Zlotow

But not one weapon will be supplied by the US. They must all be purchased by NATO countries struggling with their declining economies due in large part by squandering tens of billion of Euros on Ukaine sinking deeping into failed state status.


Walt Zlotow West Suburban Peace Coalition Glen Ellyn IL, Sep 9, 2026,

If there was a Nobel Prize for the most most cynical foreign posicy among the world’s 193 countries, the US would win weapons down.


Under Secretary of War Elbridge Colby just told European NATO countries to keep buying US weapos to keep Ukraine being destroyed in their lost war with Riussia.

“The situation makes it all the more important for Europe to sustain support for Ukraine while also accelerating its own rearmament and reindustrialization. First, Europe must continue — and where necessary increase — support for Ukraine’s immediate battlefield requirements through Prioritized Ukraine Requirements List (PURL). The continued flow of munitions and critical capabilities is effective; it remains essential to enabling Ukrainian forces to hold the front line and deny further Russian advances. Second, Europe must plan now for sustained procurement that supports both Ukraine’s long-term force reconstitution and Europe’s own defense requirements.” Colby omitted that NATO weapons purchases fit neatly into US economic policy.

But not one weapon will be supplied by the US. They must all be purchased by NATO countries struggling with their declining economies due in large part by squandering tens of billion of Euros on Ukaine sinking deeping into failed state status. The fact Ukraine has suffered over over two million causualties and lost a fifth of their land forever means nothing to Colby and his bosses War Secretary Pete Hegseth and President Trump. All they care about is how those billions in weapons sales will help salvage the declining US economy from Trump and Hegseth’s failed Iran war debacle ahead of the approaching November 3 midterms.

Trump has been lusting for a Nobel Peace Prize since hie took office in January 2017. He’s been tirelessly promoting his candidacy claiming he’s ended 8 wars when he’s ended none while waging war on Iran, Venezuela, Yemen, Somalia, Nigeria and any small boat in the Caribbean he claims is carrying drugs.

Yep, the Nobel Committee should consider awarding a Nobel Cynical Foreign Policy Prize. Donald Trump, on behalf of the United States would be selected unanimously.

September 11, 2026 Posted by | EUROPE, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

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