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Peace River nuclear power project: The hidden cost

Alberta is already building faster, cheaper alternatives. Between 2019 and 2022, the province added over 1,400 megawatts of wind and solar, with another 2,500 MW in development, according to the Alberta Electric System Operator.”

Patrick Jean, Jul 15, 2025 , https://www.dailyheraldtribune.com/opinion/more-expensive-than-you-think-the-hidden-cost-of-nuclear-energy

As someone born in Peace River and raised in the Falher–Donnelly area, I care deeply about the land, water, and communities that would be affected by the proposed nuclear facility in northwestern Alberta. Although I live in Edmonton now, I work as a Municipal Energy Manager for a small rural municipality in the province, and my family still lives across the region — from McLennan to Marie-Reine.

Though I’m relatively new to public service, I bring over 20 years of experience in project management, systems analysis, and strategic planning across various sectors, including energy, agriculture, and technology. I’ve worked with municipalities, nonprofits, and institutions across Alberta on energy efficiency, infrastructure modernization, and rural economic development. I hold an Honours degree in Sustainability Management from MacEwan University, and continue to deepen my training in energy policy and climate adaptation as I prepare to do my Master of Sustainable Energy Development at the University of Calgary. I’ve also published and presented research on how geothermal energy can support rural economies—work that reflects my broader commitment to clean, decentralized solutions that benefit communities like the one I come from.

In contrast, Alberta is already building faster, cheaper alternatives. Between 2019 and 2022, the province added over 1,400 megawatts of wind and solar, with another 2,500 MW in development, according to the Alberta Electric System Operator (AESO). Most renewable projects are completed in under five years, with many rooftop and community systems operational in less than one. In 2022, solar became the world’s fastest-growing source of new electricity capacity.

They’re also far more cost-effective. Lazard’s 2025 Levelized Cost of Energy+ estimates nuclear at $141–$251 per megawatt-hour, compared to just $37–$81 for wind and $38–$66 for solar. Nuclear is up to six times more expensive than renewables, and that doesn’t include long-term waste management, decommissioning, or liability coverage—costs that often fall to the public. Clean energy isn’t just cheaper—it’s better for jobs. A dollar invested in solar or wind creates 2.8 to 5.7 times more employment than the same dollar spent on nuclear, according to peer-reviewed research in energy policy. These are jobs in construction, maintenance, engineering, and operations, many of which can be located in rural and underserved communities.

Even if built, nuclear doesn’t align with the needs of modern energy systems. Grids today depend on flexibility, not constant output “baseload” plants like nuclear reactors that can’t adjust quickly to changing demand. When renewable energy production is high, inflexible nuclear can force the grid to waste clean power. In contrast, renewables combined with battery storage, smart grid controls, and demand-side response offer more adaptable, resilient energy systems. Research in Joule and PNAS shows that 100 per cent renewable grids with storage are not only viable, they’re more stable than those relying on nuclear.

In the time it would take to bring Peace River’s reactors online, Alberta could:
• Deploy 10 to 15 GW of solar and wind,
• Install 1–2 GW of grid-scale storage,
• Retrofit public buildings and homes for energy efficiency,
• Launch locally led clean energy partnerships, and
• Create tens of thousands of well-paying jobs.

The local risks are just as serious. A nuclear facility would withdraw millions of litres of water per day from the Peace River for cooling, potentially harming aquatic ecosystems and fish spawning habitats. A 2021 study in Environmental Monitoring and Assessment found that thermal pollution and water drawdown from nuclear plants disrupt river ecosystems.

Public submissions and academic research have also raised critical concerns about the cultural and social impact of this project. The proposed site lies within Treaty 8 territory—an area with deep spiritual, cultural, and subsistence significance. According to The Canadian Journal of Native Studies (2022), long-term nuclear waste storage near such lands threatens intergenerational safety and undermines the cultural integrity of surrounding communities. The Land Use Policy journal emphasizes the importance of free, prior, and informed consent under Canada’s obligations to UNDRIP—yet many affected communities report they have not been meaningfully engaged. The Impact Assessment Agency of Canada (IAAC) has already documented frustration with inaccessible technical documents and limited public engagement in its summary of issues.

We don’t need to go down this road. Alberta already has the tools to reduce emissions, create good jobs, and support rural communities—without waiting decades or spending billions on a legacy system that doesn’t serve our needs.

The Peace River nuclear proposal would delay real climate action, raise electricity costs, and place long-term environmental and financial burdens on the very communities it claims to help. We already have faster, cleaner, and smarter options. We should be investing in them now.

Patrick Jean is a holistic sustainability consultant, policy analyst, and municipal energy manager based in Edmonton. He holds an honours degree in sustainability management, has over 20 years of experience in systems analysis and project management, and has published research on rural energy innovation. He was born in Peace River, raised in the Falher–Donnelly area, and maintains strong family and community ties across the region. His comprehensive comments are available on the Government of Canada’s Impact Assessment Agency. 

July 17, 2025 Posted by | business and costs, Canada | Leave a comment

Northern Ontario residents oppose plan to dump radioactive material near drinking water source.

By Angela Gemmill, July 15, 2025, https://www.ctvnews.ca/northern-ontario/article/northern-ont-residents-oppose-plan-to-dump-radioactive-material-near-drinking-water-source/

Residents in Nairn and Hyman and surrounding communities met Monday to discuss concerns about a plan by the province to transfer radioactive material into the area.

Concerns were first raised last summer after a local municipal councillor noticed newer back roads and inquired about the upgrades.

That’s when the township discovered that the Ministry of Transportation and the Ministry of Mines were planning to move 18,000 cubic metres of niobium radioactive materials from Nipissing First Nation to the tailings area at Agnew Lake.

Agnew Lake is 27 kilometres from the township’s drinking water.

“We felt we really hadn’t been consulted,” Nairn and Hyman Mayor Amy Mazey told the crowd.

“We were told the ‘naturally occurring radioactive material’ was just like gravel.”

Last September, the municipality asked the province for more specific information about the project, which was scheduled to begin this summer.

“This is not ‘NORM ‘–naturally occurring radioactive material,” Mazey said.

“It contains hazardous heavy metals — uranium, niobium, radium 226, cadmium, arsenic, selenium, silver and manganese.”

In April, both ministries provided the township with a massive report filled with technical and scientific details. So the township hired environmental consultants Hutchinson Environmental Sciences Ltd. to interpret the report — and determine what science was missing.

That information was presented to residents on Monday, who were then asked for feedback and suggestions on what to do next.

Mazey said there are eight studies missing from the report.

“The two most important are a cumulative risk assessment — what’s going to happen when you put uranium tailings on top and niobium tailings together,” she said.

What will happen? And also a drainage study — so where is the water going to go, how is it going to leech? All of those things that were outlined that should have been done already, we just haven’t seen them.”

Township CAO Belinda Ketchabaw said what it boils down to is that the province wants to put radioactive materials in a lake that’s already struggling.

“(Agnew Lake) site is already in crisis, and they want to bring in more radioactive material to ‘fix’ the site,” Ketchabaw said.

“It doesn’t really add up to me. When the science isn’t there, there’s no trust. We need to trust what is best for our community.”

Safe outcome

Ketchabaw said they’ve learned that some of the niobium material will be taken to a Clean Harbors facility near Sarnia, made for hazardous waste.

She said it raises the question that if the material is hazardous enough to be sent to this facility, shouldn’t it all be sent there?

“Let’s just bring it all there and have a safe outcome for everyone,” Ketchabaw said.

Furthering distrust, Mazey said the two ministries often give the community contradictory information.

“It just raises a lot of red flags,” she said.

“I hope that the Ontario government listens to the residents and takes us seriously that this isn’t an easy fix … Just because this is the most convenient solution for the province, it doesn’t mean that it’s the best solution.”

Margaret Lafromboise, who lives close to the Spanish River, said she’s concerned about having “an unsafe radioactive site increased in volume.”

“I think the most constructive and practical thing to do would be to see if the municipality could get financial help to hire a lawyer and initiate an injunction to stop the action immediately,” Lafromboise said.

“As a society, as a province, we are not taking good enough care of our environment, the water and I don’t believe our current government is willing to take the action that is required.”

Representatives from the provincial ministries were not invited to Monday’s town hall.

July 17, 2025 Posted by | Canada, opposition to nuclear | Leave a comment

US DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) told regulator to ‘rubber stamp’ nuclear.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s historic role of assuring safety is changing as the White House shifts some responsibility to the Department of Energy.

Politico, By Francisco “A.J.” Camacho and Peter Behr, 07/14/2025

A DOGE representative told the chair and top staff of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that the agency will be expected to give “rubber stamp” approval to new reactors tested by the departments of Energy or Defense, according to three people with knowledge of a May meeting where the message was delivered.

The three people said Adam Blake, detailed to the NRC by the Department of Government Efficiency, described a new regulatory approach by NRC that would expedite nuclear safety assessments.

“DOE, DOD would approve stuff, and then NRC would be expected to just kind of rubber-stamp it,” said one of the three people, who were all granted anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

The meeting was held after President Donald Trump signed a May 23 executive order that would supplant the NRC’s historical role as the sole agency responsible for ensuring commercial nuclear projects are safe and won’t threaten public health.


Two of the three people said Blake used the term “rubber stamp” at the meeting that included NRC Chair David Wright, senior agency staff and DOE officials. Under Trump’s executive order, the NRC could not revisit issues assessed by DOE or the Pentagon, but the people with knowledge of the meeting said Blake and DOE officials went a step further to suggest the NRC’s secondary assessment should be a foregone conclusion.

Trump’s executive order and staff departures have added to concern at the independent agency and among nuclear experts that the White House is exerting more control over the NRC’s mandate under the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 than any previous administration.

“The NRC is working quickly to implement the executive orders reforming the agency and modernizing our regulatory and licensing processes,” said NRC spokesperson Maureen Conley. “We look forward to continuing to work with the administration, DOE and DOD on future nuclear programs.”

The NRC’s Wright was not made available for an interview. POLITICO’s E&E News also reached out for comment from Blake about the “rubber stamp” remark and his role at the agency. Blake and the White House did not respond to requests for comment.

When asked about the May meeting, a DOE spokesperson referenced Trump’s executive order.

Trump has said he wants to quadruple the U.S. supply of nuclear power by 2050. Tech industry allies, Republicans in Congress and Secretary of Energy Chris Wright have been sharply critical of the NRC for what they say is an unreasonably slow approval process that has held back the nuclear industry.

Defenders of the NRC and former agency officials agree that today’s smaller reactor designs require a new approach to licensing nuclear technology. They’re also adamant that a political push to build more nuclear reactors, and fast, doesn’t change NRC requirements under the law to ensure new reactor designs are safe.

Nuclear is now in political vogue again, with bipartisan support lately driven by Silicon Valley and Trump administration plans to use nuclear power to fuel huge artificial intelligence data centers. Some clean energy supporters see new, smaller nuclear reactors as crucial sources of carbon-free power in the 2030s.

Ongoing shake-up

In the weeks following the “rubber stamp” comment, the NRC experienced significant upheaval, including the abrupt June 13 firing of Christopher Hanson, a Democratic commissioner originally appointed during Trump’s first term and the former chair under President Joe Biden.

Hanson took to social media to protest the termination, saying it was done “without cause, contrary to existing law and longstanding precedent regarding removal of independent agency appointees.”

Anna Kelly, a White House spokesperson, told POLITICO at the time that “all organizations are more effective when leaders are rowing in the same direction,” adding that Trump “reserves the right to remove employees within his own Executive Branch who exert his executive authority.”

Wright’s term on the commission expired at the end of June as his reappointment from Trump waited in a Senate committee. Wright’s appointment squeaked through the Environment and Public Works Committee on Wednesday on a party-line vote after Democrats decried what they characterized as the administration’s “hostile takeover” of the NRC.

The decision by Trump and top aides to insert DOE into the NRC’s statutory licensing process was spelled out in four executive orders Trump signed May 23 — prompting nuclear experts to warn of “serious consequences” if the NRC’s loss of independence erodes safety.

Trump ordered a “wholesale review” of the NRC’s reactor design and safety regulations, with a nine-month deadline for proposed changes and final action in another nine months. The order said commission reviews of new designs must be completed within 18 months, with shorter deadlines set as appropriate.

A committee of at least 20 people would perform the review, including representatives of DOGE and the Office of Management and Budget, headed by Russ Vought, the architect of Project 2025’s conservative blueprint for shrinking the federal government.

Leadership at Idaho National Laboratory, which has been one of the centers of DOE’s research on nuclear reactors, has said DOE can perform safety evaluations of new reactors, and in doing so move more quickly and efficiently than the NRC………………………………………………….

………………………………………….
Big tech companies such as Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Meta are also signing long-term agreements with utilities that own nuclear reactors and SMR startups for future purchases of electricity to power their AI data centers.

The NRC is assessing a plan to reopen a closed unit at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania. And last month, the agency received a combined license application from Fermi America, a Texas-based company led by former Energy Secretary Rick Perry that plans to build the nation’s largest nuclear power complex. The “HyperGrid” site is in Amarillo, Texas, near the largest U.S. assembly plant for nuclear weapons known as Pantex.

“The Chinese are building 22 nuclear reactors today to power the future of AI,” said Perry, the former Texas governor. “America has none. We’re behind, and it’s all hands on deck.”

One of the three people with knowledge of the May meeting and Blake’s “rubber stamp” remark said the influx of nuclear license applications — and from politically connected people — is adding pressure and scrutiny to the process. “This is where the rubber hits the road,” the person said.

All of this comes amid a shake-up of senior leadership at the NRC. That includes the commission’s Executive Director of Operations Mirela Gavrilas, who had worked at the agency for more than 20 years and who was effectively forced out, according to the three people.

As the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee sent Wright’s renomination to the full Senate on Wednesday, its top Democrat, Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, withdrew his support……………………………..https://www.politico.com/news/2025/07/14/doge-to-regulator-rubber-stamp-nuclear-00450658

July 16, 2025 Posted by | safety, USA | Leave a comment

Instigating Murder

The US Attack on Francesca Albanese is even worse than meets the eye

Tarik Cyril Amar, Jul 10, 2025, https://www.tarikcyrilamar.com/p/instigating-murder

Sometimes – or, actually, very often – the behavior of the West’s ruling “elites” (if that is the word) is so obviously absurd and vicious that it’s, literally, stunning. In the sense that it almost knocks out a sane and morally decent individual’s capacity to fully grasp all aspects of any given new piece of depravity.

Instead, if you are still halfway normal in this West ruled by the clearly criminal and perverse, their frequent peak performances in depravity leave you with a dazed sense of “What just happened, again?” And once you recover from that shock, you can’t entirely shake the eerie feeling that you’ll never quite catch up with “their” constant and, again literally, limitless production of new evils.

None of the above is abstract. On the contrary, concrete examples abound. Recently, for instance, we have witnessed Israeli genocider-in-chief and fugitive under international law Benjamin Netanyahu publicly nominate genocide co-perpetrator Donald Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Together with his gang, the same Donald Trump, also of course serving as president of the still single most powerful (alas!) rogue state on the planet, has attempted to simply wipe out the memory of the Epstein sex abuse (at least) and political blackmail scandal. Most likely – as in, we all know it – because he himself and many of his donors were ensnared in that Israeli operation of controlling the West’s “elites” and depriving the West’s populations of the last, miserable shreds of having a say in their own countries.

Meanwhile, in Britain, those who resist the Gaza Genocide perpetrated by Israel and the West together are brutally suppressed as “terrorists,” while cabinet minister Lisa Nandy literally conspires with Israeli diplomats to make the already outrageously pro-Zionist BBC even more so.

And then, essentially at the same time, there has been America’s massive and unambiguously criminal attack on the UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Francesca Albanese. And that is, perhaps, the case displaying with greatest clarity that odd, stunning quality of the West’s atrocities and outrages.

The gist of the matter is that the US has sanctioned Albanese as if she were a criminal or even a terrorist. US secretary of state Marco Rubio has claimed that Albanese, an internationally recognized authority on human rights and international law, is waging a “campaign of political and economic warfare against the United States and Israel.” In particular, Rubio charged her with having supported the prosecution of Israeli leaders – that is, in reality, genocide perpetrators, also guilty of any other crime in every other book, from war crimes, via crimes against humanity, to apartheid and ethnic cleansing – by the International Criminal Court, another body under heavy sanctions fire from the US.

That, according to Rubio’s non-logic which is, of course, identical with that of the Israeli criminals – amounts to “antisemitism.” As a special highlight of absurdity, Rubio added that Albanese’s activities threaten the US’s “sovereignty.”

Let’s not waste time. No, it is neither necessary nor just nor intellectually healthy to treat these American allegations seriously, in the sense of going into any detail about why precisely they are deranged lies. Only so much, if Rubio and the other Trumpists are looking for someone destroying US “sovereignty” then the guy the American president has a habit of seating in his chair like a waiter may be a really good starting-point. And Netanyahu would, obviously, only be a small, nasty part of something much bigger called Israel and its lobby in America.

What is really happening here is clear: Albanese is a prominent critic and opponent of Israeli genocide. The US and its Western vassals are, at best, accomplices or, more realistically, co-perpetrators of that genocide. No Western state, conversely is fulfilling its clear legal obligations under the 1948 UN Genocide Convention and the 1998 Rome Statute (the US, to be fair, has always been vile enough not to even sign the latter; but that makes no difference to the fact that it is a signatory of the Genocide Convention): namely, not only not to commit the crime of genocide but to prevent it and to punish its perpetrators.

The US conclusion from the above, true to form is to persecute Albanese. It’s – literally – the criminals going after the sheriff. Because they can. For the worst and meanest rogue nation of them all, the US, with its trusty mass-murderous sidekick Israel, believes that might makes right. The rest – rules-based this or that, values, etc. – is pure hypocrisy.

None of the above is surprising or, make no mistake, new: No, this is not merely “Trumpism,” it is real-existing Americanism, as it has been for a long, long time. Ask the native Americans who were exterminated not “merely” by bloody violence but also by one broken agreement after another. Ask, more recently, the Iraqis or Libyans, for instance. What the Trumpists have added is merely a special note of in-your-face: Going after Albanese as if she were a terrorist while simultaneously not only sucking up once again to the genocidal führer of Israel but also a died-in-the-wool real terrorist, the head-cutting, pogrom-running puppet now in charge in Syria – that is almost a Gesamtkunstwerk of real-existing Americanism. Or maybe a Gestalt of evil and lies of satanic purity.

Likewise, the assault on Albanese – while a fresh peak performance – stands in a long tradition of harassing her as well as other opponents of Western-Israeli genocide, and not only in the US, of course. In Germany, Albanese was treated like a dangerous extremist who must not be allowed to speak in public. In the US, the attempt to cancel Albanese has a long history. Other critics of Israel and its crimes have been subjected to massive lawfare, on both sides of the Atlantic. Most recently, the German journalist Hüsein Dogru and his pregnant wife, too, have been terrorized by lawless EU sanctions that aim at nothing less than his economic destruction.

The reason: his reporting on protests against German complicity in the Gaza Genocide, which was absurdly re-interpreted as destabilizing Germany and – drum roll – playing into Russian hands. By that “logic” any criticism of any policy in the West can now lead to punitive sanctions (without any legal process, simply by bureaucratic fiat, Kafka-style) designed to destroy an individual’s existence.

All of the above, though, is obvious. Indeed, it is stunningly obvious in the sense mentioned at the beginning of this text: It arrests the mind, as it were. One gets stuck as if meditating on a perverse mandala of the unholy. Yet there seems to be one aspect of the attack on Albanese that receives too little attention, although it is second to none in its viciousness.

Consider that the Israelis have a long history of not “merely” smearing and undermining the UN, its offices, and representatives, but of deliberately mass-murdering them, too. To his eternal shame, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has betrayed his own brave staff by never daring to say what the world knows: The hundreds of UN, in particular UNRWA, personnel killed in Gaza since October 2023 have been the victims of an Israeli campaign to destroy UNRWA as a last lifeline for the Palestinian victims. A campaign that is part of Israel’s use of starvation as yet another weapon of genocide. Its “logical” conclusion has been the replacement of UNRWA with the mercenary death squads, cooperating with the equally murderous IDF, of the so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, funded, of course, by Israel.

If hundreds of UN staff have been mass-murdered as part of Israel’s Gaza Genocide, let’s not forget that Israel has a long tradition of assassinating UN officers, indeed, including the very highest: In 1948, Folke Bernadotte, a mediator and emissary of the UN Security Council was murdered by the Lehi terrorist organization (aka Stern Gang). Its members received a general amnesty in 1949. Later, one of Lehi’s leaders would go on to become Israeli prime minister (another one, of course, had led Irgun, another Zionist terror organization), and a military decoration would be named after it as well.

Israel, in sum, has a proud tradition of murdering UN representatives. It also has a long tradition of impunity in this area – as in all others – of criminality as well. Against this background, it is impossible that Rubio, Trump, and other US officials have missed one simple fact: They have not only assaulted Albanese with criminal lawfare. They have also signaled to Israel that they won’t mind if Israeli criminals go a step further and murder this UN representative, too.

That is the stark reality: Albanese’s punishment for standing up against genocide is not “merely” massive harassment but a very real death threat. Or to be precise, an implicit encouragement for Israel, a murderous state founded by ethnic cleansers and terrorists, to make true on the death threat Albanese lives under already. And Trump and his henchmen know this.

July 16, 2025 Posted by | politics international, USA | Leave a comment

Trump to Ukraine: ‘Squander another half million casualties to prevent defeat on my watch’ 

Walt Zlotow, West Suburban Peace Coalition, Glen Ellyn IL. 13 July25

Most esteemed observers put Ukraine’s dead and wounded at north of a half million in their lost war with Russia. Several million young Ukrainian men have fled conscription while stragglers are rounded up like stray dogs to be thrown into the meat grinder of warfare they’re totally unprepared to fight.

But the war is much more than Ukraine defending itself from a Russian invasion. It’s America’s proxy war to weaken, Russia from Western European political economy. Its origins go back 17 years when the US pitched NATO membership to Ukraine to achieve that senseless goal. It virtually guaranteed war after the US engineered the 2014 coup against Russian friendly Ukrainian President Victor Yanukovych. It ignited a civil war between the Kyiv government and the Russian cultured Ukrainians in the Donbas on Russia’s border. Russia tried diplomacy for 8 years to no avail before invading both to keep Ukraine out of NATO and end protect the beleaguered Donbas Ukrainians. Just before the invasion the US stupidly told Russia that NATO membership for Ukraine and Russia’s security concerns were not subject to diplomacy.

America’s best laid plans to prevail failed spectacularly. Now Ukraine will never join NATO but Donbas Ukrainians are largely safe and thrilled to be under Russian protection from the terrors imposed by Kyiv. Ukraine’s fate was sealed once Biden announced he’d only waste US treasure for weapons but not one drop of US blood for Ukraine’s defense. Three and a half years and over $200 billion in US/NATO weapons have simply put Ukraine on US/NATO life support. 

Biden was able to keep Ukraine in the fight for nearly 3 years, squandering a half million of its finest, so he could pass the war on to successor Trump. After being eviscerated by the US national security class for his admitting defeat and withdrawing from the 20 year Afghan war, Biden was loathe to incur another defeat on his watch. So he loaded up Ukraine with tons of weapons in his last months to ensure Ukraine would not collapse before his leaving.

 Even before retaking office, clueless Trump bragged he’d end the war in one day. He tried to browbeat Ukraine President Zelensky to negotiate war’s end, even humiliating him before the world in the Oval Office. One hundred seventy-five days in Trump is facing his own Afghanistan style defeat as Ukraine nears collapse.

 To stave off impending defeat he reversed the Pentagon’s withdrawal of new weapons based on US stockpiles running low. But all he could sputter was that he’s releasing “defensive weapons” only which will do no good with Ukraine running out of cannon fodder to fire them.

For Trump that’s A-OK. ‘Fight on Ukraine…I’ve only got three and a half years to keep this going till I can pull a Biden and pass it on the next clueless idiot trying to defeat an undefeatable Russia.’ The real issue is not whether Trump will succeed. He can’t. The ominous issue facing the US, indeed peoplekind, is whether Trump’s plan to avert defeat will lead to nuclear war that has been a possibility every day in Ukraine for the past three and a half years. 

July 14, 2025 Posted by | Ukraine, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Rep. Green cracks open America’s decades long denial of Israel’s illegal nuclear arsenal 

Walt Zlotow, West Suburban Peace Coalition, Glen Ellyn IL, 12 July 25

Marjorie Taylor Green (R-GA) became 1 in 535 congresspersons with the guts to call out Israel’s lawless nuclear weapons arsenal containing between 100 and 300 nukes.

She plans to introduce an amendment to strip $500 million from the 2026 NDAA (defense budget) for Israel. “I’m entering amendments to strike $500 million more for nuclear-armed Israel. And it’s important to say nuclear-armed Israel, because they do have nuclear weapons. And we already give them $3.4 billion every single year from the State Department. They don’t need another $500 million in our defense budget. That’s for the American people’s defense.”

Green represents the first serious crack in US administration, Congress and mainstream media’s lockstep denial of Israel’s nukes to avoid complying with US law. The Symington Amendment, a foreign assistance law, forbids military aid to countries trafficking in nuclear enrichment or technology outside of International Atomic Energy Administration (IAEA) safeguards

If the US admitted to Israel’s illegal nukes, it couldn’t give penny in military aid, much less the $3.4 billion Congress gifts to Israel every year on top of the roughly $20 billion we’ve given them to conduct their genocidal ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in Gaza. US aid represents nearly three quarters of Israel’s military spending since their genocide began in October, 2023.

Green, long a critic of the Israel Lobby, is likely to continue receiving her yearly bribe from the Lobby to support their genocidal ethnic cleansing of Gaza and the West Bank….$0.

When the Lobby comes calling to the other 534 congresspersons, nearly all sputter ‘Step right up.’ None dare not utter one word against Israel’s illegal, destabilizing, dangerous nuclear arsenal.

Back in February 2009 at his first presidential press conference, Obama said this when Helen Thomas asked him if any Middle East countries possess nuclear weapons. “When it comes to nuclear weapons….I do not wish to speculate.” What Obama really said was ‘When it come to nuclear weapons, I do not wish to tell the truth.’ A big reason was Obama’ senseless plan to guarantee Israel $3.4 billion annually for 10 years, something he could not do if he did tell the truth.

It’s been 16 years, but we finally heard a governmental leader, albeit just a relatively powerless congressperson, answer that question truthfully.

Let’s hope the crack Green opened up on Israel’s nukes will expand into a Grand Canyon of nuclear sanity.

July 12, 2025 Posted by | politics, USA | Leave a comment

‘An Arsenal of Profiteering’: Military Contractors Have Gotten Over Half of Pentagon Spending Since 2020

“These figures represent a continuing and massive transfer of wealth from taxpayers to fund war and weapons manufacturing,” said the project’s director.

Jessica Corbett, Jul 08, 2025, https://www.commondreams.org/news/pentagon-contractors

Less than a week after U.S. President Donald Trump signed a budget package that pushes annual military spending past $1 trillion, researchers on Tuesday published a report detailing how much major Pentagon contractors have raked in since 2020.

Sharing The Guardian‘s exclusive coverage of the paper on social media, U.K.-based climate scientist Bill McGuire wrote: “Are you a U.S. taxpayer? I am sure you will be delighted to know where $2.4 TRILLION of your money has gone.”

The report from the Costs of War Project at Brown University’s Watson School of International and Public Affairs and the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft shows that from 2020-24 private firms received $2.4 trillion in Department of Defense contracts, or roughly 54% of DOD’s $4.4 trillion in discretionary spending for that five-year period.

The publication highlights that “during those five years, $771 billion in Pentagon contracts went to just five firms: Lockheed Martin ($313 billion), RTX (formerly Raytheon, $145 billion), Boeing ($115 billion), General Dynamics ($116 billion), and Northrop Grumman ($81 billion).”

In a statement about the findings, Stephanie Savell, director of the Costs of War Project, said that “these figures represent a continuing and massive transfer of wealth from taxpayers to fund war and weapons manufacturing.”

“This is not an arsenal of democracy—it’s an arsenal of profiteering,” Savell added. “We should keep the enormous and growing power of the arms industry in mind as we assess the rise of authoritarianism in the U.S. and globally.”

The paper points out that “by comparison, the total diplomacy, development, and humanitarian aid budget, excluding military aid, was $356 billion. In other words, the U.S. government invested over twice as much money in five weapons companies as in diplomacy and international assistance.”

“Record arms transfers have further boosted the bottom lines of weapons firms,” the document details. “These companies have benefited from tens of billions of dollars in military aid to Israel and Ukraine, paid for by U.S. taxpayers. U.S. military aid to Israel was over $18 billion in just the first year following October 2023; military aid to Ukraine totals $65 billion since the Russian invasion in 2022 through 2025.”

“Additionally, a surge in foreign-funded arms sales to European allies, paid for by the recipient nations—over $170 billion in 2023 and 2024 alone—have provided additional revenue to arms contractors over and above the funds they receive directly from the Pentagon,” the paper adds.

The 23-page report stresses that “annual U.S. military spending has grown significantly this century,” as presidents from both major parties have waged a so-called Global War on Terror and the DOD has continuously failed to pass an audit.

Specifically, according to the paper, “the Pentagon’s discretionary budget—the annual funding approved by Congress and the large majority of its overall budget—rose from $507 billion in 2000 to $843 billion in 2025 (in constant 2025 dollars), a 66% increase. Including military spending outside the Pentagon—primarily nuclear weapons programs at the Department of Energy, counterterrorism operations at the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and other military activities officially classified under ‘Budget Function 050’— total military spending grew from $531 billion in 2000 to $899 billion in 2025, a 69% increase.”

Republicans’ One Big Beautiful Bill Act passed earlier this month “adds $156 billion to this year’s total, pushing the 2025 military budget to $1.06 trillion,” the document notes. “After taking into account this supplemental funding, the U.S. military budget has nearly doubled this century, increasing 99% since 2000.”

Noting that “taxpayers are expected to fund a $1 trillion Pentagon budget,” Security Policy Reform Institute co-founder Stephen Semler said the paper, which he co-authored, “illustrates what they’ll be paying for: a historic redistribution of wealth from the public to private industry.”

Semler produced the report with William Hartung, senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute. Hartung said that “high Pentagon budgets are often justified because the funds are ‘for the troops.'”

“But as this paper shows, the majority of the department’s budget goes to corporations, money that has as much to do with special interest lobbying as it does with any rational defense planning,” he continued. “Much of this funding has been wasted on dysfunctional or overpriced weapons systems and extravagant compensation packages.”

In addition to spotlighting how U.S. military budgets funnel billions of dollars to contractors each year, the report shines a light on the various ways the industry influences politics.

“The ongoing influence of the arms industry over Congress operates through tens of millions in campaign contributions and the employment of 950 lobbyists, as of 2024,” the publication explains. “Military contractors also shape military policy and lobby to increase military spending by funding think tanks and serving on government commissions.”

“Senior officials in government often go easy on major weapons companies so as not to ruin their chances of getting lucrative positions with them upon leaving government service,” the report notes. “For its part, the emerging military tech sector has opened a new version of the revolving door—the movement of ex-military officers and senior Pentagon officials, not to arms companies per se, but to the venture capital firms that invest in Silicon Valley arms industry startups.”

The paper concludes by arguing that “the U.S. needs stronger congressional and public scrutiny of both current and emerging weapons contractors to avoid wasteful spending and reckless decision-making on issues of war and peace. Profits should not drive policy.”

“In particular,” it adds, “the role of Silicon Valley startups and the venture capital firms that support them needs to be better understood and debated as the U.S. crafts a new foreign policy strategy that avoids unnecessary wars and prioritizes cooperation over confrontation.”

July 12, 2025 Posted by | USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Why the US must protect the independence of its nuclear regulator

By Stephen Burns, Allison Macfarlane, Richard Meserve | July 7, 2025, https://thebulletin.org/2025/07/why-the-us-must-protect-the-independence-of-its-nuclear-regulator/https://thebulletin.org/2025/07/why-the-us-must-protect-the-independence-of-its-nuclear-regulator/

The White House has introduced radical changes that threaten to disrupt the effectiveness of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). The agency was formed in 1975 to be an independent regulator, separating it from the promotional role pursued by its predecessor, the Atomic Energy Commission. The NRC has set safety requirements that have become the global gold standard for nuclear regulation. The White House actions threaten to undermine this record.

Conversations with fellow former NRC chairs and retired NRC experts reveal a shared concern that the changes will have unintended, dangerous consequences. In February, the White House issued an executive order that intruded on the traditional autonomy of independent agencies, thereby giving the White House the capacity to control NRC regulatory actions and allow politics to infect regulatory decision-making. A series of executive orders on nuclear matters issued in late May compounded the challenge. One of the executive orders focuses on the reform of the NRC. It would establish arbitrary deadlines for decisions on construction permits and operating licenses, regardless of whether the design offers new and previously unevaluated safety challenges. Other provisions demand the review of all the extensive NRC regulations within 18 months. The other executive orders allow the construction of nuclear power reactors on federal lands—sites belonging to the Energy Department and the Defense Department—without any review by the NRC.

Then, on June 13, the Trump administration fired Christopher Hanson, an NRC commissioner and former chair, without any stated justification. These actions all serve to weaken protections for those who work in or live near reactors. Given the anticipated expansion of reliance on nuclear power, the drastic staff reductions contemplated by the White House come at the wrong time.


There is always room to assess the efficiency and effectiveness of the regulatory process and adapt it to the evolution of nuclear technologies and their implementation. Recognizing that, past and current NRC commissioners and technical staff have set in motion changes to reduce the regulatory burden and speed the deployment of reactors at a lower cost. The changes are prudent and reasonable and support the promise of expanded reliance on nuclear energy. Congress has also encouraged those efforts and further instructed the NRC to make more improvements to the process through the bipartisan ADVANCE Act signed into law in 2024. All of this was underway before the White House interference.

The NRC has protected the health and safety of Americans for 50 years without a single civilian reactor radiation-related death. The lessons of the 1979 Three Mile Island accident have long been woven into the safety regime, and every commercial reactor in the United States is safer today because of major safety steps taken after the destruction of reactors in Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi plant by a massive earthquake and tsunami in 2011.

Since Three Mile Island, the agency has licensed approximately 50 power reactors to operate. It has recently issued construction permits for advanced reactors ahead of schedule. And the NRC has cleared utilities to boost the power of many existing reactors and has licensed them to run longer than originally planned.

We are concerned about the unintended safety consequences that a reduced NRC independence and a schedule-driven regulatory paradigm threaten to bring.

We fear the loss of public confidence that can befall a safety agency when expediency is seen to be given priority. Reducing the NRC’s independence while mixing promotion of nuclear energy and responsibility for safeguarding the public and environment is a recipe for corner-cutting at best and catastrophe at worst.

We are also concerned that such steps could damage the reputation of US reactor vendors worldwide. A design licensed in the United States now carries a stamp of approval that can facilitate licensing elsewhere, including the many countries that plan to embark on a nuclear power program. If it becomes clear that the NRC has been forced to cut corners on safety and operate less transparently, US reactor vendors will be hurt.

The US nuclear industry is helped by the fact that it has a strong independent regulator behind it. The White House’s executive orders may produce the opposite effect from their stated purpose.

Editor’s note: The authors are former chairs of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

July 12, 2025 Posted by | safety, USA | Leave a comment

U.S. sanctions U.N. expert critical of Israel’s war in Gaza

10 July 25, https://www.nbcnews.com/world/middle-east/us-sanctions-un-expert-critical-israel-war-gaza-francesca-albanese-rcna217927

Francesca Albanese has called for an arms embargo on Israel and accused the U.S. ally of waging a “genocidal campaign” in Gaza.

The United States said on Wednesday it was imposing sanctions on Francesca Albanese, the United Nations’ special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories, who has been very critical of U.S. ally Israel’s war in Gaza.

“Today I am imposing sanctions on UN Human Rights Council Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese for her illegitimate and shameful efforts to prompt (International Criminal Court) action against U.S. and Israeli officials, companies, and executives,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement.

In a post on X late on Wednesday, Albanese wrote that she stood “firmly and convincingly on the side of justice, as I have always done,” without directly mentioning the U.S. sanctions. In a text message to Al Jazeera, she was quoted as dismissing the U.S. move as “mafia style intimidation techniques.”

Albanese, an Italian lawyer and academic, has called on states at the U.N. Human Rights Council to impose an arms embargo and cut off trade and financial ties with Israel while accusing the U.S. ally of waging a “genocidal campaign” in Gaza.

Israel has faced accusations of genocide at the International Court of Justice and of war crimes at the ICC over its devastating military assault on Gaza. Israel denies the accusations and says its campaign amounts to self-defense after a deadly October 2023 Hamas attack.

In a report published earlier this month, Albanese accused over 60 companies, including major arms manufacturers and technology firms, of involvement in supporting Israeli settlements and military actions in Gaza. The report called on companies to cease dealings with Israel and for legal accountability for executives implicated in alleged violations of international law.

Albanese is one of dozens of independent human rights experts mandated by the United Nations to report on specific themes and crises. The views expressed by special rapporteurs do not reflect those of the global body as a whole.

Rights experts slammed the U.S. sanctions against Albanese. Dylan Williams, vice president for government affairs at the Center for International Policy think tank, labeled them as “rogue state behavior” while Amnesty International said special rapporteurs must be supported and not sanctioned.

“Governments around the world and all actors who believe in the rule-based order and international law must do everything in their power to mitigate and block the effect of the sanctions against Francesca Albanese and more generally to protect the work and independence of Special Rapporteurs,” Amnesty International’s Secretary General Agnes Callamard, a former UN special rapporteur, said.

Since returning to office in January, President Donald Trump has stopped U.S. engagement with the U.N. Human Rights Council, extended a halt to funding for the Palestinian relief agency UNRWA and ordered a review of the U.N. cultural agency UNESCO.

He has also announced U.S. plans to quit the Paris climate deal and the World Health Organization.

His administration imposed sanctions on four judges at the ICC in June in retaliation over the war tribunal’s issuance of an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and a past decision to open a case into alleged war crimes by U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

July 12, 2025 Posted by | civil liberties, USA | Leave a comment

Republicans and Democrats Finally Agree on Nuclear. It’s the Industry That’s the Problem.

The atomic age is perpetually on the verge of dawning.

 Nuclear power is a political winner — but not a money saver. Just ask
Tim Echols. Echols’ term on the Georgia Public Service Commission is up
this year, and unlike most states, his position is an elected one.

He says the Vogtle nuclear plant has been a campaign issue — it’s hiked
customers’ bills by about 12 percent since coming fully online last year,
$21 billion over budget and seven years behind schedule — but that his
opponents haven’t been able to weaponize it. He won his Republican
primary resoundingly last month.

“All the Democratic opponents are saying
that they would build Vogtle,” he said. “They’re just not saying how
they would pay for it. Or they’re saying they’re going to lower bills,
but they’re going to build nuclear, and those two things don’t go
together.”

The hippies are dying out, and with them the memories of
Shoreham, San Onofre, V.C. Summer, Three Mile Island and other nuclear
plants that didn’t pan out, suffered radiation leaks or otherwise closed
before their time. It’s not the policy that’s holding nuclear back:
It’s the industry.

All the incentives and permitting reforms the
government can muster won’t change the basic economics that have led to
just three new nuclear plants getting built in the U.S. this century: It
takes too long, is too expensive and is only getting pricier. “In terms
of new nuclear, it’s a nonstarter,” said Stanford engineering professor
Mark Z. Jacobson, a longtime skeptic of nuclear power. “They can spend as
much money as they want, it’s never going to happen.”

 Politico 9th July 2025, https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/07/09/gop-dems-nuclear-energy-industry-problems-debra-kahn-column-00344370

July 12, 2025 Posted by | politics, USA | Leave a comment

America’s largest airport reveals ‘plan’ to build NUCLEAR REACTOR on its land.

 America’s largest airport by size is reportedly considering plans to build
a nuclear reactor on its sprawling 33,500-acre property. Denver
International Airport CEO Phil Washington, 67, made the shocking revelation
during a recent Future of Aerotropolis event hosted by local business
publication, Business Den. Washington, a former pick to lead Joe Biden’s
FAA before he withdrew under heavy Republican criticism over the airport’s
safety record, told the panel discussion the he was seriously considering a
‘small modular reactor’ to meet growing energy demands.

 Daily Mail 9th July 2025, https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14890859/Americas-largest-airport-reveals-plan-build-NUCLEAR-REACTOR-land.html

July 12, 2025 Posted by | safety, USA | Leave a comment

The Trumpanyahu Administration

Caitlin Johnstone, Jul 01, 2025, https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/the-trumpanyahu-administration?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=167261479&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

Honestly at this point they should just get Netanyahu his own room in the White House and a desk in the Oval Office.

The prime minister of Israel is taking his third trip to the White House in the five months since Trump has been back in office. I have immediate blood family members who I love with all my heart and visit less often than this.

This comes as the Trump administration revokes the US visas of British punk rap duo Bob Vylan ahead of a US tour for chanting “Death, death to the IDF” at a concert in the UK. Trump’s sycophantic supporters who spent years complaining that their free speech rights were under assault appear fine with their government deciding what words Americans are allowed to hear in their own country.

This also comes as Trump actively intervenes in the Israeli judicial system to prevent Netanyahu’s corruption trial from moving forward.

The president has repeatedly taken to social media to demand that Israel abandon its corruption case against the prime minister, at one point even implying that the US could cut off arms supplies if his trial isn’t canceled.

“The United States of America spends Billions of Dollar a year, far more than on any other Nation, protecting and supporting Israel,” Trump said. “We are not going to stand for this. We just had a Great Victory with Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu at the helm — And this greatly tarnishes our Victory. LET BIBI GO, HE’S GOT A BIG JOB TO DO!”

It’s so revealing what the US government is and is not willing to threaten conditioning military supplies on, and what it’s willing to interfere in Israel’s affairs to accomplish.

Ever since the Gaza holocaust began we’ve been hearing lines like “Israel is a sovereign country” and “Israel is a sovereign state that makes its own decisions” when reporters ask why the White House doesn’t leverage arms shipments to demand more humanitarian treatment for civilians in the Gaza Strip. But the president of the United States is willing to leverage those same arms shipments to directly interfere in Israeli legal proceedings which have nothing to do with the US government in order to get Netanyahu out of trouble.

And it would appear that the president’s intervention has been successful; Netanyahu’s corruption trial has since been postponed.

When it comes to committing genocide using American weapons funded by American taxpayers, Israel is a sovereign state upon which the US can exert zero leverage or control. When it comes to meddling in the corruption trial of a man who is wanted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court, the White House pulls no punches in protecting its favorite genocide monster.

There is no meaningful separation between the US and Israeli governments. They’re two member states in the undeclared empire that sprawls across the entire western world, and Trump and Netanyahu are two of the most depraved and most consequential managers of this empire today.

They are thick as thieves. They are partners in crime.

Call it the Trumpanyahu administration.

July 4, 2025 Posted by | Israel, politics international, USA | Leave a comment

US Approves $510 Million Arms Deal for Israel

The deal is for more than 7,000 JDAM kits, which turn bombs into precision-guided weapons

by Dave DeCamp | Jun 30, 2025, https://news.antiwar.com/2025/06/30/us-approves-510-million-arms-deal-for-israel/

The Trump administration has approved a new arms deal for Israel that will provide the country with $510 million worth of Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAMS), kits that turn bombs into precision-guided weapons, as the US continues to provide military aid to support the genocidal war in Gaza.

According to the Pentagon’s Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA), the State Department notified Congress of the sale of 3,845 JDAMS for 2,000-pound BLU-109 bombs and 3,280 JDAMS for 500-pound MK 82 bombs. The deal also includes US “government and contractor engineering, logistics, and technical support services; and other related elements of logistics and program support.”

The DSCA said Boeing is the principal contractor for the deal. The notification of the potential deal begins a time period when US lawmakers could potentially block the sale, but there’s little opposition to US military support for Israel within Congress, despite the many war crimes the US is implicated in by providing Israel with weapons.

Fragments of bombs with US-provided JDAM kits have been found at the scene of Israeli airstrikes in Gaza that have massacred many civilians. In 2023, Human Rights Watch said it identified JDAM fragments that were found in two airstrikes on homes in central Gaza that killed 43 civilians, including 19 children, and 14 women.

It’s unclear at this point how the deal will be financed, but many arms sales to Israel are funded by US military aid, and US assistance to Israel has significantly increased since October 7, 2023. According to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, in that time, US funding has covered an estimated 70% of Israel’s war-related military spending.

July 4, 2025 Posted by | Israel, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Operation Midnight Hammer: Were Iran’s Nuclear Facilities Damaged?

After mulling over the attacks over the course of a week, Grossi revisited the matter. The attacks on the facilities had caused severe though “not total” damage. “Frankly speaking, one cannot claim that everything has disappeared and there is nothing there.” Tehran could “in a matter of months” have “a few cascades of centrifuges spinning and producing enriched uranium.” Iran still had the “industrial and technological” means to recommence the process.

1 July 2025 Dr Binoy Kampmark, https://theaimn.net/operation-midnight-hammer-were-irans-nuclear-facilities-damaged/

The aftermath of Operation Midnight Hammer, a strike by the US Air Force on three nuclear facilities in Iran authorised by President Donald Trump on June 22, was raucous and triumphant. But that depended on what company you were keeping. The mission involved the bombing of the Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant, the uranium-enrichment facility at Natanz, and the uranium-conversion facility in Isfahan. The Israeli Air Force had already attacked the last two facilities, sparing Fordow for the singular weaponry available for the USAF.  

The Fordow site was of particular interest, located some eighty to a hundred metres underground and cocooned by protective concrete. For its purported destruction, B-2 Spirit stealth bombers were used to drop GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator “bunker buster” bombs. All in all, approximately 75 precision guided weapons were used in the operation, along with 125 aircraft and a guided missile submarine.

Trump was never going to be anything other than optimistic about the result. “Monumental Damage was done to all Nuclear sites in Iran, as shown by satellite images,” he blustered. “Obliteration is an accurate term!”

At the Pentagon press conference following the attack, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth bubbled with enthusiasm. “The order we received from our commander in chief was focused, it was powerful, and it was clear. We devastated the Iranian nuclear program.” The US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Air Force Gen. Dan Caine was confident that the facilities had been subjected to severe punishment. “Initial battle damage assessments indicate that all three sites sustained extremely severe damage and destruction.” Adding to Caine’s remarks, Hegseth stated that, “The battle damage assessment is ongoing, but our initial assessment, as the Chairman said, is that all of our precision munitions struck where we wanted them to strike and had the desired effect.”

Resort to satellite imagery was always going to take place, and Maxar Technologies willingly supplied the material. “A layer of grey-blue ash caused by the airstrikes [on Fordow] is seen across a large swathe of the area,” the company noted in a statement. “Additionally, several of the tunnel entrances that lead into the underground facility are blocked with dirt following the airstrikes.”

The director of the Central Intelligence Agency, John Ratcliffe, also added his voice to the merry chorus that the damage had been significant. “CIA can confirm that a body of credible intelligence indicates Iran’s Nuclear Program has been severely damaged by the recent, targeted airstrikes.” The assessment included “new intelligence from a historically reliable and accurate source/method that several key Iranian nuclear facilities were destroyed and would have to be rebuilt over the course of years.”

Israeli sources were also quick to stroke Trump’s already outsized ego. The Israel Atomic Energy Commission opined that the strikes, combined with Israel’s own efforts, had “set back Iran’s ability to develop nuclear weapons by many years.” IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir’s view was that the damage to the nuclear program was sufficient to have “set it back by years, I repeat, years.”

The chief of the increasingly discredited International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Grossi, flirted with some initial speculation, but was mindful of necessary caveats. In a statement to an emergency meeting of the IAEA’s 35-nation Board of Governors, he warned that, “At this time, no one, including the IAEA, is in a position to have fully assessed the underground damage at Fordow.” Cue the speculation: “Given the explosive payload utilised and extreme(ly) vibration-sensitive nature of centrifuges, very significant damage is expected to have occurred.”

This was a parade begging to be rained on. CNN and The New York Times supplied it. Referring to preliminary classified findings in a Defense Intelligence Agency assessment running for five pages, the paper reported that the bombing of the three sites had “set back the country’s nuclear program by only a few months.” The entrances to two of the facilities had been sealed off by the strikes but were not successful in precipitating a collapse of the underground buildings. Sceptical expertise murmured through the report: to destroy the facility at Fordow would require “waves of airstrikes, with days or even weeks of pounding the same spots.”

Then came the issue of the nuclear material in question, which Iran still retained control over. The fate of over 400 kg of uranium that had been enriched up to 60% of purity is unclear, as are the number of surviving or hidden centrifuges. Iran had already informed the IAEA on June 13 that “special measures” would be taken to protect nuclear materials and equipment under IAEA safeguards, a feature provided under the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Any transfer of nuclear material from a safeguarded facility to another location, however, would have to be declared to the agency, something bound to be increasingly unlikely given the proposed suspension of cooperation with the IAEA by Iran’s parliament.  

After mulling over the attacks over the course of a week, Grossi revisited the matter. The attacks on the facilities had caused severe though “not total” damage. “Frankly speaking, one cannot claim that everything has disappeared and there is nothing there.” Tehran could “in a matter of months” have “a few cascades of centrifuges spinning and producing enriched uranium.” Iran still had the “industrial and technological” means to recommence the process.

Efforts to question the effacing thoroughness of Operation Midnight Hammer did not sit well with the Trump administration. White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt worked herself into a state on any cautionary reporting, treating it as a libellous blemish. “The leaking of this alleged report is a clear attempt to demean President Trump and discredit the brave fighter pilots who conducted a perfectly executed mission to obliterate Iran’s nuclear program,” she fumed in a statement. “Everyone knows what happens when you drop 14 30,000-pound bombs perfectly on their targets.”

July 4, 2025 Posted by | Iran, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Palantir’s Shadow War On Iran

 July 2, 2025, Kit Klarenberg, https://www.kitklarenberg.com/p/palantirs-shadow-war-on-iran

As the dust settles on the “12 Day War”, it is ever-clearer that the conflict was a crushing defeat for Israel and the US. In retrospect, the Zionist entity’s sole success was a wave of assassinations in the conflict’s first hours. A fawning June 19th Financial Times report hinted cutting-edge technology drawing together diverse data and intelligence sources was responsible. This raises the obvious question of whether Tel Aviv was assisted in its murderous spree by notorious private spying giant Palantir.

An avowedly pro-Israel tech giant founded by Donald Trump confidante and ardent Zionist Peter Thiel, which reportedly provides artificial intelligence tech supporting Tel Aviv’s genocide in Gaza, Palantir’s tendrils extend typically unseen into almost every conceivable sphere of public and private life across the West. Moreover, the firm – launched with seed funding from CIA venture capital wing In-Q-Tel – has long-played a pivotal but barely acknowledged role in the International Atomic Energy Agency’s monitoring of Tehran’s nuclear research.

The interpretation Palantir was one way or another involved in Israel’s illegal “preemptive” war of aggression against Tehran is amply reinforced by the release of sensitive Israeli documents by Iran’s intelligence ministry. These files indicate the IAEA previously provided Israeli intelligence with the names of several Iranian nuclear scientists, who were subsequently assassinated. Additionally, current Association chief Rafael Grossi enjoys a close, long-running, clandestine relationship with Israeli officials. Subsequent disclosures could expose the IAEA’s dark alliance with Palantir.

‘Fishing Expedition’

In July 2015, the Obama administration inked the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action with Tehran. Under its auspices, in return for sanctions relief, the IAEA was granted unimpeded access to Iran’s nuclear facilities, to ensure the Islamic Republic was not developing nuclear weapons. Vast amounts of information on and within the sites, including surveillance camera photos, measurement data, and documents were collected along the way. The Association consistently found Iran was stringently adhering to the JCPOA’s terms.

Following Trump’s first inauguration however, the JCPOA began to come apart at the seams. In October 2017, he refused to certify Iran’s compliance with its obligations on bogus grounds, and began threatening to tear up the agreement outright and reimpose sanctions. The next March, then-IAEA director general Yukiya Amano sounded alarm over this prospect, claiming the JCPOA had produced “the world’s most robust [nuclear] verification regime” in Iran, and its cessation would represent a “great loss”. He went on to boast of how Association inspectors:

“Now spend 3,000 calendar days per year on the ground in Iran. We have installed some 2,000 tamper-proof seals on nuclear material and equipment. We have carried out more than 60 complementary accesses [unannounced inspections] and visited more than 190 buildings…We collect and analyse hundreds of thousands of images captured daily by our sophisticated surveillance cameras…about half of the total number of such images that we collect throughout the world. We collect over one million pieces of open source information each month.”

Amano added IAEA activities in Tehran were “supported by state-of-the-art technology, including data collecting and processing systems.” Unmentioned was that these innovative resources were provided by Palantir. The company’s central role in scrutinizing Iran’s nuclear compliance and intimate handshake with the IAEA was revealed two months later by Bloomberg, mere days before the Trump administration shredded the Agreement and launched a “maximum pressure” campaign against Tehran. Former US energy secretary Ernest Moniz effusively praised Palantir’s contribution:

“We have a completely unique and unparalleled intrusive verification regime that was not there before the agreement.”

A tool dubbed Mosaic served as “the analytical core” and “platform of choice” for the IAEA’s verification mission in Iran. The software helped the Association “plan and justify unscheduled probes”, collating and processing data from around 400 million “digital objects” globally, “including social media feeds and satellite photographs.” Mosaic was also charged with examining en-masse documents not only collected by the IAEA, but tens of thousands of sensitive files stolen by Mossad from Tehran.

Bloomberg quoted Ali Vaez, International Crisis Group’s Iran Project director, as expressing concern about Mosaic analysing “dirty” data obtained by Mossad, “which prides itself on deception.” After all, “even a small amount of false information could trigger a flurry of unnecessary snap inspections and derail an agreement that took years to reach.” The broader the terms of Palantir’s work with the IAEA, the more the mission “appears as a fishing expedition,” Vaez fretted, suggesting Iran could become less willing “to open its doors to inspectors.”

Vaez’s comments were eerily prophetic. Recent disclosures of intensive collusion between the IAEA and Zionist entity authorities, and the resultant prospect Association inspections assisted Israeli and US attacks on Tehran, prompted Iranian lawmakers to unanimously pass legislation indefinitely suspending cooperation with the Association on June 25th. It is unlikely IAEA inspectors will ever be permitted to tread on the Islamic Republic’s territory again. But Bloomberg highlighted a number of other anxieties that have only gained in gravity in light of recent events.

‘False Assumption’

For one, the outlet recorded how Palantir’s IAEA role granted the company “access to information that governments don’t,” while questioning whether “an international agency known for its independence” could truly remain neutral and objective given “Thiel’s close personal ties to Trump.” Furthermore, Bloomberg noted the Association’s Palantir-provided “enhanced investigative abilities” had “raised concern that the IAEA may overstep the boundary between nuclear monitoring and intelligence-gathering,” transforming its inspectors into unwitting “potential cyber sleuths.”

Such fears were only exacerbated by Mosaic being based upon Palantir’s highly controversial “predictive-policing software”. For the IAEA, this capability turned “databases of classified information into maps” helping “inspectors visualize ties between the people, places and material involved in nuclear activities” in Tehran. The risk of innocent Iranian civilians being made targets for surveillance, harassment, or even assassination created by erroneous data being fed into and/or pumped out by Mosaic is gargantuan.

Bloomberg quoted a representative of a British company “that advises governments on verification issues” as saying “predictive-analysis” systems were extremely vulnerable to such corruption, “either by accident or design.” He noted, “you will generate a false return if you add a false assumption into the system…[and] end up convincing yourself that shadows are real.” Of course, a dangerous “false assumption” lay at the very core of the IAEA’s inspection mission in Iran – namely, that Tehran was developing nukes in the first place.

The Islamic Republic has for decades consistently denied any suggestion it harbours ambitions to possess nuclear weapons. Her denials were corroborated by a November 2007 US National Intelligence Estimate expressing “high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted” any and all research into nuclear weapons. This assessment remained unchanged for several years, and was reportedly shared by Mossad. As Bloomberg recorded, come May 2018 the IAEA had “certified Iran’s work 10 times.”

In March 2025, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard testified to Congress that Iran had not restarted the nuclear weapons program it halted in 2003. On June 17th, with the 12 Day War well-underway, IAEA chief Grossi declared “we did not have any proof of a systematic effort” by Tehran “to move into a nuclear weapon.” Yet, Israel justified its attacks based on an intelligence dossier that concluded the Islamic Republic had in fact reached the “point of no return” in acquiring nukes.

That dodgy dossier depended in no small part on the findings of a May IAEA report. The document provided no new information – its dubious charges related “to activities dating back decades” at three sites where purportedly, until the early 2000s, “undeclared nuclear material” was handled. If this report was analysed by Palantir’s “predictive-analysis” systems, it is all but inevitable false results and connections would’ve been created, in turn influencing the Zionist entity’s targets and strategy.

One of the “predictive policing” tools innovated by Palantir guiding Mosaic’s operations is Gotham, which is used by an uncertain number of Western law enforcement agencies. Leaked documents on the resource show it collects an extraordinary volume of data on entire populations – whether they are law-abiding, suspected of having committed a crime, or simply connected to individuals accused of wrongdoing. This includes sex, race, names, contact details, addresses, prior warrants, mugshots, surveillance photos, personal relationships, past and current employers, and identifying features such as tattoos.

In October 2024, a major Norwegian asset manager divested from Palantir due to the company offering “AI-based predictive policing systems”, aiding the Zionist entity’s mass surveillance of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. These systems are designed “to identify individuals who are likely to launch ‘lone wolf terrorist’ attacks, facilitating their arrests preemptively before the strikes that it is projected they would carry out.” Their deployment results in countless Palestinians languishing in Israeli dungeons without charge or trial.

If Mosaic informed the Zionist entity’s strategy during the 12 Day War, that may account for why individuals with no connection whatsoever to Iran’s civilian nuclear program were directly targeted for assassination. This includes Majid Tajan Jari, a prominent professor in the field of AI locally, slain in an Israeli strike on a residential building in Tehran on June 16th. Yet, reliance on faulty or false information collated by Mosaic would simultaneously explain the conflict ending in embarrassing defeat for Israel, and victory for Tehran.

July 3, 2025 Posted by | Iran, Israel, secrets,lies and civil liberties, USA | Leave a comment

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