NORTH AMERICA « nuclear-news

Money to oversee nuclear weapons safety will start running low after 8 days, Energy secretary says

The National Nuclear Security Administration will need to ramp back its work, which ranges from maintaining the weapons arsenal to international non-proliferation efforts.

Politico, By Kelsey Tamborrino, 10/03/2025

Energy Secretary Chris Wright is warning that the agency within the Energy Department that oversees the safety and reliability of the nation’s nuclear weapons stockpile has only enough funding to operate at full strength for about eight more days because of the ongoing government shutdown.

“Eight more days of funding, and then we have to go into some emergency shutdown procedures, putting our country at risk,” Wright said Thursday evening on Fox News, referring to the National Nuclear Security Administration.

Prior to federal cuts imposed earlier this year, NNSA had more than 65,000 federal workers and contractors across the country responsible for a wide range of activities from maintaining the nuclear arsenal to international non-proliferation work and overseeing the U.S. Navy’s nuclear operations.

In its recent shutdown plan, the Energy Department said it would maintain the NNSA’s weapons-focused staff who operate “critical control operations systems,” as well as employees who work on tasks such as stemming the spread of nuclear weapons, but it did not offer figures on how many people that includes…………………………………………………………….

The shutdown poses the second risk this year to the NNSA, after cuts instituted by Elon Musk’s DOGE removed too many people, forcing DOE to call back some terminated workers at the NNSA. Those DOGE appointees were reportedly unaware of the NNSA’s role in overseeing national security………………………………………………………. https://www.politico.com/news/2025/10/03/nuclear-energy-nnsa-00592883

October 5, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | safety, USA | Leave a comment

Under Trump, Criticism Is Now Criminal

Jim Naureckas, FAIR, October 3, 2025

After the killing of right-wing influencer Charlie Kirk, President Donald Trump (9/10/25) escalated his war on free speech, calling for criminalizing criticism of himself:

“It’s a long past time for all Americans and the media to confront the fact that violence and murder are the tragic consequence of demonizing those with whom you disagree day after day, year after year, in the most hateful and despicable way possible. For years, those on the radical left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis and the world’s worst mass murderers and criminals.

This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we’re seeing in our country today, and it must stop right now. My administration will find each and every one of those who contributed to this atrocity and to other political violence, including the organizations that fund it and support it, as well as those who go after our judges, law enforcement officials, and everyone else who brings order to our country.“

To spell it out: “Demonizing”—which is to say, criticizing—people with whom you disagree is “directly responsible” for Kirk’s death. Note that this is about criticizing people that you disagree with—”you” presumably being one of “those on the radical left”—as Trump has built a wildly lucrative political career out of demonizing those he disagrees with, and he’s not about to stop now. It’s the “wonderful Americans” like Kirk whom you aren’t supposed to criticize.

Trump promises “this kind of rhetoric”—the “radical left” kind—will “stop,” because the government will “find each and every one who contributed to this atrocity.” This includes all those who used their speech to “go after our judges,” cops and “everyone else who brings order.”

This is, in short, a declaration that the idea of free speech is over—despite Trump going on to list “free speech” first among “the American values for which Charlie Kirk lived and died.” Where once you had the right to criticize those who “bring order,” now such reckless rhetoric is punishable as direct support for “terrorism”—a word that under the US legal system authorizes draconian police powers……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. https://fair.org/home/under-trump-criticism-is-now-criminal/

October 5, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | civil liberties, USA | Leave a comment

Can Warriors Stop Endless Wars?

The Role of Veterans in Movements for Peace and Justice

By William D. Hartung. Tom Dispatch, September 30, 2025

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, the former “Fox and Friends” cohost, claims to be obsessed with making the Pentagon and the military services about “the warfighter.” His main approach to doing so is a deeply misguided campaign to reduce “distractions” like commitments to diversity, equity, and inclusion (the dreaded “DEI”). No matter that the purpose of DEI is to combat White supremacist attitudes, misogyny, and anti-gay and anti-trans violence in the ranks.

All such forms of discrimination are, in fact, already present in the U.S. military, and the way to build a cohesive defense force is certainly not by allowing them to run wild and be seen as acceptable or “normal” behavior. The best way to build a stronger, more unified military would, of course, be to make people feel welcome regardless of gender, race, ethnicity, or gender identification. That would, in fact, be the only way to build a military that reflects the nation it’s charged with defending. DEI, after all, is not an irritating slogan. It’s an attempt to right historic wrongs in the service of a more effective military and a more unified populace. And it’s one thing to suggest that current approaches could be made more effective, but quite another to demonize them in the name of forging “better” warfighters.

In short, the Hegseth method is bound to prove destructive. Count on this, in fact: it will only weaken our military, not strengthen it. The result, if Hegseth’s efforts succeed, will indeed be a Whiter, more aggressive armed forces, and quite likely one significantly more loyal to the current occupant of the Oval Office than to the Constitution.

Ex-Warriors for Peace

Thankfully, Hegseth’s vision is not shared by many of the veterans of America’s disastrous post-9/11 wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere. The eye-opening documentary What I Want You to Know presents the views of just such veterans about their service and about the meaning of the conflicts they fought in. Almost to a person (no, not “a man”!), they said the following four things:

– They don’t know why they were sent to the places where they fought

– They did not believe the U.S. could win the war they were sent to fight

– Their government lied to them

– They were forced to do things that will haunt them for the rest of their lives

It took courage for such veterans to go on camera and offer the unvarnished truth about the disastrous wars they helped to fight. They are, of course, far from alone, but as one of the producers of the film told me, many veterans are reluctant to discuss such feelings and insights publicly. Some don’t want to reflect on the idea that the wars they fought in were disastrously misguided and didn’t end in anything resembling an American victory. Others fear political retribution. Still others prefer to keep such conversations among their fellow vets, in large part because they feel that people who haven’t served can’t fully understand what they went through.

It’s little wonder that many vets keep their feelings about their long years in service within a close circle of friends and other veterans. But whether they choose to speak out publicly or not, a striking number of them are now either antiwar or “war skeptical,” questioning whether some of our recent conflicts were faintly worth fighting in the first place.

Don’t misunderstand me on this. There are indeed veterans speaking out against such unnecessary, unjust wars (past or future). Fifteen of them, for instance, contributed chapters to Paths of Dissent, a volume edited by Quincy Institute co-founder Andrew Bacevich and U.S. Army veteran Daniel Sjursen. A description of a 2023 webinar marking the release of the book caught its main theme perfectly:

“[T]hese soldiers vividly describe both their motivations for serving and the disillusionment that made them speak out against the system. Their testimony is crucial for understanding just how the world’s self-proclaimed greatest military power went so badly astray.”

There are also entire organizations, including Veterans for Peace (VFP), Common Defense, and About Face: Veterans Against the War, devoted to ensuring that such endless wars remain over and crafting an American foreign policy grounded in diplomacy and defense rather than in a quest for global military dominance. …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

Isn’t it finally time for a respectful national dialogue about what constitutes an adequate defense and how to balance military preparations with other urgent national needs? Of course, having any such conversation, given the present deep divisions in American society, will be a challenge in its own right. But the alternative is a continuation of some variation of the devastating wars of the post-9/11 period, and such new and perilous conflicts will involve boots on the ground, air strikes, or the endless arming of repressive regimes. https://tomdispatch.com/can-warriors-stop-endless-wars/

October 5, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

The U.S. is now a fascist state. What Trump’s new order on domestic terrorism really means.

Richard J Murphy, 3 Oct 2025

Fascists mean what they say. Donald Trump has now issued NSPM-7, a presidential order that redefines dissent as terrorism and authorises the state to treat opponents as enemies. From Stalin’s Article 58 to the Nazi Malicious Practices Act, history shows what happens when repression becomes law. We need to face facts: the US is very rapidly sliding into full-blown fascism — and the UK could follow.

And that future is dystopian. Dissent is recast as terrorism in Trump’s world. This order makes that idea law, and terrorists are now to be eliminated by the US military, as he told them in a conference when he assembled 700 or more generals and declared that they would now be fighting terrorism in the cities of the USA.

In effect, Trump is saying that there is a civil war to be waged in the USA now against what he calls the domestic terrorist threat, but which doesn’t exist.

The truth is that the USA is now a fascist authoritarian state, and we need to take seriously what he’s saying because, as Chris Hedges put it, “Fascists mean what they say”.

This memo, this order, signed by Trump, starts with the words ’Heinous assassinations and other acts have dramatically increased’. He lists Charlie Kirk’s murder, an attack on the Supreme Court Judge Brett Kavanaugh in 2022 and recent attacks on ICE, the Customs Enforcement Agency in the USA, that is expelling people from the country.

He claims that these are the basis for the terror that he is talking about. But in a country where, frankly, violence is normalised, and death on the streets is not uncommon, to pretend that this is the case is just wrong. He’s trying to build a highly selective, distorted, and self-serving story about left-wing terror, for which there is almost no evidence whatsoever. But as a consequence, he’s criminalising dissent.

Anti-fascism is now defined as terrorism.

Opposition to expulsions by ICE and opposition to patriarchy, or to his idea of empire, is defined as violent revolution. Anti-capitalism, anti-racism, and campaigns for gender equality – all these are branded as extremist. And truth becomes whatever he, as the arbiter of power, declares it to be.

In this situation, the law is inverted. Instead of being a mechanism that defends our freedoms, the law becomes a weapon of repression. This order dictates that the Department of Justice seek to prosecute people who oppose what Trump is trying to do with maximum charges.

There is an instruction that the Internal Revenue Service of the USA, the equivalent of HM Revenue and Customs in the UK, should strip the tax status of suspected groups, and that would include NGOs of the sort that campaign in the UK with regard to human rights, or even universities that teach courses that suggest that people have the right to dissent.

The agencies of the USA are authorised to interrogate and detain people just because they don’t agree with Trump.

Justice in this world becomes a means of persecution, and we’ve been here before, of course. There are massive historical parallels to what Trump is now doing.

Stalin had Article 58 in his penal code. It was a catchall for counter-revolutionary activity, and literally millions of people died as a result of being prosecuted under Article 58. Any form of dissent basically gave rise to their execution.

The same thing happened in Nazi Germany. There was the Malicious Practices Act of 1933, the very first act right at the beginning of the Nazi era that made it illegal to criticise the Nazi government, its leaders or its policies, and which allowed for punishment by arrest and internment in concentration camps like Dachau, which was in suburban Munich.

Trump’s memo – his order – fits exactly the same pattern. It’s vague and sweeping, and it’s designed to criminalise opposition, but without precisely saying what anybody will have done wrong, except to offer dissent.

This is, in effect, a declaration of preemptive war. What the order says is that a new organisation, the National Joint Terrorism Task Force, or the JTTF for short, must disrupt and dismantle networks of opposition to what Trump is trying to achieve. That’s not based on evidence of crimes, but on the basis of people’s associations or their free speech or their ideas. Financial networks, NGOs and universities are all specifically targeted by this. This is the policing of thought.

And behind all this, there is a very obvious ideology. A Christian nationalist worldview drives this agenda.

Those who support LGBTQ+ rights or who are indeed members of the LGBTQ+ community, people who are secular humanists or immigrants, all of them are labelled as deviants. Science and reason are replaced by biblical dogma, and patriotism is twisted into theocratic authoritarianism.

This has a paranoia behind it. Indeed, there is a paranoia that is gripping the elite in America. Narcissists and conspiracists are imagining that there are enemies everywhere to what Trump is proposing to do and what they wish to happen.

Pseudo-democracy is being created. Pseudo-courts, pseudo-media, pseudo-citizens, people who will, in fact, support the lies that maintain the Trump regime, and I rightly call it a regime and not an administration, and these lies replace facts.

Loyalty is replacing law.

Liberal institutions are being hollowed out.

Rights are being reduced to privileges and are being revoked at will, and hope and silence will ensure that the repression spreads.

And all of this happens whilst we try to look the other way. And that is the big threat of this moment.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn wrote in The Gulag Archipelago, “Universal innocence gives rise to the universal failure to act. Maybe they won’t take you. Maybe it will all blow over”, he said.

But it won’t. This is real. Fascists should lay out in advance what they intend to do, and then they do it, and that is what is happening in the USA.

This will happen. People will disappear. This is not a future danger. It’s here and now, and the decree that puts it into place already exists. The bars to freedom are being literally built before our own eyes at this moment, and democracy can’t survive if the opposition to it is redefined as terrorism.

So, where are we? Let’s face the facts. Fascism cannot be reasoned with. It must be confronted. And hope is most definitely not enough. And silence is complicity.

Solidarity and resistance are essential, even though that does inevitably involve risk. Making this video involves risk. If these measures become the norm in the UK as well, I will, of course, be identified as one of the threats.

But we have to defend civil liberties, truth and institutions now and challenge our government to act to do so, or we will follow the path of the USA and head down the direct route to both fascism and everything that follows from it, including the internment camps, which I am sure will be sprouting up soon in the USA and not just for those who are scheduled for deportation because they come from an ethnic minority.

We have to isolate the USA.

We have to call out what’s happening.

We have to say we object.

Our governments must decide whether they can any longer align with a country which is so openly fascist.

We need to come to the point where we say, “This is not acceptable.”

We need to say, “This is a country now built on lies, peddling myths and untruths and oppressing what is real.”

We need to support independent journalism, which there still is in the USA, but which is under enormous threat.

And we need to support those who will stand up for democracy.

We need to demand accountability.

And we need to stand up for what was put in place after World War II, which was the structure of human rights, which our mainstream political parties in the UK, including the Labour Party and the Conservative Party, both now question, even though this structure was put in place as a result of the influence of Winston Churchill, who wanted to make sure that never again would human rights be threatened by fascists. But they are, and our politicians are letting that happen.

We have to take action before the iron bars of fascism slam the door shut. That’s the risk that we face, and our politicians have to rise to the challenge, or we’re all in very deep trouble. The US is already a fascist state. We could be too. That’s what we’re up against.

What do you think? There’s a poll below. Do you think the US has now moved into fascism? Do you think that the UK could follow in the same way? Are you willing to take a stand? Or will you stand by the wayside? We are at a point where we have to decide.

Please think about what you are going to do.

October 4, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics, USA | Leave a comment

80 years demonizing Russia long enough…time for détente.

In 2019 and 2020 the US withdrew from two critical nuclear treaties with Russia: INF (Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces) and Open Skies. The third and last, New Start, expires in 4 months with no substantive ongoing negotiations. Why? Because America has abandoned negotiations extending New Start and reinstituting the others during its senseless, failed proxy war to weaken, isolate Russia from the European political economy.

Walt Zlotow, West Suburban Peace Coalition, Glen Ellyn IL , 3 Oct 25,

Last time US and Russia were buddies was 80 years ago at the end of WWII. Russia coughed up over 25 million dead in defeating Nazism in the East. In return for shedding that blood, the US coughed up several billion in military aid that kept the Russian war machine functioning in a Russian economy largely destroyed by Germany.

That friendship was blown up, literally, on August 6, 1945, when the US dropped the first of 2 atomic bombs on Japan. One of several reasons was to inform Russia (than USSR) that as new boss of the world America would brook no interference from a Russia we falsely assumed was bent on expanding communism everywhere on earth.

Had FDR lived there may not have been a Cold War. FDR recognized a prostrate Russia needed a buffer from a third German invasion from the west in the 20th century. He wisely surmised Stalin had no agenda whatsoever to conquer the world. So, he acquiesced in Stalin’s authoritarian control of his neighbors.

Alas, FDR’s death ushered in profoundly inexperienced Harry Truman. Woefully uninformed on foreign affairs, Truman was easy pickings for Russophobes Jimmy Burns, James Forestall, Dean Atchison and others who not only wanted to vanquish communist Russia, but desired a permanent war economy to prevent another Great Depression.

That wasn’t needed as pent-up domestic demand began the fabulous growth of the post WWII middle class. But Truman’s foreign policy handlers convinced him to promulgate the Truman Doctrine in February 1947, opposing communist expansion everywhere on earth even if meant demonizing as ‘communist’ any progressive movement that might make life better for downtrodden peoples.

But Russia never, for a single day between 1945 and the USSR’s implosion 46 years later, represented a serious existential threat to America. That’s because Russia had neither the desire nor the capability to attack America without suffering its utter destruction from an overwhelming American nuclear capability.

Instead, imaginary US obsession with Russia promoting communism in every corner of the earth including America, led to millions of deaths from hot wars such as Korea and Vietnam, and from US support for dictators killing dissidents threatening their regimes in over 20 countries. The million leftists Indonesia’s General Suharto killed with America’s help gave the grisly name to this murderous foreign policy…The Jakarta Method.

So, the Cold War was on till l1991 when the USSR went poof. Time to disband a now obsolete NATO? ‘Ha ha’, said the US national security state. ’We’re just getting started.’ Between 1999 and 2020 NATO expanded from 16 to 30 members, including 2 on Russia’s borders.

Beginning in 2007 Russia, requested, pleaded, begged the US and NATO to cease expansion. A year later the US response was to pledge NATO membership to the one country Russia would never allow in…neighboring and partially Russian cultured Ukraine. It took 14 years for an astonishingly patient Russia to say ‘enough’ and launch its ‘special military operation.’ That will not only prevent Ukraine NATO membership, it will effectively destroy Ukraine as a functioning state. All thanks to deranged anti-Russian US policy.

But America’s clearly lost proxy war against Russia sacrificing Ukraine is not the worst of what should be termed Cold War II. In 2019 and 2020 the US withdrew from two critical nuclear treaties with Russia: INF (Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces) and Open Skies. The third and last, New Start, expires in 4 months with no substantive ongoing negotiations. Why? Because America has abandoned negotiations extending New Start and reinstituting the others during its senseless, failed proxy war to weaken, isolate Russia from the European political economy. The US has put peoplekind at increased risk of nuclear confrontation due to refusal to negotiate nuclear disarmament.

Eighty years of America’s Russian Derangement Syndrome is 80 years too long. Time to shut down the lost proxy war against Russia by ceasing all aid to Ukraine till they negotiate the war’s end. Time to begin disengagement from European security including NATO. Time to embrace diplomatic relations with Russia to end all sanctions, explore mutually beneficial trade relations, and most importantly, reinstitute and renew nuclear agreements to prevent our collective annihilation rom nuclear war. We can’t wait another 80 years, 80 months, 80 weeks…even another 80 days.

October 4, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | history, USA | 1 Comment

The Ultimate Test of Allegiance

3 October 2025 AIMN Editorial, By Peter Brown, https://theaimn.net/the-ultimate-test-of-allegiance/

Watching American politics from afar, it’s often easy to get lost in the noise and drama. But sometimes, a fundamental issue cuts through the static – one that should alarm every citizen and international onlooker alike. What I see now is a direct challenge to one of the most sacred principles of their republic. To see that foundational principle now being tested is, frankly, chilling.

The bedrock principle of the American military is its oath to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” This sacred commitment is deliberately to an idea, a set of laws, and a nation – not to a person. Yet, they now face the unsettling prospect of a commander-in-chief, Donald Trump, who has consistently demonstrated that his primary demand is personal loyalty.

This creates a terrifying binary choice for the armed forces, with monumental repercussions for the republic.

Scenario One: They Pledge Loyalty to Him

If the military and its leadership were to prioritise loyalty to the president over loyalty to the Constitution, the very foundation of their democracy would crack. The armed forces would be transformed from a guardian of the state into a potential tool of a single leader. Orders that test constitutional boundaries would go unchallenged. The principle of civilian control of the military would remain in letter, but be utterly corrupted in spirit, becoming personal control of the military. The chain of command would exist not to execute the law, but to execute the will of one man.

Scenario Two: They Refuse

If the military holds fast to its constitutional oath, the result would be a crisis of a different kind. A president demanding personal fealty would inevitably view any constitutional resistance as disloyalty. We could see the politically charged dismissal of principled military leaders, creating a “Saturday Night Massacre” scenario within the Pentagon. This would shatter morale, politicise the most respected institution in the country, and create a dangerous rift between a president and the very forces tasked with protecting the nation.

This is not a partisan issue; it is a foundational one. The immense power of the U.S. military must never be contingent on a personality. The terrifying truth of the current moment is that they are forced to contemplate a scenario where the ultimate check and balance – the military’s refusal to follow an unlawful order – could be triggered, with consequences that would ripple through history.

The men and women in uniform swear an oath that ends with “So help me God.” The question they must all ask is: what happens if their commander-in-chief asks them to break it?

October 4, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics, USA | Leave a comment

U.S. to gift Plutonium-239 to private nuclear industry

The Trump Administration’s trafficking of nuclear weapons-grade usable plutonium would significantly increase the global proliferation of nation state-sponsored nuclear weapon programs as well as the nuclear weapons material acquisition by thief and purchase for acts of nuclear terrorism.

October 2, 2025, https://beyondnuclear.org/u-s-to-gift-pu-239-to-private-nuclear-utilities/

Trump Administration’s give away of 20 MT of US plutonium weapons stockpile to private companies threatens nuclear proliferation

According to previously unreleased government documents obtained and reviewed by Politico and addressed in a letter from three Democrat members of Congress to President Donald Trump, The White House is preparing to give away 20 metric tons of weapons-usable plutonium to new nuclear start companies. The Trump deal calls for the equivalent of 2000 nuclear bombs previously slated for permanent disposal as nuclear waste) from the nation’s Cold War era nuclear weapons stockpile to be freed up to help jump start privately-owned U.S. commercial nuclear startup companies. The fledgling nuclear companies would instead use the plutonium fuel in a still unproven and unlicensed new generation of nuclear power plants for domestic power production. The plan includes U.S. startups to reprocess plutonium used in nuclear fuel for international export. The Trump Administration’s trafficking of nuclear weapons-grade usable plutonium would significantly increase the global proliferation of nation state-sponsored nuclear weapon programs as well as the nuclear weapons material acquisition by thief and purchase for acts of nuclear terrorism.

The White House proposal calls for the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), currently charged with the nation’s nuclear weapons development and nuclear power promotion, to “alter” the military-grade plutonium so it can be used as fuel by civilian startup power companies in new reactor designs. Theses unfinished and yet to be approved designs (such as the sodium cooled metal fuel fast reactors “Aurora” by the Santa Clara, CA start-up Oklo, Inc.’s and Bill Gates’ TerraPower’s “Natrium”) are already being privately marketed for the domestic and international export of fast reactors by companies such as Oklo.

The White House Executive Orders originally issued in May 2025 as part of the President Trump’s national call to “Unleash Nuclear Energy” had directed that the US Department of Energy draw down the from the nation’s plutonium surplus. The current White House plan now additionally includes the military to civilian utility transfer of reserve warhead parts known as “plutonium pits.

The Politico article quotes Oklo’s CEO Jacob DeWitte, “Oklo, wants to take advantage of the plutonium fuel program. Unlike its competitors, Oklo’s fast-neutron reactors can use plutonium as a ‘bridge’ fuel to get around the bottlenecks that exist in obtaining the more desirable grades of uranium.” Those “desirable grades of uranium” fuel are currently only commercially available from the Russia global monopoly on High Assay Low Enriched Uranium (HALEU) which is just less than 20% enriched U-235.

Oklo’s prestigious former board member, Chris Wright, stepped down from the company when he was confirmed to be President Trump’s new Secretary of Energy. Oklo’s Aurora reactor design now under review by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission is a controversial liquid sodium-cooled metal fueled fast reactor. The fast reactor design is controversial chiefly because it can be retrofitted as a “dual purpose” (military and commercial) reactor to breed more plutonium for nuclear weapons and commercial power generation.

The concept for Oklo’s plan was opposed in a July 25, 2025 letter to Congress signed by 17 scientific experts on global non-proliferation of nuclear weapons. First and foremost, nothing has fundamentally changed to break with the five decades that the United States has opposed from using plutonium fuel in commercial power plants due to security and economic concerns. Their letter further pronounces that authorizing funds for the proposed civilian use of nuclear weapons-usable plutonium as fuel in nuclear power plants will only accelerate the global spread of nuclear weapons in two obvious ways; 1) US companies plan to internationally export plutonium fuel and the plutonium extraction technology, and; 2) the US cannot discourage other countries from further trafficking of weapons-usable plutonium as civilian nuclear fuel if the US is doing it ourselves.

Moreover, pyro-processing or “recycling” to extract plutonium and uranium for reuse as reactor fuel has already proven to be unsustainable economically and will only deepen the already bad economics of nuclear power. The processing is acknowledged as “very costly, due to safety and security concerns, both to extract from nuclear waste and to fabricate into fuel.”

October 4, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | - plutonium, USA | Leave a comment

Leah McGrath Goodman, Tony Blair and issues on torture (with added radiation)

Published by arclight2011- date 15 Sep 2012 -nuclear-news.net

[…]

Accusations: Despite the mockery of the film Borat, leaked U.S. cables suggest the country was undemocratic and used torture in detention

Other dignitaries at the meeting included former Italian Prime Minister and ex-EU Commission President

Romano Prodi. Mr Mittal’s employees in Kazakhstan have accused him of ‘slave labour’ conditions after a series of coal mining accidents between 2004 and 2007 which led to 91 deaths.

[…]

Last week a senior adviser to the Kazakh president said that Mr Blair had opened an office in the capital.Presidential adviser Yermukhamet Yertysbayev said: ‘A large working group is here and, to my knowledge, it has already opened Tony Blair’s permanent office in Astana.’

It was reported last week that Mr Blair had secured an £8 million deal to clean up the image of Kazakhstan.

[…]

Mr Blair also visited Kazakhstan in 2008, and in 2003 Lord Levy went there to help UK firms win contracts.

[…]

Max Keiser talks to investigative journalist and author, Leah McGrath Goodman about her being banned from the UK for reporting on the Jersey sex and murder scandal. They discuss the $5 billion per square mile in laundered money that means Jersey rises, while Switzerland sinks.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gA_aVZrR5NI&feature=player_detailpage#t=749s

And as well as protecting the guilty child sex/torturers/murderers of the island of Jersey I believe that they are also protecting the tax dodgers from any association.. its just good PR!

FORMER Prime Minister Tony Blair was reportedly involved in helping to keep alive the world’s biggest takeover by Jersey-incorporated commodities trader Glencore of mining company Xstrata.

11/September/2012

[…]

Mr Blair was said to have attended a meeting at Claridge’s Hotel in London towards the end of last week which led to the Qatari Sovereign wealth fund supporting a final revised bid from Glencore for its shareholding. Continue reading →

October 4, 2025 Posted by arclight2011 | 1 NUCLEAR ISSUES, Belarus, civil liberties, depleted uranium, environment, Fukushima 2012, health, Japan, Kazakhstan, marketing, politics international, Reference archives, Russia, secrets,lies and civil liberties, UK, Ukraine, USA, wastes, weapons and war | 1 Comment

Powering forward the Transatlantic Nuclear Free Alliance

2 Oct 25, https://www.nuclearpolicy.info/news/powering-forward-the-transatlantic-nuclear-free-alliance/

The UK/Ireland Nuclear Free Local Authorities were proud to partner with Canadian and United States anti nuclear activists at a lively webinar, kindly hosted and organised by SOS: The San Onofre Syndrome, last Thursday (25 September).

Richard Outram, NFLA Secretary, was humbled to join an online panel of distinguished speakers who are working in opposition to new nuclear plants and nuclear waste dumps in both nations. There was an audience of around 50 activists joining us from across the globe, from Colwyn Bay to Hawaii, who had been invited to view the award-winning film ‘SOS – The San Onofre Syndrome: Nuclear Power’s Legacy’.

This time the focus was upon examining the situation in Canada.

Britain’s Nuclear Waste Services, being responsible for locating and building an undersea repository for our nation’s legacy and future high-level radioactive waste – the so called Geological Disposal Facility – has established strong ties with its Canadian counterparts, the Nuclear Waste Management Organisation which has determined to build a similar, though inland and underground, repository – called a Deep Geological Repository – at Ignace in Ontario.

Dr Gordon Edwards is a mathematician, physicist, nuclear consultant, and president of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility (https://www.ccnr.org). CCNR is a not-for-profit organization, federally incorporated in 1978, dedicated to education and research on all issues related to nuclear energy, whether civilian or military — including non-nuclear alternatives — especially those pertaining to Canada. He is based in Montreal.

Brennain Lloyd from We the Nuclear Free North (https://wethenuclearfreenorth.ca/) is a community organizer, public interest researcher and writer. For the last 30 plus years, Brennain has worked with environmental, peace and women’s organizations as a facilitator and adult educator supporting public participation in environmental and natural resource decision-making and various planning processes. She is based in northeastern Ontario.

The panel was also joined by Team SOS in the United States, namely
Mary Beth Brangan and James Heddle, who are award-winning filmmakers of ‘SOS – The San Onofre Syndrome: Nuclear Power’s Legacy’ and co-directors of EON – the Ecological Options Network (https://www.eon3.org) and Morgan Peterson is an Oscar-nominated producer/director and director/editor of ‘SOS – The San Onofre Syndrome’. Mary Beth and James are based in Northern California, USA, whilst Morgan is based in Indiana, USA.

Richard is delighted that colleagues in the USA are looking to start work to build a network of nuclear free local authorities based on the model established from 1981 in the UK and Ireland.

It is almost 45 years since Manchester declared itself the world’s first nuclear free city and hosted the Secretariat of the Nuclear Free Local Authorities. Many cities across the globe followed Manchester’s lead in making similar declarations, many notably in the United States. It would be gratifying if these nuclear free cities could take the lead in establishing a new network across the Atlantic.

Richard said: “The purpose of establishing this Transatlantic Nuclear Free Alliance was to bring together anti-nuclear activists from both sides of the huge ocean which physically divides us in an online forum where we can share information on developments, support one another with campaigns, celebrate our successes, and share our common goals for a nuclear-free, peaceful and sustainable world.

“The UK / Ireland NFLAs would be delighted if from this meeting our colleagues in the United States could begin work to build their own network of nuclear free municipalities and we stand ready to lend support to such an initiative, where we can”.

Lisa Smithline from Moca Media TV, who ably performed the critical job of facilitating the event, summarised the event: “It was a deep and meaningful conversation. The feedback has been extremely positive, people are hungry for this information, the attendees didn’t want it to end!”

A future event will be held in around two months’ time – so do watch out for the invitation.

If you would like to attend and are not yet on the NFLA mailing list for news and future events, please email Richard Outram at richard.outram@manchester.gov.uk

In the meantime, the 25 September event can be viewed online at:

https://us02web.zoom.us/rec/share/Y3wQ_8YDumxukIDLCS5_uuBpUxnuYe9SbUHTF2PhVWEmPtE0Id2qNglFWDShT91n.dY8SN70Lrx5xxyqc
Passcode: RgMr442*

October 4, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Canada, opposition to nuclear, UK, USA | Leave a comment

The War Department’s War on Media

The Pentagon’s new restrictions will bar correspondents covering the American military from covering the American military, as the Trump regime attempts to exert full-spectrum control over media.

By Patrick Lawrence, Consortium News, September 30, 2025

It should be evident by now to anyone paying even casual attention that exerting full-spectrum control over American media is among the Trump regime’s most perniciously obsessive projects.

Of all the extra-constitutional messes this vulgar ignoramus is making, I count his assaults on media his gravest attempt to destroy what remains of American democracy and what little chance there may be to restore it.

There are all sorts of cases in point. President Trump has a citizen’s right to file lawsuits against various media — ABC News, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Paramount Global (the parent of CBS News) — but to call these anything other than an antidemocratic assertion of executive power is out of the question.

Lately there are the threats of Brendan Carr, the mad-dog chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, to take licenses away from broadcasters whose reportage and commentary are not to Trump’s liking.

“We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” saith Carr when he forced ABC to take Jimmy Kimmel off the air (temporarily, it turned out) for a few utterly harmless remarks the late-night host made after the assassination of Charlie Kirk, the influential conservative.

What a ridiculous comment from a ridiculous man, what a capricious display of authoritarian power. This is a war on media the Trump regime intends to wage on many fronts, to finish this pencil-sketch of the landscape.

What is to my mind the most portentous attack yet on media of all sorts and what little independence remains among the mainstream variety came a couple of weeks ago, when the Defense Department announced severe new restrictions on journalists covering the Pentagon.

To put the case simply, these rules will bar correspondents covering the American military from covering the American military.

My mind goes first to Jefferson’s famous remark in 1787, while serving as the young United States’ minister in Paris.

“Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government,” he wrote to Edward Carrington, a prominent Virginian and a friend, “I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.”

Taking the Pentagon’s new restrictions on their own terms and also as a harbinger, Trump and Pete Hegseth, his buffoonish defense secretary, appear intent on delivering Americans to that condition Jefferson warned against 238 years ago.

Turning his question another way, I remind readers of W.E.B. DuBois, Mark Twain, Samuel Gompers, the James brothers (William and Henry), and other critics of the American imperium as it emerged at the end of the 19^th century. There will be empire abroad or democracy at home, they asserted with a sort of desperate alarm, but Americans will not have both.

Considered in this context, Hegseth, with Trump’s evident approval, has just nodded in favor of this argument. Operating the late-phase imperium, Hegseth effectively advises Americans, requires the sequestration of power from public scrutiny.

The document announcing the Defense Department’s new restrictions on correspondents covering the American military runs to 17 pages; a covering letter signed by Sean Parnell, the Pentagon spokesman, describes it as “implementing the Secretary of War [sic] memorandum, ‘Updated Physical Control Measures for Press/Media Access Within the Pentagon,’ dated May 23, 2025.”

Note the date. By mid–May Pentagon correspondents had reported that Hegseth was using unsecured internet lines to conduct classified business and had brought his wife, brother, and personal attorney into a chat room where a top-secret aerial attack on Yemen was under discussion. A few days after that it was reported that he had invited Elon Musk to a briefing on potential war plans against China.

This guy had a lot of stupidity and incompetence to cover up. And the restrictions Hegseth authorized in May, detailed in the memorandum dated Sept. 18 and due to come into effect over the next few days, reek of the sort of revenge — against Democrats, against the universities, against the courts, against the media — that seems to rule within the Trump regime.

How damaging to our tattered republic, you have to conclude, are the petty vendettas of these thankfully passing people.

These new restrictions are beyond Draconian. Journalists covering the Pentagon are to be required to pledge not to report anything, anything at all, that has not been explicitly authorized by a department official. They will not be allowed even to gather information without such authorization. Access even to unclassified information will be limited to occasions “when there is a lawful government purpose for doing so.”

Reporters assigned to cover the Defense Department will now have to take pledges to get in the Pentagon’s front door? Just how far are these people going to go? This reminds me of the loyalty oaths required of federal employees during the McCarthyist 1950s.

Roughly 90 journalists cover the Pentagon at any given time. They will henceforth be restricted even from walking most of the building’s halls without an escort. “Failure to abide by these rules,” the memorandum warns, “may result in suspension or revocation of your building pass and loss of access.”

This is pretty close to Soviet, in my estimation.

“Journalists covering the Pentagon are to be required to pledge not to report anything, anything at all, that has not been explicitly authorized by a department official…. Access even to unclassified information will be limited…

Hegseth took to social media the day these restrictions were issued to journalists and, so, reported in their media. “The ‘press’ does not run the Pentagon,” he declared to all, “the people do.”

Tell me if this is not altogether Soviet.

It would be difficult to overstate the gravity of these measures. Taken to their extreme, and to go by the hyper-officious phrasing of the Sept. 18 memorandum the extreme is what Hegseth’s Pentagon has in mind, once these regulations go live the conduct of the imperium will no longer be visible to the public.

The imposition of total control of information — and so of all “narratives” — and the concealment of all conduct: These are the all-but-stated objectives. We are looking at unlimited prerogative and the strictest enforcement of secrecy, to describe this new regime another way. At this early moment I find it hard to imagine the extent of the lawlessness this may turn out to license.

I start to think the Trump II regime’s relations with media exceed the corruptions of the Cold War decades, and this is going some. But no president then was as brutishly ignorant and as indifferent to the Constitution as Trump. The imperium was on the ascendant during those first post–1945 decades; now it is bankrupt (in lots of ways) and obviously on the wane. The game is bound to get rougher as strength gives way to weakness…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

Pete Hegseth has decreed a radical departure in professional practice for journalists covering the national security state. True and highly condemnable.

Pete Hegseth has codified long-established practices and a longstanding relationship between the press and power. True and highly condemnable. https://consortiumnews.com/2025/09/30/patrick-lawrence-the-war-depts-war-on-media/

October 3, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | media, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

US Military Doctrine – Goodbye to Geneva

1 October 2025 AIMN Editorial, By Andrew Klein, https://theaimn.net/us-military-doctrine-goodbye-to-geneva/

Recent developments in the United States of America and the performances of President Trump and his Secretary of War Pete Hegseth should be concerning to us all.

There are indeed reports and analyses indicating that Secretary Hegseth is pursuing a significant overhaul of the U.S. military’s legal framework, with the stated goal of empowering commanders and adopting a more aggressive approach to warfare.

Policy Shifts and International Law

The planned changes have raised concerns among observers about their potential impact on the international rules-based order.

Overhauling Military Lawyers

Reports note that Hegseth has made it a priority to “retrain” military lawyers (the Judge Advocate General’s corps, or JAGs) so they provide advice that allows commanders to “pursue more aggressive tactics” and take a “more lenient approach in charging soldiers with battlefield crimes.” Critics of the JAG corps have argued that their interpretation of rules of engagement, such as the requirement to positively identify an enemy combatant, has been too restrictive.

Historical Context and Criticism

This effort is not happening in a vacuum. During the George W. Bush administration after the 9/11 attacks, JAG lawyers resisted the administration’s view that it could lawfully direct the military to ignore the Geneva Conventions regarding detainees.

A Stated Vision for Warfare

In his writings, Hegseth has been explicit about his philosophy, questioning the value of the Geneva Conventions and suggesting that the U.S. military should fight wars on its own terms, with less regard for the opinions of other countries or international courts. He has publicly argued that modern fighters “face lawyers as much as enemies” and that adversaries should receive “bullets, not lawyers.”

When evaluating these developments, it is helpful to consider the following perspectives:

A Deliberate Agenda

The evidence suggests that the actions of Secretary Hegseth are not ad hoc but part of a coherent, long-held belief system aimed at reducing legal constraints on the battlefield, which he views as detrimental to a “warrior ethos.”

A Contentious Debate

This shift represents one side of a long-standing and profound debate within military and international circles. It pits a view prioritising maximum operational freedom against one that holds that adhering to laws of war is a strategic and moral necessity, a stance historically defended by military lawyers themselves.

The potential consequences of altering the U.S. military’s relationship with international humanitarian law are a significant subject of global concern and analysis.

October 3, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Legal, USA | Leave a comment

Democrats alarmed as Trump eyes weapons material to fuel nuclear reactors

The scramble to build new reactors to supply power to AI data centers may include plutonium from the nation’s nuclear deterrent.

Politico, By Zack Colman, 09/29/2025

The Trump administration is considering a proposal to divert plutonium that plays a central role in the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile to fuel a new generation of power plants, according to an Energy Department official and previously undisclosed department documents.

The proposal calls for the department to alter the plutonium so it can be used by civilian power companies, including startups pitching advanced reactor designs. It’s part of a broader push by President Donald Trump to convert tons of the Energy Department’s plutonium to civilian use, a notion that some lawmakers argue would undermine the U.S. weapons program for the benefit of untested private companies.

The initiative would involve harvesting plutonium on a large scale: According to a department official and a July 31 DOE memo seen by POLITICO, more than a fifth of the plutonium needed to meet Trump’s mandates would come from the highly radioactive spheres manufactured for the cores of nuclear weapons. DOE already faces a crunch to make more of those spheres, known as plutonium pits — it’s lagging behind Congress’ demands that it boost pit production to modernize the country’s nuclear deterrence.

The department is “not meeting the current pit manufacturing schedule,” said a former DOE official who is familiar with the department’s plutonium reserves. “So to make pit plutonium available would be a huge shift, and I’d be shocked.”

Both the current and former officials were granted anonymity to share sensitive details about national security matters.

Trump didn’t mention the pits in a May executive order in which he directed DOE to draw from another source — its stores of surplus plutonium — to help revive the nuclear power industry and meet the soaring electricity demands of data centers used in artificial intelligence. The U.S. officially halted its program that made weapons-grade plutonium in 1992.

The department declined to confirm or deny any details of its plutonium plans in response to questions from POLITICO.

“The Department of Energy is evaluating a variety of strategies to build and strengthen domestic supply chains for nuclear fuel, including plutonium, as directed by President Trump’s Executive Orders,” the department said in a statement. “We have no announcements to share at this time.”

The White House referred POLITICO’s questions about the plutonium plans to DOE. The Defense Department referred questions to the White House.

Government watchdogs and congressional Democrats have spent weeks objecting to the entire notion of transferring government-owned plutonium to the power sector. Such a move “goes against long-standing, bipartisan U.S. nuclear security policy,” Democratic Sen. Ed Markey and Reps. Don Beyer and John Garamendi wrote in a Sept. 10 letter to Trump. “It raises serious weapons proliferation concerns, makes little economic sense, and may adversely affect the nation’s defense posture.”

In a separate Sept. 23 letter to Trump, Markey said he was concerned that Energy Secretary Chris Wright was pushing the plutonium proposals to help a Californian nuclear power startup named Oklo, on whose board Wright once sat………….

Oklo spokesperson Paul Day declined to comment on Markey’s concerns of a possible conflict of interest. He also declined to comment on how much plutonium the company intends or has agreed to acquire from DOE. He said DOE “has not, as far as we know, established a plutonium fuel program.”

One nuclear safety watchdog echoed many of the Democrats’ concerns in an interview, saying DOE’s proposal could hollow out the nation’s nuclear defenses and compromise the Pentagon’s long-term deterrence strategy. And it appears to be happening without coordination with the Defense Department, said Hans Kristensen, director of the nuclear information project at the Federation of American Scientists, a nonprofit group that focuses on global security.

…………………………………………..U.S. civilian reactors now use only uranium for their nuclear fuel, but some reactors under development are planning to use plutonium. Spent plutonium from reactors is far more radioactive than uranium — and could pose a greater security risk than uranium if it were to fall into the hands of hostile nations or terrorist groups.

………………………………………… The DOE memo called for delivering 18.5 metric tons of the government’s surplus plutonium and an additional 6.5 metric tons pulled from “material in classified form once it has been declassified.” That latter term, the current DOE official who spoke to POLITICO said, refers to the plutonium pits, whose shape and characteristics can reveal information about nuclear weapons.

The company where Wright was once a board member, Oklo, wants to take advantage of the plutonium fuel program. Unlike its competitors, Oklo’s fast-neutron reactors can use plutonium as a “bridge” fuel to get around the bottlenecks that exist in obtaining the more desirable grades of uranium, CEO Jacob DeWitte told POLITICO in an interview.

DeWitte said Oklo has not publicly revealed how much plutonium the company is seeking to run its new reactors, or from where precisely it plans to obtain that plutonium. He also said the Trump administration has not detailed exactly how much plutonium it will make available, noting that “there is disagreement” over how much surplus plutonium the federal government can hand off before harming nuclear deterrence……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… https://www.politico.com/news/2025/09/29/trumps-nuclear-power-push-stirs-worries-about-us-weapons-stockpile-00583424

October 3, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | - plutonium, USA | Leave a comment

Theatre of the absurd

Roswell, 2 Oct 25 https://theaimn.net/theatre-of-the-absurd/

The headliner, of course, was the Commander-in-Chief, Donald Trump. But this was not a presidential address; it was a campaign rally in search of an enemy. Instead of a coherent strategy, the assembled warriors were treated to the familiar Trumpian symphony of digressions, personal boasts, and factual free-association. While the apocryphal tale of a president explaining the melting point of aluminum is a perfect metaphor, the reality was often just as bewildering. This is the man who once claimed that fallen soldiers were “suckers” and “losers” – an hallucination that surely left the Army Chief of Staff staring blankly at his shoes.

The spectacle of the world’s most powerful military being led by a man who treats complex briefings like open-mic night is comedy enough. But every great act needs a sidekick. Enter Pete Hegseth, the cable news warrior turned unofficial advisor, who stepped in to provide the second act of this two-part farce.

If Trump was the master of ceremonial confusion, Hegseth was the sergeant of petty discipline. His message to these titans of modern warfare? Shave.

Yes, shave. While the world smoldered, the sage counsel from the sidelines was that the solution to modern warfare’s challenges lay not in advanced cyber strategy or diplomatic finesse, but in a closer shave. Draped in the language of “warrior culture” and a fight against “wokeness,” Hegseth’s prescription was the ultimate reduction of military virtue to a matter of grooming. It was a disrespect so profound it looped back into comedy. These are men and women who have borne the unimaginable weight of sending troops into battle; to imply they lacked the basic discipline to manage their own facial hair was not just an insult – it was a joke.

The true comedy of this entire spectacle was not in any single gaffe or ridiculous order. It was in the devastating contrast. It was the sight of a room filled with the heirs to Patton and Nimitz being lectured on reality by a man who seemed to have learned his history from a cereal box, and then being scolded on personal hygiene by a commentator playing soldier.

They were called to Washington to confront the nation’s enemies, only to find that the real absurdity was already in the room. The mission, it turned out, wasn’t in some distant desert or contested sea lane. The mission was to survive an administration that confused the Situation Room for a green room and treated its most decorated leaders like unruly recruits. It wasn’t just a failure of policy; it was a masterpiece of political theatre, a comedy of errors where the stakes just happened to be the security of a nation.

(Meanwhile, on another planet):

“The generals in the audience today praised my speech and said they haven’t heard anything better since General Patton, but said mine was more inspiring”

October 2, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics, USA | Leave a comment

Trump says Israel can ‘finish the job’ in Gaza if Hamas rejects latest ceasefire plan

If Hamas rejects the deal, Trump said Israel “would have my full backing to finish the job” of destroying the group. Netanyahu said Hamas could choose the “easy way or hard way” going forward.

Donald Trump says Benjamin Netanyahu accepted the latest U.S.-backed “peace plan” in Gaza and threatened Hamas that if it rejects the proposal, Israel would have his “full backing to finish the job” of destroying the group.

By Michael Arria September 29, 2025, https://mondoweiss.net/2025/09/trump-says-israel-can-finish-the-job-in-gaza-if-hamas-rejects-latest-ceasefire-plan/

President Donald Trump says Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has accepted the latest U.S.-backed “peace plan,” which is ostensibly aimed at securing a ceasefire in Gaza.

Trump made the announcement during a joint press conference with Netanyahu, which followed a White House meeting between the two leaders. It’s Netanyahu’s fourth trip to Washington since Trump began his term in January.

During the meeting, Trump facilitated an Oval Office phone call between Netanyahu and Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim al-Thani, in which the Israeli leader apologized for the September 9 attack on Doha.

Netanyahu expressed regret about the strikes and, specifically, “that, in targeting Hamas leadership during hostage negotiations, Israel violated Qatari sovereignty,” according to a White House readout of the phone call.

Despite being touted as a diplomatic breakthrough, the 20-point plan recycles a number of previous White House declarations.

The plan would include a prisoner swap, complete Hamas disarmament, and the formulation of a transitional government led by an international body. Additionaly, it requires Gaza to become “deradicalized terror-free zone.”

Trump would chair a “board of peace” to reconstruct the Gaza Strip as part of the program, while Jordan and Egypt would train new Palestinian security forces.

Trump told reporters that it was an “extremely fair” proposal and claimed that Hamas “wants to get this done too,” despite reports that Hamas has yet to receive the plan.

“I also want to thank Prime Minister Netanyahu for agreeing to the plan and for trusting that if we work together, we can bring an end to the death and destruction that we’ve seen for so many years, decades, even centuries and begin a new chapter of security, peace and prosperity for the entire region,” said Trump.

If Hamas rejects the deal, Trump said Israel “would have my full backing to finish the job” of destroying the group. Netanyahu said Hamas could choose the “easy way or hard way” going forward.

“Everyone understands that the ultimate result must be the elimination of any danger posed in the region, and that danger is caused by Hamas,” explained Trump.

Neither leader took questions after the press conference.

Shortly before the meeting, Axios published a report by Marc Caputo and Barak Ravid, which claimed Trump is “willing to break with him over Gaza for the first time since returning to office.” It quoted an anonymous Trump official who insisted that “everyone — and I mean everyone — is exasperated with Bibi.”

Despite such assertions, the Trump administration has continued to support the assault on Gaza without conditions of any kind.

Earlier this month, in a 72-page report, the UN Commission of Inquiry concluded that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza and called for an arms embargo on the country.

“What does this mean for the international community?,” wrote UN human rights chief and commission member Navi Pillay after the report was released. “It means its obligations are not optional. Every state has an obligation to prevent genocide wherever it occurs,” she continued. “That obligation requires action: halting the transfer of weapons and military support used in genocidal acts, ensuring unimpeded humanitarian assistance, stopping the mass displacement and destruction, and using all available diplomatic and legal means to stop the killing. To do nothing is not neutrality. It is complicity.”

October 2, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Israel, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

As UN Turns 80, Trump Continues US Violation of Charter’s Limits on Use of Force.

Donald Trump has ignored UN rules about attacking other nations, but he is not the first US president to do so

By Marjorie Cohn , Truthout, September 29, 2025

n his inflammatory September 23 speech to the United Nations General Assembly, Donald Trump expressed contempt for the UN, falsely claiming he had ended seven wars and stating, “I realized that the United Nations wasn’t there for us. I thought of it really after the fact … that being the case, what is the purpose of the United Nations?”

If Trump studied history, he would know the answer to that question.

Eighty years ago, after two world wars claimed millions of lives, nations around the world — including the United States — came together and established the UN system “to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war.”

The UN Charter requires that all states settle their disputes peacefully and refrain from the use of armed force except in self-defense under Article 51, after an armed attack against a UN state by another state, or when the Security Council authorizes it.

But, motivated by American exceptionalism — the notion that the U.S. is unique and morally superior and thus not bound by the rules — successive elected U.S. governments have violate d the commands of the UN Charter and illegally attacked other countries with impunity.

Violation of UN Charter by Last Five U.S. Presidents

Trump has ignored the straightforward rules about the lawful use of force, but he is not the first U.S. president to do so. We need look no further than the last five presidents, who have launched armed attacks without Security Council approval against countries that had not carried out armed attacks on the United States or other UN member countries.

Bill Clinton could have helped prevent the genocide in Rwanda. But instead, he precluded the UN from acting to stop the killing of 800,000 people. In 1993, Clinton bombed Iraq to retaliate for an assassination attempt against George H. W. Bush. In 1998, on the eve of his impeachment, Clinton once again bombed Iraq, ostensibly to enforce Security Council resolutions, even though only the Council has the power to enforce its resolutions. Both bombings violated the UN Charter. The 1999 U.S.-led NATO bombing of Yugoslavia also violated the Charter, killing roughly 500 civilians. Madeline Albright, Clinton’s secretary of state, labeled the UN “a tool of American foreign policy.”

In 2001, George W. Bush’s administration illegally invaded Afghanistan, even though Afghanistan had not attacked the United States. On September 11, 2001, 19 men (15 of whom hailed from Saudi Arabia) committed crimes against humanity in the United States. But that was not an armed attack by another state sufficient to trigger the Charter’s Article 51 self-defense provision. Bush’s invasion of Afghanistan was not lawful self-defense, and the Security Council had not approved it.

Two years later, before he illegally invaded Iraq and changed its regime, Bush tried to obtain the consent of the Security Council, but the Council refused to authorize the invasion. Then Bush cobbled together prior Security Council resolutions from the first Gulf War, none of which authorized him to attack Iraq in 2003, in a vain attempt to legitimize his illegitimate war.

John Bolton, who served as U.S. ambassador to the UN during George W. Bush’s second term, and national security adviser during Trump’s first term, was a strong advocate for Bush’s 2003 invasion of Iraq. In 1994, Bolton displayed his hatred for the UN when he stated that “there is no such thing as the United Nations,” cynically adding, “If the UN Secretariat building in New York lost 10 stories, it wouldn’t make a bit of difference.”

Barack Obama launched illegal drone strikes in Yemen, Pakistan, Somalia, Libya, Afghanistan, Syria, and Iraq. None of those seven states had mounted an armed attack against the U.S. or any other UN member country, and the Security Council did not authorize the strikes. Moreover, the Obama administration provided no evidence that any of those states were about to launch an imminent attack on the United States. Even if the U.S. Congress had authorized Obama’s wars, they still would not have been in compliance with the Charter.

During Trump’s first regime, he ordered the illegal bombing of Syria. In 2017, he sent 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles to attack Syria in response to its alleged use of chemical weapons in a Damascus suburb. Syria had not attacked the United States or any other UN state before Trump’s missile strike. The use of chemical weapons by Syria did not constitute an armed attack to trigger the right of self-defense. And the Security Council had not approved Trump’s use of force. It therefore violated the Charter.

In 2020, Trump ordered the illegal drone assassination of Iranian Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani who was present in Iraq. Neither Iran nor Iraq had attacked the United States and the Council had not authorized Trump’s drone attack. It was therefore illegal under the Charter.

One month after Joe Biden was inaugurated, he authorized airstrikes in Syria on buildings that purportedly belonged to Iran-backed militias who were allegedly responsible for attacks against U.S. and allied personnel in Iraq. Syria, however, had not undertaken an armed attack on the U.S. or another country, and the Security Council had not approved the attack. Biden also authorized illegal drone strikes in Afghanistan in 2021 and 2022, and in Yemen in 2024.

Trump Renames “Department of Defense” the “Department of War”

Trump signed an executive order attempting to rename the “Department of Defense” as the “Department of War.” Permanently renaming the department would require congressional approval, but the move is indicative of his explicit rejection of the Charter’s fundamental precept of self-defense. And his actions since assuming office for his second term are consistent with that rejection.

After Israel illegally attacked Iran in June, Trump conducted a series of military strikes against three Iranian nuclear facilities. Although he claimed his objective was to put “a stop to the nuclear threat posed by the world’s number one state sponsor of terror,” Iran did not constitute an imminent threat. Rafael Grossi, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, affirmed at the time that Iran did not even have nuclear weapons capability. The U.S. strikes were not mounted in self-defense, and the Council had not given its imprimatur for the attacks.

Earlier this month, Trump illegally ordered armed attacks on at least three Venezuelan fishing vessels under the guise of fighting the drug war, killing at least 11 people, in direct violation of the Charter. He was apparently testing the waters. Now NBC News is reporting that Trump is considering mounting drone strikes within Venezuela in the next few weeks.

Since October 7, 2023, when Israel began its genocidal campaign against the Palestinian people in Gaza, the United States — under both Biden and Trump — has six times vetoed Security Council resolutions to end the fighting, despite the UN Charter’s command that international disputes be settled peacefully. The Trump administration filed the most recent U.S. veto on September 18.

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has issued an unprecedented order summoning high-ranking military officials to attend a meeting in Quantico, Virginia, on September 30, reportedly to deliver a message about upholding a “warrior ethos.” Whether this signals a new aggressive approach or remains a mere photo op, the Trump administration is likely to continue the foreign policy tradition of disregarding the UN Charter, thanks to decades of impunity enjoyed by previous administrations.

Marjorie Cohn is professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, dean of the People’s Academy of International Law and past president of the National Lawyers Guild. She sits on the national advisory boards of Veterans For Peace and Assange Defense, and is a member of the bureau of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers and the U.S. representative to the continental advisory council of the Association of American Jurists. Her books include Drones and Targeted Killing: Legal, Moral and Geopolitical Issues.

October 2, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Reference, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

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