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‘National Security Threat’? 95-Year-Old Human Rights Scholar Richard Falk Interrogated for Hours by Canada.

“Clearly, the international repression of the Palestinian cause knows no bounds.”

Jon Queally, Common Dreams, Nov 15, 2025

Ninety-five-year-old Richard Falk—world renowned scholar of international law and former UN special rapporteur focused on Palestinian rights—was detained and interrogated for several hours along with his wife, legal scholar Hilal Elver, as the pair entered Canada for a conference focused on that nation’s complicity with Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

“A security person came and said, ‘We’ve detained you both because we’re concerned that you pose a national security threat to Canada,’” Falk explained to Al-Jazeera in a Saturday interview from Ottawa in the wake of the incident that happened at the international airport in Toronto ahead of the scheduled event.

“It was my first experience of this sort–ever–in my life,” said Falk, professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University, author or editor of more than 20 books, and formerly the UN special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories.

Falk, who is American, has been an outspoken critic of the foreign policy of Canada, the United States, and other Western nations on the subject of Israel-Palestine as well as other issues. He told media outlets that he and his wife, also an American, were held for over four hours after their arrival in Toronto. They were in the country to speak and participate at the Palestine Tribunal on Canadian Responsibility, an event scheduled for Friday and Saturday in Ottawa, the nation’s capital.

The event, according to the program notes on the website, was designed to “document the multiple ways that Canadian entities – including government bodies, corporations, universities, charities, media, and other cultural institutions–have enabled and continue to enable the settler colonization and genocide of Palestinians, and to articulate what justice and reparations would require.”………………………………………………….. https://www.commondreams.org/news/richard-falk-canada-gaza

November 18, 2025 Posted by | Canada, secrets,lies and civil liberties | Leave a comment

Health Care Workers Spoke Out for Their Peers in Gaza. Then Came Backlash.

Medical institutions are silencing their staff and impeding efforts to build solidarity with medical workers in Gaza.

By Marianne Dhenin , Truthout, November 17, 2025

handra Hassan, an associate professor of surgery at the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) College of Medicine, spent three weeks in Gaza in January 2024, treating patients who had survived tank shelling, drone strikes, and sniper fire amid Israel’s ongoing genocide. When Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis came under siege, Hassan and the MedGlobal doctors he was serving with were forced to flee. “We were evacuated when they bombed just across the street from the hospital [and] tanks were rolling in,” Hassan told Truth

When Hassan returned home to Chicago, he was eager to share his experiences and advocate for an end to Israel’s assault on Gaza, which has killed an estimated 68,000 Palestinians since October 2023. Among the dead are over 1,500 health care workers, including doctors and nurses Hassan worked alongside.

But instead of being welcomed like he had been after previous missions to conflict zones in Ukraine and Syria, Hassan soon found himself on the receiving end of a doxxing and harassment campaign.  StopAntisemitism, a pro-Israel group that doxxes people it accuses of antisemitism, shared screenshots of some of Hassan’s LinkedIn posts to its X account. Hassan said his employer received around 1,500 emailed complaints the day StopAntisemitism posted his information.

“I was speaking up for the human rights of Palestinians [because] it’s like, you’re witnessing another genocide, you need to talk about it,” Hassan told Truthout. But StopAntisemitism “put my picture, and they wrote that I’m [an] antisemite.”

Hassan is one of more than 15 health care workers in eight states who told Truthout they faced silencing, harassment, or workplace retaliation for Palestine-related speech, including giving a talk on health issues in Palestine, endorsing statements condemning the killing of health care workers in Gaza, or wearing a keffiyeh or other symbols of Palestine solidarity at work. Many said they felt that their hospitals, clinics, or professional societies had become increasingly hostile working environments since October 2023.

The experiences that health care workers shared suggest that organized campaigns of complaints and harassment from pro-Israel groups against health care workers have intensified, and that anti-Palestinian racism is entrenched across health care institutions nationwide. In a 2024 survey, the Institute for the Understanding of Anti-Palestinian Racism (IUAPR) also found widespread anti-Palestinian racism in health care: More than half of the 387 health care provider respondents “reported experiencing silencing, exclusion, harassment, physical threat or harm, or defamation while advocating for Gaza and/or Palestinian human rights.” Half said they were “afraid to speak out.”

Many of those who spoke to Truthout shared that fear and expressed concerns for their patients and profession: “The reality on the ground is that racism is running unchecked throughout our medical institutions, and as a result, health care workers don’t have the training they need, accountability is not happening at the level of the medical institutions, and our communities are not being served,” Asfia Qaadir, a psychiatrist specialized in trauma-informed care for BIPOC youth, told Truthout. “Racism is about erasure, and ultimately, our patients are paying the price.”

A Pattern of Censorship……………………………..

https://truthout.org/articles/these-health-care-workers-spoke-out-for-their-peers-in-gaza-then-came-backlash/?utm_source=Truthout&utm_campaign=5511502921-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2025_11_17_10_28&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_bbb541a1db-5511502921-650192793

November 18, 2025 Posted by | employment, health, USA | Leave a comment

OpenAI Oligarch Pre-Emptively Demands Government Bailout When AI Bubble Bursts.

Benjamin Bartee, Nov 15, 2025, https://www.sott.net/article/503004-OpenAI-oligarch-Altman-pre-emptively-demands-government-bailout-when-AI-bubble-finally-bursts

AI hype may soon meet fiscal reality — and, if history is any guide, the American taxpayer will be left raped, holding the bag, while the perpetrators of the bubble will face no real consequences whatsoever.

On the contrary, they’ll be rewarded for their recklessness — the classic “moral hazard.”

Via DW (emphasis added):

“Signs of a hangover are getting harder to ignore. AI usage by corporations is slipping, spending is tightening and the machine learning hype has massively outpaced the profits.

Many economists think usage concerns, barely three years into AI going mainstream, dropkick the prevailing narrative that AI would revolutionize how businesses operate by streamlining repetitive tasks and improving forecasting.

“The vast bet on AI infrastructure assumes surging usage, yet multiple US surveys show adoption has actually declined since the summer,” Carl-Benedikt Frey, professor of AI & work at the UK’s University of Oxford, told DW. “Unless new, durable use cases emerge quickly, something will give — and the bubble could burst.”…

As the gap widens between sky-high expectations and commercial reality, investor enthusiasm for AI is starting to fade.

n the third quarter of the year, venture-capital deals with private AI firms dropped by 22% quarter on quarter to 1,295, although funding levels remained above $45 billion for the fourth consecutive quarter, market intelligence firm CB Insights wrote last month.

“What perturbs me is the scale of the money being invested compared to the amount of revenue flowing from AI,” economist Stuart Mills, a senior fellow at the London School of Economics, told DW.”

In his characteristically weasely manner, in which coming out and saying anything straightforwardly is too toxically masculine or whatever, OpenAI’s Sam Altman, currently being sued by his sister for allegedly molesting her for the better part of a decade, has issued a pre-emptive demand that the government come to his company’s rescue when the financial speculation bonanza bubble around AI inevitably bursts.

“When something gets sufficiently huge, whether or not they are on paper, the federal government is kind of the insurer of last resort…So, I guess, given the magnitude of what I expect AI economic impact to look like, sort of, I do think the government ends up as, like, the insurer of last resort.”

“Like, totally! I’m just, like, sort of, a Valley Girl [upward vocal inflection] in a Valley world! Where’s, like, the cash, Sugar Daddy Warbucks?”

(Let’s not forget that OpenAI was founded as a “nonprofit” philanthropic organization that quietly morphed into a “public benefit corporation” before making Sam Altman a billionaire, much in the same way that Google quietly nixed its “Don’t Be Evil” slogan in the dead of night, like a scene out of Animal Farm, and now commits its evil in broad daylight because it knows no force on Earth is going to restrain it.)

Comment: Altman is a weasel, to be sure, and with AI heading for a cliff, he wants to be able to bail before it goes over:

November 18, 2025 Posted by | business and costs, USA | Leave a comment

Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Is Set to Visit Washington. Here’s What to Expect Out of His Meeting with Trump.

the country has continued to push for a civilian nuclear program as the high energy demand of new AI data centers prompts a global revival in nuclear power. Riyadh has long expressed interest in developing its own nuclear program

The Chicago Council on Global Affairs, Analysis, by Rachel Bronson, November 13, 2025

Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s meeting with US President Donald Trump comes during a period of relatively strong and stable ties between Saudi Arabia and the United States. How much he can leverage those ties will be on full display.

Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) will make an official working visit to the White House on Tuesday, November 18. It will be his first trip to Washington since March 2018.

The period between his two visits has been bumpy. MBS seeks to solidify and extend a recent positive period, building on a strong personal relationship with US President Donald Trump, deep commercial ties between members of each country’s leadership, and Trump’s successful trip to the Kingdom in May. The connection between the two countries and the two men will prove critical this visit, as they will confront a wide-ranging agenda requiring considerable attention and diplomatic finesse.

There will be no shortage of topics for the two leaders to discuss during the meeting. New commercial and defense ties are likely to receive significant attention, particularly in the realms of artificial intelligence and growing regional data centers. Trickier for the two sides will be managing bigger ticket items—such as the purchase of F-35s and the development of nuclear power. Larger regional questions loom large about Saudi Arabia’s relationship with Israel, Turkey, and Qatar that will shape the future of Gaza, the West Bank, Syria, and beyond.

What’s on the agenda?

Key priority areas for the Saudis include broadening and deepening commercial ties, particularly in the realm of artificial intelligence, data technology, energy, and defense.

State visits usually result in announcements of new agreements or memoranda of understanding, and this trip will likely prove no different. But such trips can also highlight where sides remain further apart. Human rights, a perennial stumbling block in US-Saudi relations, are unlikely to receive significant attention.

The Saudis have been working assiduously to lower expectations that they will join the Abraham Accords—a stated goal of the Trump administration that would require normalizing relations with Israel—until the White House articulates a clearer vision for the future of Gaza and the West Bank. The two sides will thus need to work through how much is possible without attaining this loftier goal.

What is behind the visit?

When MBS last arrived in Washington to meet with Trump, he had only recently assumed his role as crown prince, supplanting his uncle, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Nayef. He was not yet halfway through a controversial 15-month purge of business leaders, officials, and members of the royal family that would eventually solidify his rule.

Just seven months after his March 2018 visit, MBS was implicated in the grotesque and brazen assassination of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a murder that brought international opprobrium. The growing humanitarian disaster in Yemen resulting from intense Saudi armed intervention was further galvanizing public outcry in the United States and abroad. Although the Trump administration tried to downplay both crises, Congress and the American public remained cautious of US-Saudi ties.

In September 2019, as the conflict in Yemen escalated, Iranian missiles and drones successfully targeted Abqaiq and Khurais, two major Saudi oil facilities, taking out 50 percent of Saudi oil production for about two weeks. Although the Trump administration responded by bolstering America’s military troop presence in the Kingdom and reimposing select sanctions on Iran, Riyadh wanted a more visible show of force. Washington’s perceived tepid response left many in Riyadh openly questioning US commitment to the desert kingdom.

The following September, just four months before leaving office, the Trump administration heralded in the Abraham Accords between Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan. Saudi Arabia remained on the sidelines…………………..

The return of the Trump administration in January 2025 provided an opportunity to reset and strengthen relations more generally. In May, building on strong commercial ties forged between Trump administration associates and their Saudi counterparts during the Biden years, Trump traveled to Gulf states including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar, ushering in a raft of new defense and technology deals, particularly in the areas of data center technologies and artificial intelligence…………………………………………………………………………..

What does Saudi Arabia hope to get out of it?

…………..The focus of the announcements will most likely center on a robust AI future that is emerging in the Gulf in particular. Saudi Arabia has made investing in data centers and digital infrastructure a key aspect of its “Saudi Vision 2030” economic development plan and is investing $21 billion in data centers alone. ……….

……… the country has continued to push for a civilian nuclear program as the high energy demand of new AI data centers prompts a global revival in nuclear power. Riyadh has long expressed interest in developing its own nuclear program, which the Biden administration entertained as a sweetener to Saudi-Israeli normalization.

………………………During Trump’s May trip to the region, US Secretary of Energy Chris Wright signed a memorandum of understanding with Saudi Arabia’s energy minister on civil nuclear energy, including safety, security, and nonproliferation programs; vocational training and workforce development; US Generation III+ advanced large reactor technologies and small modular reactors; uranium exploration, mining, and milling; and safe and secure nuclear waste disposal. ……………….

What could happen?

In addition to energy and data infrastructure, the two sides will likely continue to deepen their defense relationship. During the May trip, the White House announced $142 billion in arms sales, and related weapons packages are now making their way through the Pentagon, including a Saudi request for F-35s—one of the world’s most advanced aircrafts. During the Biden administration, the F-35s were tied to Saudi-Israeli normalization. As with nuclear power, it is not clear whether such tethering will continue.

Another key topic to watch is how the two leaders define their overall defense relationship. Saudi Arabia has long sought a defense treaty with the United States that would elevate the country among other US partners in the Gulf. Without full recognition of Israel—and given the current polarization in US politics—Riyadh is unlikely to be able to muster the two-thirds US Senate vote required for official ally status. Still, the Saudis likely want to upgrade their existing relationship……………………………..

What we are likely to hear less about during this trip is human rights, which have been on the US-Saudi agenda for decades.

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………. The future of Gaza and the West Bank will likely prove the trickiest shoal to navigate. The Saudis want to ensure a strong influence in leading Gaza reconstruction given that they are expected to foot a large portion of the bill. ……………………………………. https://globalaffairs.org/commentary/analysis/saudi-arabias-crown-prince-visit-washington-trump-what-to-expect?utm_source=ActiveCampaign&utm_medium=email&utm_content=Trump%20s%20radiation%20exposure%20rule%3A%20%20catastrophic%20%20for%20women%20and%20girls&utm_campaign=20251117%20Monday%20Newsletter

November 18, 2025 Posted by | politics international, Saudi Arabia, USA | Leave a comment

US Launches a Series of Airstrikes in Somalia, Civilians Reported Killed

Most of the strikes targeted al-Shabaab in southern Somalia while one targeted the ISIS affiliate in Somalia’s Puntland region

by Dave DeCamp | November 16, 2025, https://news.antiwar.com/2025/11/16/us-launches-a-series-of-airstrikes-in-somalia-civilians-reported-killed/

The US has launched at least five more airstrikes in Somalia in recent days as the Trump administration continues to bomb the country at a record pace, a heavy US air war that receives virtually no American media coverage.

According to press releases from US Africa Command, the US launched airstrikes targeting al-Shabaab in southern Somalia on November 11, November 13, November 14, and November 15. Unverified reports on social media suggest that another US airstrike was launched in the area on Sunday, November 16. The command also announced one strike on November 10 that targeted the ISIS affiliate in Somalia’s northeastern Puntland region.

All of the strikes against al-Shabaab were launched to the northeast of the port city of Kismayo. According to al-Shabaab’s news agency, Shahada News Agency, a US and Somali government attack on the town of Jamame on Saturday killed 12 civilians, including eight children, three women, and an elderly man.

The Shahada News Agency published photos of dead and wounded children that it claimed were killed in the attack, which it said involved airstrikes and artillery strikes on a civilian area. Baidoa Online, a Somali media outlet, also reported civilian casualties in a suspected US airstrike in Jamame, saying 10 were killed, including eight children.

“Witnesses say homes and businesses were destroyed during the strikes. The US military usually targets suspected Al-Shabaab positions in the region, but previous operations have occasionally resulted in civilian casualties,” Baidoa said in a post on X. Other posts suggest the strike may have occurred on Sunday, not Saturday as reported by al-Shabaab’s news agency.

AFRICOM offered no details about its airstrike on Saturday besides saying it was launched 55 kilometers to the northeast of Kismayo, which puts it in the vicinity of Jamame. Since earlier this year, AFRICOM has stopped sharing information about casualties in its airstrikes or assessments on civilian harm.

“Specific details about units and assets will not be released to ensure continued operations security,” AFRICOM said in its press release on Sunday that announced US airstrikes in the area on November 14 and November 15.

When asked about the reports of civilian casualties, an AFRICOM spokesman told Antiwar.com, “I haven’t seen that report. AFRICOM takes all allegations of civilian harm seriously and maintains processes to conduct thorough assessments using all available information that may factor into findings.” In previous years, the command has undercounted civilian casualties in its airstrikes in Somalia.

The Somalia National News Agency reported Sunday that the Somali National Army and US-trained Danab commandos conducted operations against al-Shabaab in Jamame, claiming that “heavy losses” were inflicted on the group. The report made no mention of civilian casualties. Hiraan Online, a Somali news site, cited Somali security officials who claimed 56 al-Shabaab fighters were killed and 20 were captured in the operations.

The US-backed Somali Federal Government, which is based in Mogadishu, is known for arresting and restricting journalists who report critically on Somalia’s security forces. Those restrictions, plus al-Shabaab’s restrictions on the use of the internet in the areas it controls, and the lack of US media coverage of the US air war, make it very difficult to ascertain the situation on the ground where the US has been conducting airstrikes.

Based on Antiwar.com’s count, the latest US bombings in Somalia bring the total number of airstrikes in the country this year to 96, according to AFRICOM. President Trump has shattered the annual record for US airstrikes in Somalia, which he previously set at 63 during his first term in 2019. For context, President Biden launched a total of 51 airstrikes in Somalia throughout his four years in office, and President Obama launched 48 over eight years.

November 18, 2025 Posted by | AFRICA, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

US and Russia ‘actively discussing’ settlement of Ukraine conflict – Moscow

16 Nov, 2025, https://www.rt.com/russia/627862-russia-us-discuss-ukraine-settlement/

The understanding reached at the Alaska summit is still in force, President Putin’s aide Yury Ushakov has said.

Moscow and Washington are continuing their dialogue on resolving the Ukraine conflict in line with the understanding reached during the Alaska meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his US counterpart Donald Trump in August, Putin’s aide Yury Ushakov has said.

Although the summit failed to yield a breakthrough, Moscow has praised what it called Washington’s willingness to mediate and consider the conflict’s underlying causes.

Russian officials also maintain that continued dialogue creates opportunities for trade and economic cooperation despite the US decision to sanction the oil companies Rosneft and Lukoil last month.

Russia is receiving “many signals” from the US, with the Anchorage meeting still acting as a basis for the talks, Ushakov told journalist Pavel Zarubin on Sunday. “We do believe it is a good way forward,” he said. According to the official, the understandings are still relevant since Washington has never explicitly stated that they are no longer valid.

The presidential aide admitted that the peace process and agreements reached in Alaska do not sit well with Kiev and some of its European backers, adding that it only indicates they want to continue the bloodshed. “The Anchorage [meeting] is only disliked by those who does not want a peaceful resolution [to the Ukraine conflict],” he said.

Bilateral relations between Moscow and Washington sank to an all-time low under former US President Joe Biden, amid the Ukraine conflict, but have shown signs of improvement since Trump’s return to the White House. US and Russian officials have held several rounds of talks this year, including the Alaska summit.

The US and Russia also announced the next planned Trump-Putin summit in Budapest in the fall, but it was then postponed indefinitely. Washington is still determined to continue contacts with Moscow, according to US Vice President J.D. Vance. Earlier in November, he called direct dialogue with Russia part of the “Trump doctrine.”

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov reaffirmed this month that Moscow was ready to resume contacts and rejected media reports claiming otherwise as false.

November 18, 2025 Posted by | politics international, Russia, USA | Leave a comment

The Censored History of Able Archer 83

Archive Publishes “War Scare” Documents Deleted from State Department History

Newly Declassified Documents Focus on Soviet Military’s Fear of U.S. First Strike During Exercise

Washington, D.C., November 14, 2025  https://nsarchive.salsalabs.org/908?wvpId=753e3bf4-ad6a-4702-8e18-2f0d8d5326e6– The State Department quietly deleted important archival records from an official history detailing how a 1983 NATO war game could have led to a catastrophic nuclear exchange, according to new reporting from The Washington Post. This is the first known instance in which the State Department has removed previously declassified and published documents from one of its Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) volumes, according to the report.

Today, the Archive is publishing copies of the records that were censored by the State Department, along with a selection of the most revealing war scare records. Among them are records revealing that the Soviet military leadership genuinely feared that they were vulnerable to a preemptive nuclear strike from the West during the war scare.

The State Department republished the FRUS volume without the records after the U.S. Court of Appeals in 2024 upheld a CIA decision to deny a 2021 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request from the National Security Archive seeking the declassification of an important retrospective analysis of Able Archer 83 written by U.S. Air Force Lt. Gen. Leonard Perroots, who warned that the exercise could have led to “a potentially disastrous situation.”

Asked why 15 pages on Able Archer had been removed from the history without explanation, the State Department told the Post that “[t]he Department was not required to provide public notice.”

National Security Archive director Tom Blanton said that the unprecedented deletion of declassified historical records from the State Department volume on the war scare echoed similar efforts in the Soviet Union where, as author David Remnick writes, the “censors went through the libraries with razor blades and slashed from the bound copies of Novy Mir.”

“Today, in America,” Blanton said, “the censors just have to press delete.”

READ THE DOCUMENTS THAT THE STATE DEPARTMENT CENSORED
THE NATIONAL SECURITY ARCHIVE is an independent non-governmental research institute and library located at The George Washington University in Washington, D.C. The Archive collects and publishes declassified documents acquired through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). A tax-exempt public charity, the Archive receives no U.S. government funding; its budget is supported by publication royalties and donations from foundations and individuals.

November 18, 2025 Posted by | secrets,lies and civil liberties, USA | Leave a comment

Trump Bets Big on a Nuclear Comeback

critics are not so certain that Westinghouse will be able to deliver on its promises due to the company’s poor track record.

The question now is, just how long will it take to achieve the U.S. nuclear renaissance? ………………………  The projects being funded by tech companies, which focus on the development of SMRs, are not expected to produce power until the next decade, and these are much smaller than conventional reactors.

By Felicity Bradstock , Oil Price- Nov 15, 2025, https://oilprice.com/Alternative-Energy/Nuclear-Power/Trump-Bets-Big-on-a-Nuclear-Comeback.html

  • The Trump administration plans to quadruple U.S. nuclear capacity by 2050 and deploy 10 new large reactors by 2030, backed by major public funding and tech-sector investment.
  • Westinghouse, Cameco, and international partners like Japan and the U.K. are central to the expansion push, though Westinghouse’s troubled track record raises concerns.
  • Long development timelines, high costs, regulatory delays, and a diminished skills base make a rapid nuclear renaissance unlikely despite political momentum.

United States President Donald Trump is putting his money where his mouth is as he doubles down on efforts to accelerate the expansion of the country’s nuclear energy sector. The government will spend billions in public funding to reinvigorate U.S. nuclear power, following decades of underinvestment. Unlike renewable energy, Trump views nuclear power as key to expanding the U.S. electricity generation capacity and recently announced the target of quadrupling nuclear capacity by 2050.

In May, President Trump signed an executive order calling for the U.S. to develop 10 new large nuclear reactors by the end of the decade. In addition, several tech companies, including Alphabet, Amazon, Meta Platforms, and Microsoft, are providing billions in private funding to restart old nuclear plants, upgrade existing ones, and deploy new reactor technology to meet the growing demands from the data centres powering advanced technologies, such as artificial intelligence.

The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DoE) loan office will dedicate significant funds to the nuclear energy industry to support the development of new reactors. This week, the Energy Secretary Chris Wright stated, “We have significant lending authority at the loan programme office… By far the biggest use of those dollars will be for nuclear power plants — to get those first plants built.”

Wright expects the public support for the sector to encourage private actors to invest more heavily in nuclear power in the coming years. “When we leave office three years and three months from now, I want to see hopefully dozens of nuclear plants under construction,” said Wright.

In October, Trump came to an agreement with the owners of Westinghouse – uranium miner Cameco and Brookfield Asset Management – to invest $80 billion to build nuclear plants across the country. Westinghouse plans to construct large nuclear plants to be fitted with its modern AP1000 reactor design, which can power over 750,000 homes, according to the company. Cameco COO Grant Isaac suggested he would look to the DoE’s loans office to fund the development of the Westinghouse reactors.

However, critics are not so certain that Westinghouse will be able to deliver on its promises due to the company’s poor track record. The firm went bankrupt in 2017 after going over budget on large-scale nuclear projects in Georgia and South Carolina. Westinghouse will have to prove its ability to build the AP1000 on time and on budget to attract the investment it requires.

The Trump administration has developed various international partnerships to help develop its nuclear power sector in recent months. In September, Japan committed to investing in the Westinghouse nuclear project. The Asian country also agreed on an investment deal for Hitachi GE Vernova to build small modular reactors (SMRs). 

Also in September, the U.S. signed a multibillion-dollar deal with the United Kingdom to expand nuclear power across both countries. The new Atlantic Partnership for Advanced Nuclear Energy is aimed at accelerating the construction of new reactors and providing reliable, low-carbon energy for high-demand sectors, such as data centres.

The question now is, just how long will it take to achieve the U.S. nuclear renaissance? It typically takes a decade or longer to develop a new nuclear power plant, and while adding additional reactors to existing plants can be faster, licensing and approval can take several years. In addition, after decades of stagnation in the sector, developing nuclear reactors in the U.S. can be extremely costly and slow, due to the lack of expertise, compared to rapidly growing nuclear powers, such as China.

In China, developing a new nuclear reactor now takes between five and six years on average, much faster than the decade-long timeline in most Western countries. This is supported by China’s strong regulatory system and tried-and-tested development methods. Meanwhile, in the U.S., just powering up a disused reactor, such as that of Three Mile Island, can take several years to achieve. The projects being funded by tech companies, which focus on the development of SMRs, are not expected to produce power until the next decade, and these are much smaller than conventional reactors.

The Trump administration hopes to speed up the development process through a range of measures. One executive order calls for the nuclear power industry’s safety regulator to approve applications in no more than 18 months. The recent funding announcement from the DoE’s loan office is expected to help overcome the biggest bottleneck – funding. Congress has also kept its tax breaks in place for nuclear development to attract private funding to the sector.

Thanks to greater political support and public financing, the U.S. nuclear energy sector could rapidly expand its power capacity over the coming decades. However, achieving the level of acceleration in nuclear development expected by the Trump administration is highly unlikely due to a range of challenges hindering development, from expertise to cost and manufacturing capacity. So, while a nuclear renaissance is possible, it is unlikely to be seen within the next decade. 

November 17, 2025 Posted by | politics, USA | Leave a comment

‘Gunboat Diplomacy’: U.S. War in Latin America Feared as Hegseth Launches ‘Operation Southern Spear’

SCHEERPOST, November 15, 2025 By DemocracyNow!

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has announced the launch of Operation Southern Spear to target suspected drug traffickers in South America, Central America and the Caribbean. The U.S. now has 15,000 military personnel in the region. Over the past two months the U.S. has blown up at least 20 boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific. “80 people have been killed in what are extrajudicial executions under international law,” says Juan Pappier, Americas deputy director at Human Rights Watch. The Pentagon claims the boats were carrying drugs but officials have acknowledged they don’t know who has been killed.

“Progressives and people of goodwill — of the U.S. and Puerto Rico — it’s time for those of us here to stand up and say that where we will not support any attempt to bring back the old gunboat diplomacy and to invade another Latin American country, and we need to do it soon, because this stuff is moving very quickly,” says Democracy Now!’s Juan González.

Transcript

………………………..AMY GOODMAN: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has announced the launch of Operation Southern Spear to target suspected drug traffickers, he says. In a post on X, Hegseth wrote, quote, “Today, I’m announcing Operation Southern Spear led by Joint Task Force Southern Spear and SOUTHCOM. This mission defends our homeland, removes narcoterrorism from our hemisphere, and secures our homeland from the drugs that are killing our people,” unquote.

The announcement comes as the Pentagon continues to amass warships in the Caribbean. The USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier arrived earlier this week. The U.S. now has 15,000 military personnel in the region. It’s the largest buildup in the region in decades, according to the New York Times. Over the past two months, the U.S. has blown up at least 20 boats in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific. The latest strike killed four people on Thursday.

The Pentagon claims the boats were carrying drugs, but officials have acknowledged they don’t know who’s been killed. Critics have denounced the strikes as illegal extrajudicial killings. We begin today’s show with Juan Pappier, the Americas Deputy Director at Human Rights Watch. We welcome you to Democracy Now!, Juan. Begin by talking about Operation Southern Spear and what this means.

JUAN PAPPIER: Amy, thank you for having me. We don’t know what Operation Southern Spear means. The Secretary has not provided details. But we have every reason to be concerned because in the buildup of this announcement, as you mentioned, 80 people have been killed in what are extrajudicial executions under international law…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Yeah, well, Amy, I think with the – especially now, not only with these attacks on boats and these killings, but now with the arrival of an unprecedented military force – we’re talking the largest aircraft carrier in the world, the USS Gerald Ford, has just arrived in the Caribbean with another 5,000 troops and several other battleships accompanying it.

We now have 15,000 U.S. troops in the region, thousands of them based in Puerto Rico. The government has reopened Roosevelt Roads Naval Base, which they had closed, and U.S. planes at the old Ramey Air Force Base in Aguadilla. All of these soldiers are not there to hang out. They’re there to take military action. We have to be clear.

Even though the government hasn’t announced it, it’s clear that this is what’s coming. Our government is embarking on a totally unprovoked military assault and regime change operations in Latin America. The Trump administration has openly accused not one but two Latin-American presidents of drug dealing without any proof, Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela and Gustavo Petro of Colombia and threatened to kill Maduro. This is a bizarre return to the gunboat diplomacy of the early 20th century.

And the big prize being not democracy or not stopping drug trafficking, but grabbing the Venezuelan oil fields, the largest oil reserves in the world. The problem is, this is not the old Latin America that the U.S. could bully at will. The countries at the region are today independent sovereign states………………………………………………………………………………………………………

 Yes, it’s a clear continued policy of the United States to control oil production as much as it can as the Trump administration continues on this crazy, bizarre attempt to corner as much oil supply as they can as it continues to deny the existence of climate change or the climate catastrophe we face, https://scheerpost.com/2025/11/15/gunboat-diplomacy-u-s-war-in-latin-america-feared-as-hegseth-launches-operation-southern-spear/

November 17, 2025 Posted by | SOUTH AMERICA, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Finally Some Accountability for Georgia’s Costly Nuclear Power Mistake

Vogtle stands as the only new nuclear reactor built in the last 30 years, and its fallout offers a bleak prognosis for any supposed “renaissance” and its supporters in statehouses across the country. We can look back to 2017 when the main contractor, Westinghouse, filed for bankruptcy due to the extreme cost overruns at Vogtle. At that critical moment, the Georgia PSC ignored its own staff, energy experts, and public outcry, choosing to burden ratepayers with the project’s continuation.

By Kim Scott.15 Nov 25 https://nuclearcosts.org/finally-some-accountability-for-georgias-costly-nuclear-power-mistake/

The story of Plant Vogtle’s two new nuclear reactors in Georgia is not a triumph of a “nuclear renaissance”; it’s a cautionary tale written in soaring electric bills and a growing political fallout. The people of Georgia are paying the price, literally, as their utility bills have skyrocketed by over 40% – and now, following last Tuesday’s Public Service Commission election in Georgia, it seems those that allowed this to happen in the first place are starting to feel the pinch as well. It’s about damn time! 

Georgia voters delivered a stunning message by unseating two Republican utility commissioners, Tim Echols and Fitz Johnson, who rubber stamped and championed the costly mistakes leading to a 41% increase in Georgians’ electric bills. This election, which saw Democrats Alicia Johnson and Peter Hubbard championing fair rates, affordability and renewable energy, was a clear referendum on Plant Vogtle’s enormous price tag and more importantly, nuclear power as a not so clean future power resource both here in Georgia and elsewhere. 

The stunning defeat of utility backed incumbents sends a powerful signal to utility regulators nationwide that consumers will not tolerate being forced to pay for multi-billion-dollar nuclear boondoggles. If they aren’t paying attention, Wall Street sure is, downgrading Southern Co.’s stock immediately following the election, citing the increased risk and the new difficulty the company will face in pushing through further rate hikes to pay for Plant Vogtle and other projects in their pipeline. Georgia customers will pay an additional $36 billion to $43 billion over the 60-80 year lifespan of the two Vogtle reactors compared to cheaper alternatives. 

Vogtle stands as the only new nuclear reactor built in the last 30 years, and its fallout offers a bleak prognosis for any supposed “renaissance” and its supporters in statehouses across the country. We can look back to 2017 when the main contractor, Westinghouse, filed for bankruptcy due to the extreme cost overruns at Vogtle. At that critical moment, the Georgia PSC ignored its own staff, energy experts, and public outcry, choosing to burden ratepayers with the project’s continuation.

The consequences of those decisions, subsequent rate increases and soaring electric bills are not abstract—they are impacting the most vulnerable among us and the most overlooked i.e. middle class/working class Georgians. Disconnection rates for the inability to pay have soared by 30% in 2024. For retirees on fixed incomes, the rate increases to pay for Plant Vogtle mean the difference between making ends meet and falling into destitution. This summer, when brutal heat waves descended, vulnerable Georgians had their power shut off, creating life-threatening conditions because they could no longer afford to cool their homes.

The ratepayer backlash in Georgia is also being fueled by the projected massive energy demands of AI data centers, which are forcing utilities like Southern Co. to reckon with costly new generation and transmission projects. Instead of aggressively pushing nuclear power—as evidenced by the Trump administration’s recent $80 billion deal to buy reactors from Westinghouse, the same company bankrupted by Vogtle—we must demand that elected politicians focus on fast and affordable energy solutions like solar and battery energy storage systems. 

The painful lesson learned in Georgia is that new nuclear power is simply too expensive and takes too long. The reality is that for half the cost and in less than a quarter of the time, we could have built more than twice the capacity using solar, wind, or battery storage technologies. But corruption won out and Vogtle is here for the foreseeable future. Georgians will be paying for this mistake for decades to come… I’m just glad there’s finally some accountability headed our way.

Kim Scott is Executive Director of Georgia WAND, is a native Georgian, and has a Chemical Engineering degree from Vanderbilt University in Nashville, TN.

November 17, 2025 Posted by | business and costs, politics, USA | Leave a comment

Non Government Organisations Warn that Recent Executive Orders Would Harm Public Health, Disproportionately Impacting Women and Children

“Young men like the Reference Man are harmed by radiation, but they’re more resistant to harm than are women and children. Radiation causes cancer in women at twice the rate of adult men, while the same exposure in early childhood, will, across their lifetimes, produce seven times more cancer in young females, and four times more in young males.”

Asheville, North Carolina – November 14, https://www.radiationproject.org/blog/ngos-warn-that-recent-executive-orders-would-harm-public-health-disproportionately-impacting-women-and-children?ss_source=sscampaigns&ss_campaign_id=6917d62bc4477007efdd4b63&ss_email_id=6917db9d43e3de1cada92627&ss_campaign_name=Welcome+to+GRIP%E2%80%99s+NEW+Blog&ss_campaign_sent_date=2025-11-15T01%3A47%3A30Z

Over forty citizen’s sector organizations including the national nonprofit Physicians for Social Responsibility have sent a joint letter to federal officials warning of public health consequences of a series of executive orders by President Trump which direct the NRC to dramatically weaken Standards for Protection Against Radiation in the US federal code.  The letter points out sharply disproportionate impacts on women and children from weakening existing radiation exposure standards and calls for strengthening them.

The letter is posted here. It was spearheaded by the nonprofit Generational Radiation Impact Project (GRIP) and sent to US Nuclear Regulatory Commissioners, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Surgeon General Denise Hinton, and other key elected and appointed officials. 

Recent Trump executive orders direct the NRC to “reconsider” the linear no-threshold (LNT) model. The joint letter argues that this “would undermine public trust by falsely claiming that the NRC’s radiation risk models lack scientific basis, despite decades of peer-reviewed evidence and international consensus.” The widely accepted LNT model has no limit “below regulatory concern,” i.e. no level below which radiation exposure can be treated as negligible or zero-risk.  Where applied, LNT takes account of proportional cancer and health risks of all tiny exposures no matter how small.

Trump executive orders direct the NRC to undertake new rulemaking and “wholesale revision” of existing radiation regulations, which would likely lead to the NRC abandoning LNT and raising allowable exposure limits.

But past NRC opposition to such changes stands to be reversed by the Trump executive orders. If federal radiation regulations were weakened to permit  exposures of 10 Rems a year, scientists estimate that over a 70-year lifetime, four out of five people would develop cancer they would not otherwise get.

Today’s joint letter stresses that health damage would not be evenly distributed across the population, but would disproportionately affect women and children, who are biologically more susceptible to ionizing radiation than men.  And an article published today in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists cites several lines of evidence “that women and young girls are significantly more vulnerable to radiation harm than men—in some cases by as much as a ten-fold difference” and that “infants are especially vulnerable to radiation harm.”

A July 2025 Idaho National Laboratory report commissioned by the Department of Energy recommended loosening the public radiation standard fivefold to 500 millirems. In 2021 the NRC roundly rejected a petition to raise allowable radiation exposures for all Americans, including children and pregnant women, to 10 Rems a year, 100 times the current limit. 

“[NRC] bases its risk assessments on Reference Man, a model that represents a young adult male and fails to reflect the greater impacts to infants, children, and women—pregnant or not,” the joint letter states. “Newer research has shown that external radiation harms children more than adults and female bodies more than male bodies. Research on internal exposures…has not yet been sufficiently analyzed to discover if there are broad age-based or male/female differences in impact…. Existing standards should therefore be strengthened to account for these life-stage and gender disparities…not weakened.  Radiation causes infertility, loss of pregnancy, birth complications and defects, as well as solid tumor cancer, leukemia, non-cancer outcomes including cardiovascular disease, increased incidence of autoimmune disease and ongoing new findings.”

In cases where cancer, heart disease, and vascular degradation including stroke are caused by radiation, they are documented at higher rates in women than in men, according to 2024 UNIDIR report Gender and Ionizing Radiation. 

 The joint letter urges the NRC to “to stand up to the Executive Order’s marching orders to ‘promote’ nuclear power—a mission outside its legal regulatory mandate,” and adopt “stronger, science-based radiation protections….Contemporary research shows that radiation’s impact is far greater on females, children, and fetuses—the most at-risk postnatal group being girls from birth to age five. A truly protective framework would replace Reference Man with a lifecycle model.”

“All US radiation regulations and most radiation risk assessments are based on outcomes for the Reference Man,” said Mary Olson, CEO of GRIP, the organization which spearheaded the joint letter, and co-author of Gender and Ionizing Radiation. “Young men like the Reference Man are harmed by radiation, but they’re more resistant to harm than are women and children. Radiation causes cancer in women at twice the rate of adult men, while the same exposure in early childhood, will, across their lifetimes, produce seven times more cancer in young females, and four times more in young males.”

“We know that exposure to radiation causes disproportionate harm from both cancer and non-cancer related disease outcomes over the course of the lifetime to women and especially to little girls, but radiation is dangerous for everyone,”  said Amanda M. Nichols, Ph.D., lead author of  Gender and Ionizing Radiation. “[President Trump’s] executive order will allow the industry to relax the current standards for radiological protection, which are already far from adequate.  This will have detrimental health consequences for humans and for our shared environments and puts us all at higher risk for negative health consequences. “

“Living near nuclear power facilities doubles the risk of leukemia in children; and radiation is also associated with numerous reproductive harms including infertility, stillbirths and birth defects.,” said Cindy Folkers, Radiation and Health Hazard Specialist with the NGO Beyond Nuclear, a signatory to the joint letter. “Exposing people to more radiation, as this order would do if implemented, would be tantamount to legitimizing their suffering as the price of nuclear expansion.”

November 17, 2025 Posted by | radiation, USA | Leave a comment

Trump stupidly brags about committing war crimes against Iran 

Walt Zlotow, West Suburban Peace Coalition, Glen Ellyn IL, Nov 15, 2025, https://theaimn.net/trump-stupidly-brags-about-committing-war-crimes-against-iran/

Rule 1 for leaders committing war crimes is to refrain from bragging about them. President Trump jettisoned that wise rule regarding his criminal involvement in Israel’s 12 day war on Iran last June. 

When Israel attacked, Trump trotted his obedient Secretary of State Marco Rubio who issued this lie to America and world. “Israel had taken unilateral action to defend itself. We are not involved in strikes against Iran and our top priority is protecting American forces in the region. Let me be clear: Iran should not target U.S. interests or personnel.”

Of course Iran had every right to target US interests and personnel since the US knew about and aided Israel’s crazed war that backfired on Israel. How so? Iran was wise to ignore US perfidy to launch a massive rocket attack on Israel that could not be defended against. After 12 days Israel threw in the towel. Israel now knows Iran will never be a genocidal punching bag like the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. 

US involvement was overt and covert. The former included refueling Israeli bombers during the entire 12 day war. The covert consisted of holding fake negotiations with Iran about their nuclear program to lull them into false security that no attack, which the US knew about, was imminent. Just 2 days beforehand Trump scheduled another negotiation and proclaimed “I am committed to a “diplomatic solution” with Iran.”

The US maintained the ‘not involved’ charade for nearly 5 months. Alas, Trump, an inveterate braggart on everything he maliciously touches from business partners, women wishing to be left alone, political enemies among others, just couldn’t contain his glee in assisting Israel’s unprovoked, murderous attack. ”Israel attacked first. That attack was very, very powerful. I was very much in charge of that. When Israel attacked Iran first, that was a great day for Israel because that attack did more damage than the rest of them put together.”

Iran took note of Trump’s confession of international criminality. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi fired off a letter to UN officials demanding the US be held to account for enabling Israel’s attacks on Iran that killed more than 1,000 people. In the letter Araghchi cited Trump’s recent comments about how he was “in charge” of the Israeli attacks. “The Islamic Republic of Iran reserves its full and unimpeachable right to pursue, through all available legal means, the establishment of accountability for the responsible States and individuals and to secure compensation for the damages sustained.”

Araghchi can Faggedaboudit. If the UN and the International Criminal Court can do nothing Trump’s complicity in Israel’s monstrous genocide in Gaza, there is zero chance they will even glance at his war crimes in Iran.

November 17, 2025 Posted by | Iran, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

The Empire Only De-Escalates In One Area So It Can Escalate In Another, And Other Notes

Caitlin Johnstone, Nov 15, 2025, https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/the-empire-only-de-escalates-in-one?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=178942591&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

Just as things cool down a bit in the middle east, the US has relocated the USS Gerald Ford from the Mediterranean Sea to the Caribbean while the Trump administration discusses plans to bomb Venezuela.

The violence of the empire remains constant. Peace is never the goal. You get happy they’re pulling the world’s largest aircraft carrier away from Iran, then it turns out they’re only doing it so they can move it to Venezuela. You get happy they’re pulling out of Afghanistan, then suddenly they’re waging a proxy war in Ukraine.

These days whenever you see the imperial war machinery getting pulled from one area, you know it’s just going to be sent someplace else.

Peace is never pursued for its own sake, because there’s nothing in it for the empire. There’s too much power and money in nonstop warmongering for peace to be allowed to become the norm.

Which is just insane if you think about it. Every normal person wants peace in their own lives. None of us want our time on this planet to be disturbed by violence, chaos and bloodshed.

The western world has created a machine whose behavior goes against every healthy human impulse. The US-led world order has given birth to an out of control monster with an insatiable appetite for human flesh.

❖

Reuters reports that in 2024 the Biden administration had intelligence showing that the IDF was using Palestinians as human shields in Gaza. But Biden continued shipping genocide weapons to the Israelis the entire time he was in office.

You’ll still periodically see online liberals trying to shame leftists for not voting for Kamala, but the more information comes out about what the Biden administration was up to during that time the more genocidal they look. Biden-Harris are looking worse with time, not better.

When you see what a large-scale power broker Jeffrey Epstein was for Israeli intelligence, you understand why it’s entirely reasonable to suspect that extensive state resources would be put toward an elaborate plot to murder him in his prison cell and make it look like a suicide.

Generative AI stuff only looks impressive to mediocre people for the same reason a chess novice couldn’t tell you whether they were playing against a Grandmaster or just someone who’s pretty good at chess. We can only appreciate something up to the level of our own adeptness.

To someone who’s not very bright, an AI’s imitation of reasoning looks sharp. Someone with no aptitude for writing or appreciation for great literature will think its prose reads brilliantly. Its poetry looks good to those who don’t understand poetry. Its “art” looks great to those with no artistic sensibility. It’s music sounds awesome to those with no musical depth. Only those who are emotionally stunted and incapable of meaningful human connection will find them to be stimulating conversationalists and companions.

Like so much else capitalism produces, it’s a product that’s designed to appeal to the lowest common denominator. For everyone else it looks vapid and gross, just like daytime talk shows, Hollywood blockbusters, and trashy tabloids always have.

That’s just how it works in a society which only elevates that which can generate profits. The food is designed to induce craving rather than facilitate health. The entertainment is designed to distract and sedate rather than to edify. The social media is designed to be addictive rather than to help people connect with each other. It’s all geared to appeal to our baser instincts rather than to improve and inform us.

Anyone who is interested in actually growing as a person will have less and less use for anything GenAI has to offer. Past a certain point of personal development, it simply cannot satisfy.

November 17, 2025 Posted by | spinbuster, USA | Leave a comment

Lab Chromium Contamination Confirmed on San Ildefonso Pueblo Land.

Since chromium contamination was first reported in 2004, the Lab’s nuclear weapons budget has more than doubled to $5 billion (now 84% of LANL’s ~$6 billion annual budget). Cleanup is being cut to $278 million (less than 5% of the Lab’s total budget), as are virtually all non-nuclear weapons programs (research into renewable energies is being eliminated).[6]

Comprehensive Cleanup Needed Instead of More Nuclear Weapons

November 14, 2025, nuclear watch , New Mexico, nukewatch.org

Santa Fe, NM – The New Mexico Environment Department has announced:
“A toxic chromium plume from Los Alamos National Laboratory has spread beyond Lab boundaries onto Pueblo de San Ildefonso land for the first time, with contamination exceeding state groundwater standards… These new results are conclusive evidence that the U.S. Department of Energy’s efforts to contain the chromium plume have been inadequate.” In reality, chromium groundwater contamination probably migrated beyond the LANL/San Ildefonso Pueblo boundary long ago, with Lab maps of the plume “magically’ stopping at the border. In the past, tribal leadership has commented that it was fortunate that the contamination stopped there, but that any future indications of groundwater contamination on Pueblo land could have serious consequences. The San Ildefonso Pueblo is a sovereign Native American tribal government.
As late as the late 1990s the Lab was falsely claiming that groundwater contamination was impossible because underlying volcanic tuff is “impermeable.” [1] This ignored the obvious fact that the Parajito Plateau is heavily seismically fractured, providing ready pathways for contaminant migration to deep groundwater.
By 2005 even LANL acknowledged that continuing increasing contamination of the regional aquifer is inevitable.[2] Some 300,000 northern New Mexicans rely upon the aquifer for safe drinking water. The potential serious human health effects (including cancer) caused by chromium contamination was the subject of the popular movie Erin Brockovich.


LANL’s chromium contamination plume is at least one mile long, a half mile wide and 100 feet thick.[3] It is commonly regarded as the Lab’s most serious environmental threat. One drinking water supply well for Los Alamos County has already been shut down because of the plume. But even two decades after it was first reported, the Lab still doesn’t know how big the chromium plume is.


On December 30, 2024, in the middle of the holiday season, the Lab posted the report Independent Review of the Chromium Interim Measures Remediation System to its largely unknown Legacy Cleanup Electronic Public Reading Room. The Report’s bottom line was:
“…at this time the plume is not sufficiently characterized to design a final remedy… data gaps and uncertainties need to be addressed before committing to an alternative or final remedy.”


From 1956 to 1972, water containing potassium dichromate was used to prevent corrosion in cooling towers, releasing as much as 160,000 pounds of potassium dichromate into the headwaters of Sandia Canyon.[4] Over a 3-year period ending in November 2022, the Department of Energy extracted, treated and reinjected more than 400 million gallons of groundwater. But the December 2024 chromium report stated that only ~680 pounds of chromium was actually removed.[5] At this rate it will take more than a century to treat and remediate the chromium plume.

While failing to recommend a final remedy, the new chromium report did argue that extraction and treatment of groundwater should be continued. However, in order to speed up cleanup as part of any final remedy, Nuclear Watch New Mexico argues for pumping or trucking the treated groundwater uphill to flush out the chromium contamination at its source. In addition, more monitoring wells should be installed to finally determine the true depth and breadth of the chromium contamination that threatens northern New Mexico’s largest supply of drinking water.

Since chromium contamination was first reported in 2004, the Lab’s nuclear weapons budget has more than doubled to $5 billion (now 84% of LANL’s ~$6 billion annual budget). Cleanup is being cut to $278 million (less than 5% of the Lab’s total budget), as are virtually all non-nuclear weapons programs (research into renewable energies is being eliminated).[6]

According to the independent Government Accountability Office, expected completion of Lab cleanup has been repeatedly pushed back, most recently to 2043 with an estimated cost of $7 billion.[7] But even this is a false cleanup with the Lab planning to “cap and cover” some 800,000 cubic yards of radioactive and toxic wastes, leaving them permanently buried in unlined pits and shafts as a perpetual threat to groundwater. As the Lab becomes more and more a nuclear weapons production site for plutonium “pit” bomb cores, it remains woefully ignorant over the extent and depth of the contamination it has caused to the regional groundwater aquifer. At the same time, LANL continues to downplay widespread plutonium contamination in soil, water and plants.[8]

Jay Coghlan, Director of Nuclear Watch New Mexico, commented: “LANL’s expanding nuclear weapons programs are a two-fold threat. First, they fuel the new nuclear arms race that threatens all of humanity. At the same time, they rob funding from vitally needed cleanup that would permanently protect our irreplaceable groundwater. As is commonly said in northern New Mexico, “Aqua es Vida!” Nuclear weapons can destroy both.”

November 17, 2025 Posted by | environment, USA | Leave a comment

Trump’s Ploy at the UN Is American Imperialism Masquerading as a Peace Process

Jeffrey D. SachsSybil Fares, Nov 13, 2025, https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/trump-s-ploy-at-the-un-is-american-imperialism-masquerading-as-a-peace-process

Palestine remains the endless victim of US and Israeli maneuvers. The results are not just devastating for Palestine, which has suffered an outright genocide, but for the Arab world and beyond.

The Trump administration is pushing an Israeli-crafted resolution at the UN Security Council (UNSC) this week aimed at eliminating the possibility of a State of Palestine. The resolution does three things. It establishes US political control over Gaza. It separates Gaza from the rest of Palestine. And it allows the US, and therefore Israel, to determine the timeline for Israel’s supposed withdrawal from Gaza–which would mean: never.

This is imperialism masquerading as a peace process. In and of itself it’s no surprise. Israel runs US foreign policy in the Middle East. What is a surprise is that the US and Israel might just get away with this travesty unless the world speaks up with urgency and indignation.

The draft UNSC resolution would establish a US-UK-dominated Board of Peace, chaired by none other than Donald Trump himself, and endowed with sweeping powers over Gaza’s governance, borders, reconstruction, and security. This resolution would sideline the State of Palestine and condition any transfer of authority to the Palestinians on the indulgence of the Board of Peace.

This would be an overt return to the British Mandate of 100 years ago, with the only change being that the US would hold the mandate rather than Britain. If it weren’t so utterly tragic, it would be laughable. As Marx said, history repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce. Yes, the proposal is farce, yet Israel’s genocide is not. It is tragedy of the first order.

Incredibly, according to the draft resolution, the Board of Peace would be granted sovereign powers in Gaza. Palestinian sovereignty is left to the discretion of the Board, which alone would decide when Palestinians are “ready” to govern themselves – perhaps in another 100 years? Even military security is subordinated to the Board, and the envisioned forces would answer not to the UN Security Council or to the Palestinian people, but to the Board’s “strategic guidance.”

The US-Israel resolution is being put forward precisely because the rest of the world—other than Israel and the US—has woken up to two facts. First, Israel is committing genocide, a reality witnessed every day in Gaza and the West Bank, where innocent Palestinians are murdered to the satisfaction of the Israel Defense Forces and the illegal Israeli settlers in the West Bank. Second, Palestine is a state, albeit one whose sovereignty remains obstructed by the US, which uses its veto in the UNSC to block Palestine’s permanent UN membership. At the UN this past July and then again in September, the UN General Assembly voted overwhelmingly for Palestine’s statehood, a fact that put the Israel-US Zionist lobby into overdrive, resulting in the current draft resolution.

For Israel to accomplish its goal of Greater Israel, the US is pursuing a classic divide-and-conquer strategy, squeezing Arab and Islamic states with threats and inducements. When other countries resist the US-Israel demands, they are cut off from critical technologies, lose access to World Bank and IMF financing, and suffer Israeli bombing, even in countries with US military bases present. The US offers no real protection; rather, it orchestrates a protection racket, extracting concessions from countries wherever US leverage exists. This extortion will continue until the global community stands up to such tactics and insists upon genuine Palestinian sovereignty and US and Israeli adherence to international law.

Palestine remains the endless victim of US and Israeli maneuvers. The results are not just devastating for Palestine, which has suffered an outright genocide, but for the Arab world and beyond. Israel and the US are currently at war, overtly or covertly, across the Horn of Africa (Libya, Sudan, Somalia), the Eastern Mediterranean (Lebanon, Syria), the Gulf region (Yemen), and Western Asia (Iraq, Iran).


If the UN Security Council is to provide true security in accordance with the UN Charter, it must not yield to US pressures and instead act decisively in line with international law. A resolution truly for peace should include four vital points. First, it should welcome the State of Palestine as a sovereign UN member state, with the US lifting its veto. Second, it should safeguard the territorial integrity of the State of Palestine and Israel, according to the 1967 borders. Third, it should establish a UNSC-mandated protection force drawn up from Muslim-majority states. Fourth, it should include the defunding and disarmament of all belligerent non-state entities, and it should ensure the mutual security of Israel and Palestine.

The two-state solution is about true peace—not about the politicide and genocide of Palestine, or the continued attacks by militants on Israel. It’s time for both Palestinians and Israelis to be safe, and for the US and Israel to give up the cruel delusion of permanently ruling over the Palestinian people.

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

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