State Police to Hold Major Radiological Incident Exercise with International, Federal, State and Local Partners
The Michigan State Police, Emergency Management and Homeland Security Division (MSP/EMHSD) is playing a lead role in the planning, hosting and execution of a historic full-scale radiological exercise. More than 70 local, state, provincial and federal agencies from the United States and Canada will participate in this major radiological incident exercise at various locations in Lansing, southeast Michigan, Indiana, Ohio and Ontario from March 14 – 21.
The Cobalt Magnet 2025 exercise is led by the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), in partnership with the MSP/EMHSD. It will bring numerous agencies together to ensure preparedness against radiological threats.
“Michigan is home to two active nuclear power plants, with a third slated to return online within the next year,” said Col. James F. Grady II, director of the Michigan State Police and state director of emergency management and homeland security. “Given our location near Canada and other Great Lakes states, Michigan is uniquely positioned to play a critical role in this vital exercise, where the lessons learned will improve safety and response actions impacting the nation and beyond.”
Cobalt Magnet 2025 represents the culmination of 18 months of planning by local, state, provincial and federal responders. The exercise, with more than 3,000 participants, will simulate a nuclear power plant accident. It will enable response personnel to practice scanning for radiological materials, protecting public health and safety, providing emergency relief to affected populations and restoring essential services.
“During the exercise, members of the public may see field teams in protective clothing using radiological monitoring and detection equipment, low-flying aircraft conducting data-gathering overflights and groups of first responders and others staged at various locations,” explained Capt. Kevin Sweeney, deputy state director of Emergency Management and commander of the MSP/EMHSD. “The MSP/EMHSD will host a large portion of the Cobalt Magnet 25 exercise at the State Emergency Operations Center at MSP Headquarters in Dimondale. Multiple State of Michigan agencies will join the MSP in this full-scale exercise.”
Cobalt Magnet 2025 is part of a regular program of training, exercises and planning that help first responders prepare in case of a public health and safety emergency.
For more information on how to prepare before, during and after an emergency or disaster, visit www.michigan.gov/miready or follow MSP/EMHSD on X at @MichEMHS.
Walt Zlotow – GOP intervention needed to remove disintegrating Trump from office
Walt Zlotow, Glen Ellyn, 14 Mar 25
It took nearly 4 years to Democrats to stage an intervention to remove a mentally disintegrating Joe Biden from office.
We cannot wait that long for GOP to do their version with a disintegrating Donald Trump.
That’s because his disintegration is compounded by a malevolent streak of vindictiveness, revenge, lust for dictatorial power, gleeful dismantling of the American safety net maintaining the commons never before experienced in American history.
Annoy him and he’ll call you Asian if you’re black; Palestinian if you’re a Jew. That is sick.
Trying to salvage Musk’s sinking Tesla brand, he morphed into a sleazy car salesman pitching Tesla cars as his smug governmental wrecking ball looked on.
His obsession with tariffs has spooked Wall Street, every sensible economist, every trading partner and Joe Sixpack watching his retirement drop while his costs of necessities rise. He appears detached from reality of the economic deluge he’s unleashing.
His congressional speech sounded more like an indoor Nuremburg Rally than a prescription for healing America. His idolatrous congressional Republicans roared their approval. Apparently oblivious they’re standing on the deck of the Titanic along with the Democrats, they jeered them for not saluting America’s first autocratic president.
Whether it’s sliming critics, stealing foreign territory, gutting government, snipping the social safety net, provoking self-destructive trade war, Trump’s delusions of grandeur increase daily.
There is historical precedent for Republicans staging an intervention to remove a morally compromised president. In 1974 a GOP intervention led by Sen. Barry Goldwater visited morally compromised President Nixon in the White House and convinced him to resign. Such an intervention by today’s GOP, while virtually inconceivable, is still critically needed to prevent an unprecedented collapse of every vestige of the American promise to its citizenry.
If morally centered Barry Goldwater were in the Senate today, he’d likely step up to lead the Trump intervention. Alas, knowing the makeup of today’s GOP, it might be an intervention of one.
Poisoning the well – The toxic legacy of Cold War uranium mining in western New Mexico
Studies have shown that chronic exposure to uranium through drinking water can cause kidney damage and cardiovascular disease. When inhaled, uranium can lead to lung cancer and pulmonary fibrosis, a scarring of the lung tissue. Studies of uranium miners associate cumulative exposure to radon with higher rates of death by lung cancer.
Proving that one’s illness originated as a result of living near a mine or mill, as opposed to actually working in it, is nearly impossible, given that symptoms can take years to manifest — a lack of clear causation that is ultimately advantageous to polluters.
Near the western New Mexico town of Grants, the toxic legacy of Cold War uranium mining and milling has shattered lives, destroyed homes and created a contamination threat to the last clean source of groundwater for an entire region
SEARCHLIGHT NEW MEXICO, by Alicia Inez Guzmán, March 13, 2025 [ excellent pictures and maps]
Driving along a stretch of New Mexico Highway 605, just north of the tiny Village of Milan, it’s easy to imagine that this area has always been no-man’s-land. Little appears in the distance except for a smattering of homes and trees peppered by expanses of bone-dry scrub brush. But a hard second look reveals something else — vestiges of a mass departure. Sidewalks lead to nowhere, a dog house sits in the middle of a field next to a mound of cinder blocks, phone lines crisscross empty stretches of land and deserted propane tanks and mailboxes sit perched in front of nothing. Around the bend on one unpaved side road, a neighborhood watch sign stands sentinel where a neighborhood no longer exists…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
This home site was once part of a cluster of five rural subdivisions interspersed with rich farm and ranchland. The Homestake Mining Company — famously known for gold mining in the Black Hills of South Dakota — took up residence here in 1958, to mill uranium. From that year until 1990, millions of tons of ore were prised from nearby mines and processed at Homestake, where the ore was ground into fine particles and leached with a solution that coaxed out pure uranium oxide, often called “yellowcake.” That uranium was then shipped off to help make America’s Cold War fleet of nuclear weapons or to power nuclear reactors. The leftover slurry was piped into two unlined earthen pits, the largest the size of 50 football fields and filled with over 21 million tons of uranium mill tailings.
Over time, the uranium tailings decayed into radon gas; meanwhile, radioactive contaminants seeped into four of the region’s aquifers. Residents compiled a list of neighbors who died of cancer — they called it the Death Map. In 2014, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) predicted that the probability of developing cancer was notably higher for residents who lived closest to the mill, especially if they drank the water.
In the intervening decades, Homestake attempted to hold its remaining contamination at bay rather than offer a long-term solution. That changed in 2020, when the company declared that a full cleanup of the groundwater was not feasible and instead embarked on a mass buyout and demolition of homes inside the rural subdivisions and beyond, Boomer and Billiman’s included. Homestake’s goal, ultimately, is to hand over 6,100 acres of land — almost twice the size of nearby Milan — to the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) as part of a special federal program that takes over shuttered nuclear outfits when industry walks away. The deadline is 2035. And if this site is anything like the majority of the DOE’s other sites, the land will be rendered inaccessible to the public, with the company’s guarantee that toxins will stay inside the massive contamination zone boundary for a thousand years.
“Talk about the myth of containment,” says Christine Lowery, a commissioner in Cibola County. “The myth of reclamation as well,” she adds. For Lowery, a member of the Pueblo of Laguna who lives in Paguate, one of its six villages — itself blighted by the Jackpile-Paguate Uranium Mine, one of the world’s largest open pit uranium mines — the subtext is clear. “What they should be saying is, ‘We’ve contaminated everything we can, and there’s no way we can fix it.’”
In fact, the conditions necessary for contaminants to infiltrate a fifth aquifer in a single generation — not a thousand years — could already be in the making. The aquifer in question is the San Andres-Glorieta, so ancient that its limestone was forged from the same material as seashells before the era of the dinosaurs. It’s also the last clean source of groundwater for Milan, the county seat of Grants, many private well owners and the Pueblo of Laguna, as well as the Pueblo of Acoma, one of the longest continually inhabited communities in the United States.
According to regulators, the San Andres-Glorieta still meets standards for groundwater that is safe to use and drink. According to Homestake’s own reports, however, at least three uranium plumes are converging toward what Ann Maest, an aqueous geochemist with Buka Environmental, a Colorado-based firm, calls “a bull’s-eye of radioactive contamination.” The potential target? A geological formation called a subcrop. Here, approximately 100 feet below the surface of the earth and three miles southwest of the Homestake site, this subcrop directly connects the San Andres-Glorieta with an overlying aquifer long known to transport contamination from two uranium mills including Homestake. In 2022, the company commissioned an independent firm to study the geological feature. But according to a memo sent to state and federal regulators and written by Maest the following year, the findings were “light on interpretation” and evaded answering the most important question of all: Have those contaminants reached the San Andres-Glorieta?………………………
Gauging the extent of groundwater plumes is notoriously difficult. Topography and geology shape how groundwater moves, and sampling can underestimate the full range of a plume, leaving gaps in the data, whether that’s inadvertent or intentional. A 2022 ProPublica investigation found that regulators had been lax in their oversight of the Homestake mill, its toxic footprint and the uranium industry as a whole. Over time, a dizzying array of state and federal agencies have each overseen a different aspect of the site’s reclamation; in the past, those agencies haven’t even agreed on what that reclamation should look like.
Now, as uranium mining undergoes a national revival under initiatives that favor carbon-free nuclear energy, waste from the previous Cold War era of mining and milling endures. Homestake’s remediation — which has gone on for 49 years — exemplifies this legacy. During that time, company reports say, its collection wells have pumped out billions of gallons of contaminated water. Nearly one million pounds of uranium have been removed from the groundwater, too. Bingham says this represents 85 percent of the total uranium that was released into the environment. That’s in addition to the removal of tens of thousands of pounds of selenium and over a million pounds of molybdenum.
The company has attempted to keep pollutants that have seeped into groundwater from migrating farther away from the source. But this so-called hydraulic barrier has only addressed the symptoms of the contamination, not the cause: the tailings piles, which the company declined to relocate into a lined repository nearby. That means that some groundwater contamination continues to spread beyond Homestake’s site. The hydraulic barrier has another drawback — it has used “a massive amount of freshwater from the San Andres-Glorieta aquifer to operate,” says Laura Watchempino, a member of the Multicultural Alliance for a Safe Environment (MASE), a grassroots network of uranium-impacted communities working collectively to address the legacy of mining and milling on the health and environment of future generations. Watchempino is a former lawyer who also worked as a water quality specialist for the Pueblo of Acoma………………………………………………………………………………..
………………………………………………………………….Carver estimates that he is one of around 30 holdouts left in the five subdivisions; four of the families live in his own, Murray Acres. But few others have spent so much time fighting to hold the company accountable. “I’m 85 and it all started when I was 40,” he says.
In 1983, he was one of the plaintiffs in a lawsuit filed against the company, which argued, among other claims, that contamination of the well water had “completely destroyed the market value of the plaintiffs’ properties.” As part of the settlement, the company made small cash payments to residents and hooked them up to the municipal water system, which drew from the last clean source of water in the region, the San Andres-Glorieta. That year, the mill was designated a Superfund site, and in 1987 the company entered into a consent order with the EPA to analyze radon levels in residents’ homes, the product of uranium decaying from the tailings piles.
The mill closed in 1990, less than a decade after the uranium industry went bust. Records from the county assessor’s office show that Homestake quietly began buying a handful of homes in adjacent neighborhoods as early as 1996. (In 2001, Homestake Mining merged with the Canadian juggernaut, Barrick Gold, one of the world’s largest gold mining companies.)
“Every time someone dies or decides to move away, Homestake-Barrick Gold buys the property at a greatly reduced cost, which they can do because their ineffective groundwater remediation has devalued property many of us worked lifetimes to build,” Candace Head-Dylla, a former resident, said in a 2017 letter to the NRC.
In 2020, the company argued that it was no longer technically practical to clean up the groundwater to match its pre-mill days, Bingham wrote. So began the tangled regulatory process of applying for a less-stringent cleanup standard through the NR……………………………………
Searchlight asked the DOE for comment, but the agency declined. According to Samah Shaiq, a former DOE spokesperson, the agency is not yet responsible for the site.
The NRC denied Homestake’s application for the lower standard — the basis of the buyout — but the company remains steadfast in its desire to walk away. As part of those plans, Homestake has already scooped up approximately 455 of the estimated 523 properties that sit inside its proposed boundary, an expanse that’s nearly as large as the most contaminated area of the Rocky Flats Plant, another of the more than 100 sites under the DOE’s perpetual care, where thousands of plutonium bomb cores for the nation’s nuclear arsenal were fabricated between 1952 and 1989.
Much of Milan, along with huge swaths of land west and north, including some five miles of Highway 605, sit within this massive pie-shaped chunk, a proposed boundary that is based on the company’s groundwater modeling data. Inside are public water and electric lines, groundwater wells, septic systems and other, smaller roads, the fate of which have yet to be determined. Milan Elementary School sits only a mile away from the boundary’s southernmost rim.
When Searchlight asked how fast those plumes are migrating, drawing on a Homestake-produced simulation that’s meant to predict how contaminants move in groundwater aquifers at the site, the EPA declined to comment, because the simulation was still in draft form.
Regulators, meanwhile, are plodding through the process of determining what final act of remediation they should require before allowing Homestake to hand off the site to the DOE. But prospects for that remedy depend on whether and when the company will receive a lower cleanup threshold. If a lower standard is settled on, that remedy, whatever it may be, will fall radically short of truly protecting groundwater, advocates believe. Adding to the uncertainty is a recent announcement that the Trump administration intends to cut personnel at the EPA by up to 65 percent.
The future of the site seems all but predetermined: a wasteland in the truest sense, and a national sacrifice zone. The buyout, a prologue to this future, has fractured residents’ lives in the present. Homestake subjected sellers to nondisclosure agreements — “standard business practice,” in Bingham’s words — but to some in the community, a mechanism for silencing dissent……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
“We’ve been poisoned to the gills”
The Grants Mining District stretches from the Pueblo of Laguna to Gallup, across almost 100 miles of western New Mexico’s red bluffs. Uranium here and throughout the world is ancient even by cosmic standards………………………………………………………
…………………………..in time, more than 150 mines would be developed across this district and the greater San Mateo Creek Basin, and, today, there are a total of 261 former uranium mines statewide, making New Mexico the fourth-largest producer of uranium globally, behind East Germany, the Athabasca Basin and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which supplied much of the uranium for the Manhattan Project.
But with the uranium boom came a wave of devastation across the greater Southwest, including in Indigenous communities like the Pueblo of Laguna, as well as the Navajo Nation, where there are more than 500 abandoned uranium mines. Workers often lived near mines and mills and would bring yellowcake home on their clothes, exposing their families to harmful radioactive dust; water sources, meanwhile, have shown “elevated levels of radiation,” according to the EPA.
In the Church Rock Chapter of the Navajo Nation, a tailings dam breached on an early July morning in 1979, sending contaminated water into the Rio Puerco. Today, it constitutes the largest release of nuclear materials in the U.S. worse even than the meltdown at Three Mile Island.
Church Rock was among the eight mills that processed uranium ore in New Mexico. Others include Homestake and, in its immediate vicinity, Bluewater and two mills at Ambrosia Lake. Workers flocked here from across the state and nation during the booming 1960s and 1970s, with Homestake alone employing 1,500 people at its peak.
After graduating from high school and intermittently through his college years, Carver worked stints at all four of those mills before opening his own business, Carver Oil. At Homestake, he worked at a site where yellowcake was processed and packaged into barrels to go to Oak Ridge, Tennessee, where it would be enriched for use in nuclear weapons. He also worked in the tailings piles.
Carver now receives benefits for spots on his lungs from the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA), a program he qualified for because of his time working in the mills. Whether his illness was compounded by living near the mill tailings and by breathing excess radon, or by drinking the water — at least until the company connected residents to a clean source — is unknown. Studies have shown that chronic exposure to uranium through drinking water can cause kidney damage and cardiovascular disease. When inhaled, uranium can lead to lung cancer and pulmonary fibrosis, a scarring of the lung tissue. Studies of uranium miners associate cumulative exposure to radon with higher rates of death by lung cancer.
Maggie Billiman, who’s from the Sawmill Chapter of the Navajo Nation, has advocated for RECA to cover people in New Mexico and parts of Arizona who lived downwind of atmospheric nuclear tests or who worked in mines after 1971, the current cutoff date. Last fall, she traveled with other Indigenous activists to Washington, D.C., as part of her efforts to expand RECA after struggling with various undiagnosed illnesses for years; several painful cysts that have yet to be biopsied were recently found on her liver and pancreas. Many doctor visits later, she’s still pursuing a clear diagnosis and treatment plan.
But whether or how one gets sick can depend on biological sex, age when exposed and the pathway a certain type of radioactive particle takes to enter the body. Proving that one’s illness originated as a result of living near a mine or mill, as opposed to actually working in it, is nearly impossible, given that symptoms can take years to manifest — a lack of clear causation that is ultimately advantageous to polluters.
Groundwater contamination from uranium mining was detected as early as 1961. Even before that, the federal government was aware that New Mexico’s waterways were already showing signs of radioactive contamination from the burgeoning uranium extraction industry. It would take another 15 years for Homestake to begin a convoluted, if limited, remediation effort: A series of collection wells would pull contaminated water out and treat it, then pump that water, along with clean water sourced from the San Andres-Glorieta, back into the subsurface.
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. It’s hard to visualize such an underground fortification — on maps, it looks like a cashew-shaped moat that wraps around the west and south sides of the large tailings pile — or the timescale needed for its maintenance. In 1982, Homestake said it would “require operation for a considerable amount of time.” In response, NMED declared that Homestake had to commit to operating the system until it “can be demonstrated that contaminants in the groundwater will not exceed New Mexico Water Quality Control Commission standards off Homestake’s property in the foreseeable future.”
Advocates believe that means forever. If barrier maintenance is stopped, experts contend that highly contaminated groundwater will migrate southward and downward and eventually make its way to the subcrop, an entry point into the San Andres-Glorieta, municipal supply wells for Milan and Grants and eventually the Río San José. “This signals a bleak future for the stream system and for future generations,” Laura Watchempino warns.
Bluewater’s plume is coming from the northwest; Homestake’s plumes from the northeast. Models show that all are converging, like a Venn diagram, in a location where groundwater flows toward the subcrop. On one side, the hydraulic barrier is warding off some of that pollution, but when it stops operation completely, those contaminants will very likely infiltrate the San Andres-Glorieta, according to NMED.
In the past, it’s been difficult to discern what contaminants belong to what polluter, especially when they mingle, as is the case here. But in 2019, the USGS published the findings of a study that “fingerprinted” such mine and mill contaminants to show their point of origin……………………….
…………………………………….. “We’ve been poisoned to the gills,” says Christine Lowery, the Cibola county commissioner. “The question is: How do we recover and live with contamination?”
Alicia Inez Guzmán
Raised in the northern New Mexican village of Truchas, Alicia Inez Guzmán has written about histories of place, identity and land use in New Mexico. She brings this knowledge to her current role at Searchlight, where she focuses on nuclear issues and the impacts of the nuclear industry. The former senior editor of New Mexico Magazine, Alicia holds a Ph.D. in Visual and Cultural Studies from the University of Rochester in New York. More by Alicia Inez Guzmán https://searchlightnm.org/new-mexico-cold-war-uranium-mining-toxic-legacy-threat-homes-underground-aquifers/?utm_source=Searchlight+New+Mexico&utm_campaign=d2d0fd81fc-3%2F13%2F2025+%E2%80%93+Poisoning+the+well&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_8e05fb0467-d2d0fd81fc-395610620&mc_cid=d2d0fd81fc&mc_eid=a70296a261
Eight Reasons Why Nuclear Power is Not the Answer for Hawaii
by Sherry Pollack, 14 Mar 25
Nuclear power isn’t “zero emission.” The nuclear industry has conducted a propaganda campaign rife with factually inaccurate information, including that nuclear power is “carbon-free electricity.” However, this could not be further from the truth. To be clear, there is no such thing as a zero- or close-to-zero emission nuclear reactor. Even existing reactors emit due to the continuous mining and refining of uranium needed for the reactor.
Transporting nuclear fuel is a hazard. As an isolated island chain, Hawaii faces unique and significant risks in transporting nuclear fuel over vast ocean distances. Any accidents during transport, be it from bringing fuel here or shipping waste back, could have catastrophic consequences for Hawaii’s pristine marine environment and tourism-dependent economy.
Nuclear waste. The waste generated by nuclear reactors remains radioactive for thousands of years and needs to be kept contained throughout that time. Currently, there are no long-term storage solutions for radioactive waste, and most is stored in temporary, above-ground facilities.
Hawaii’s geological instability, including frequent earthquakes, volcanic activity, and tsunami risks, makes it an unsafe location for storing nuclear waste. There are no viable long-term solutions for safely containing radioactive materials in such a volatile environment.
Accidents. Human error and natural disasters can lead to dangerous and immensely costly accidents. Think Red Hill but multiply that exponentially. Direct costs would include cleanup operations, property damage, and evacuation efforts, as well as significant indirect costs including long-term health consequences, economic disruption due to lost productivity and tourism, and severe psychological impacts on affected populations, often lasting for generations. According to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), the emergency planning zone around a nuclear power plant typically extends to a 10-mile radius for immediate radiation exposure concerns, while a broader “ingestion pathway” zone reaches out to a 50-mile radius where food and water contamination could occur in the event of an incident. This would make safely siting a power plant, particularly on Oahu, impossible.
Impacts on Local Communities and Ecosystems. In addition to the significant risk of cancer associated with fallout from nuclear disasters, studies also show increased risk for those who reside near a nuclear power plant, especially for childhood cancers such as leukemia. Workers in the nuclear industry are also exposed to higher-than-normal levels of radiation, and as a result are at a higher risk of death from cancer.
Nuclear energy is too expensive. To protect the climate, we must reduce the most carbon at the least cost and in the least time. Nuclear power does none of this. A report by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis found that even small modular reactors (SMRs) are expensive, too slow to build, and too risky to play a significant role in transitioning from fossil fuels in the coming 10-15 years.
Integral Fast Reactors, Pebble Bed Modular Reactors, Thorium Fueled Reactors, Molten Salt Reactors, and Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) are not viable. Nuclear power advocates promote small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs) and other “advanced” nuclear technologies as the only real solution for the climate crisis. However, proponents of SMRs and these other so called “new” types of reactors fail to address their unproven nature, unresolved safety risks, and economic inefficiency. Moreover, SMRs cannot be counted on to provide ‘firm’ power as has been touted. Just like today’s nuclear plants, SMRs will be vulnerable to extreme weather events or other disasters that could cause a loss of offsite power and force them to shut down. Additionally, the push for SMRs often serves the private interests of billionaires looking to power AI data centers rather than benefiting the people of Hawaii. Bottom line, SMRs are wishful thinking rooted in misinformation.
Nuclear power is an expensive distraction undermining our ability to achieve our clean energy goals. Investment in nuclear power, including SMRs, will take resources away from carbon-free and lower-cost renewable technologies that are available today and can push the transition from fossil fuels forward significantly in the coming decade. Hawaii is already on the path to achieving 100% renewable energy by 2045. Nuclear power is not renewable, requires costly infrastructure, and pursuing it would divert attention and resources from proven, sustainable solutions like solar, and wind.
Nuclear power has NO place in Hawaii’s clean energy future. Nuclear power is too dirty, too dangerous, and too expensive. It is environmentally harmful and produces waste that will be a burden on future generations. Accordingly, we urge the legislature to commit to uphold Hawaii’s constitution, a sustainable future, prioritize investing our resources in a clean renewable energy future, and honor the voices of its people by opposing the use of nuclear power in Hawaii.
Chris Hedges: Trump’s Christian Fascists and the War on Palestine
the usual absurdity that the Hebrew Bible, written 4,000 years ago, can be used to draw contemporary national borders.
March 11, 2025, By Chris Hedges / ScheerPost
Christian Nationalists who form the bedrock of support for Donald Trump — 80 percent voted for Trump in the last election according to a voter survey by the Associated Press — have mounted a concerted campaign calling on the White House to back Israel’s annexation of the West Bank and Gaza.
This campaign includes visits to Israel by prominent leaders, including Ralph Reed, Tony Perkins and Mario Bramnick, petitioning the White House, lobbying Congress and calls for annexation at Christian conferences, including a resolution of support for Israeli sovereignty over the West Bank adopted at the most recent Conservative Political Action Conference. The National Religious Broadcasters (NRB) Convention in Dallas, in March, gathered over 200 signatures from pastors and right-wing religious leaders from across the United States calling for the annexation of “Judea and Samaria” — the purported biblical name for the West Bank —and declaring the two state solution “a failed experiment.”
American Christian Leaders for Israel, which says it represents a network of “over 3,000 organizational leaders from across the nation, including the National Religious Broadcasters,” endorsed the NRB resolution and sent it to Trump. Congresswoman Claudia Tenney and five other members of the congressional “Friends of Judea and Samaria Caucus,” sent a letter to Trump asking to “recognize the right of Israel” to declare sovereignty over the occupied Palestinian territories, arguing that it will advance “the Judeo-Christian heritage on which our nation was founded.”
Trump, who rescinded a Biden administration executive order that sanctioned Jewish colonists in the West Bank for human rights violations, promised, on Feb. 4, to make an announcement in the “next four weeks,” about possible annexation of the West Bank. This follows Trump’s call for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza and death threats to the Palestinians unless they release Israeli hostages. “You’re talking about probably a million and a half people, and we just clean out that whole thing,” Trump said of Gaza while speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One.
The agenda of Zionist extremists and Christian fascists, who hold senior positions throughout the Trump administration, have long converged. The language, iconography and symbolism used by the Christian and Jewish fascists is biblical. But the bonds are political, not religious.
I detail the history and ideology of our homegrown fascism and its kinship with Jewish fascism in my book, “American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America.”
Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas and a Baptist minister, has been nominated by Trump to be the U.S. ambassador to Israel. Huckabee has said there is “no such thing as a Palestinian” and asserted that Palestinian identity is “a political tool to try and force land away from Israel.” He proposes that any Palestinian state should be created outside of Israel in neighboring countries such as Egypt, Syria or Jordan. He dismisses the two-state solution as “irrational and unworkable.”
“I believe the scripture. Genesis 12: Those who bless Israel will be blessed; those who curse Israel will be cursed. I want to be on the blessing side, not the curse side,” Huckabee says.
John Ratcliffe, appointed by Trump to run the Central Intelligence Agency, advocates assisting Israel in what he described as its “foot-on-their-throat” approach against Iran.
Trump’s Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth — who argues that “Zionism and Americanism are the front-lines of Western civilization and freedom in our world today” — pedals the usual absurdity that the Hebrew Bible, written 4,000 years ago, can be used to draw contemporary national borders…………………………………………………………………………………….
Jewish supremacy, like the supremacy of the Christian fascists, is, these fanatics claim, sanctified by God. The slaughter of the Palestinians, who Benjamin Netanyahu compared to the biblical Amalekites, are the incarnate of evil and deserve to be massacred. Euro-Americans in the American colonies used the same biblical passage to justify the genocide of Native Americans. Violence and the threat of violence are the only forms of communication those inside the magical circle of Jewish nationalism or Christian nationalism speak…………………………………………………………………………….. more https://scheerpost.com/2025/03/11/chris-hedges-trumps-christian-fascists-and-the-war-on-palestine/
US makes fresh push for World Bank to back nuclear power
New administration wants Washington-based multilateral lender to help the west
compete with China and Russia.
The World Bank is facing renewed calls from
its biggest shareholder to drop a decades-old ban on funding nuclear power
to help the west compete with China and Russia in atomic diplomacy. French
Hill, chair of the House Financial Services Committee, has signalled that
the new US administration will continue to support the push to fund nuclear
projects just months ahead of a crucial decision on the contentious ban.
FT 9th March 2025
https://www.ft.com/content/e5e497a3-0c61-46a2-9a50-91757e7f1a61
How many nuclear weapons does the United States have in 2025?
10 Mar 2025
Since 1987, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has published the Nuclear Notebook, an authoritative accounting of world nuclear arsenals compiled by top experts from the Federation of American Scientists.
Today, it is prepared by Hans M. Kristensen, Matt Korda, Eliana Johns, and Mackenzie Knight of FAS.
This video explores the United States’ nuclear arsenal, which is currently undergoing a broad modernization effort to replace every nuclear delivery system over the next decade. You can read more from the Nuclear Notebook about other nuclear arsenals here: https://thebulletin.org/nuclear-noteb… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vsNKk9vkIE
US Threatens Possible Military Response After Tehran Rejects Nuclear Outreach
The White House again warned Tehran that it can be dealt with either through military means or by reaching a deal over its nuclear program, remarks that came hours after Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei rejected a US proposal for negotiations between the two bitter rivals.
“We hope the Iran Regime puts its people and best interests ahead of terror,” White House National Security Council spokesman Brian Hughes said in a statement on March 9 while reiterating remarks by President Donald Trump that “if we have to go in militarily, it’s going to be a terrible thing.”
In an interview with Fox Business recorded on March 6, Trump said, “There are two ways Iran can be handled: militarily, or you make a deal” to prevent Tehran from acquiring nuclear weapons.
“I’ve written them a letter saying, ‘I hope you’re going to negotiate because if we have to go in militarily, it’s going to be a terrible thing,'” Trump said.
“I would rather negotiate a deal. I’m not sure that everybody agrees with me, but we can make a deal that would be just as good as if you won militarily,” Trump added.
“But the time is happening now. The time is coming up. Something’s going to happen one way or the other.”
Snippets of the interview were aired on March 7, but the full sit-down will be broadcast on March 9, Fox said.
In separate comments to reporters, Trump said: “We have a situation with Iran that, something’s going to happen very soon. Very, very soon.”
Ali Khamenei, speaking on March 8 to a group of Iranian officials — without specifically mentioning Trump or the United States — said, “Their talks are not aimed at solving problems.”
“It is for…’Let’s talk to impose what we want on the other party that is sitting on the opposite side of the table.'”
“The insistence of some bullying governments on negotiations is not to resolve issues…. Talks for them is a pathway to have new demands; it is not only about Iran’s nuclear issue…. Iran will definitely not accept their expectations,” Khamenei was quoted by state media as saying.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi on March 8 said Tehran had not yet received a letter from Trump……………………………… more https://www.rferl.org/a/iran-trump-nuclear-khamenei-negotiations/33341412.html
Canada Unveils $490-Million Push Towards Nuclear Energy
Energy
10 Mar 25,
A massive push towards nuclear in Canada is set after several investments have been announced by Minister of Energy and Natural Resources Jonathan Wilkinson. Wilkinson is pushing what the government describes as “crucial steps towards clean, affordable, and homegrown nuclear technology.”
Central to Canada’s nuclear revival is a $304 million joint investment with engineering firm AtkinsRéalis to advance the next generation of Canada’s signature CANDU reactor. The initiative aims to refine the standard design of this Canadian-developed reactor technology.
Also key to Canada’s nuclear expansion involves small modular reactors, which provide scalable and versatile solutions for regional power needs. Ontario Power Generation received $55 million through the Future Electricity Fund to develop pre-construction activities for three SMRs at its Darlington facility.
Saskatchewan also received a substantial $80 million investment for SMR predevelopment. Managed by SaskPower through Saskatchewan’s Crown Investments Corporation, the project will focus on technical, regulatory, and community engagement tasks.
In Alberta, Capital Power Limited Partnership secured $13 million to evaluate potential SMR locations in the province, alongside a notable $8.3 million investment in the Peace Region for preliminary work on a large-scale nuclear facility with a potential capacity of 4,800 MW.
Western University in London, Ontario, received nearly $5 million to study advanced nuclear fuels, specifically the TRi-structural ISOtropic or TRISO fuel type. Canadian Nuclear Laboratories, situated in Chalk River, Ontario, was awarded over $3.5 million to establish new standards and strategies for SMR deployment across Canada, aiming to optimize waste management.
Additionally, the Saskatchewan Industrial and Mining Suppliers Association received approximately $2.8 million to assess and enhance the province’s nuclear supply chain readiness, explicitly incorporating Indigenous businesses.
Complementary to nuclear advancements, the Alberta Electric System Operator secured $18.5 million to develop IT infrastructure capable of managing increased complexity arising from clean electricity generation. Alberta is also investing $1.3 million in the Tent Mountain Pumped Hydro Energy Storage Project near Coleman for advancing integrated clean energy storage solutions alongside nuclear development.
Families sickened by radiation exposure want Congress to revive this key compensation program.
7 Mar 2025
The Radiation Exposure Compensation Act or RECA, first enacted in 1990, created a compensation program to process claims from people exposed to radiation leftover from nuclear testing done by the U.S. government.
After the latest expansion of the bill expired in June 2024, communities across the country, including Missouri and the Navajo Nation say they are waiting for the legislation to not only be taken up again, but also to include communities like theirs that were never originally included. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0icfLF6AVEQ
How the Media Walked us into Autocracy (w/ Ralph Nader) | The Chris Hedges Report
They’re abusing them for the profits they want to make from advertising, which of course begins to replace journalists and editors who want to do the right thing with journalists and editors who got their finger to the wind and are worried about the money before reporting the truth in an equitable fashion. It even gets worse. The Times created Trump. They kept giving him more and more publicity. They created JD Vance. Whoever heard of JD Vance? They kept writing about his book.
By Chris Hedges / The Chris Hedges Report, 9 Mar 25
This interview is also available on podcast platforms and Rumble.
The American corporate coup d’état is almost complete as the first weeks of the Trump administration exemplify. If there has been one person who saw this coming, and has taken courageous action over the years to prevent it, it would be Ralph Nader. The former presidential candidate, consumer advocate and corporate critic joins host Chris Hedges on this episode of The Chris Hedges Report to chronicle his life’s work battling the corporate takeover of the country and how Americans can still fight back today despite the growing repression from the White House.
“The sign of a decaying democracy is that when the forces of plutocracy, oligarchy, multinational corporations increase their power, in all sectors of our society, the resistance gets weaker,” Nader tells Hedges.
Nader asks people to look around them and witness the decay through the ordinary parts of their lives. “If you just look at the countervailing forces that hold up a society—civilized norms, due process of law and democratic traditions—they’re all either AWOL [absent without official leave] or collapsing,” he said. Civic groups are outnumbered by corporate lobbyists, the media barely pays attention to any grassroots organizing and the protests that do occur, such as the encampments at universities, are brutally suppressed.
It’s not an impossible task, Nader says, recalling the precedent of organizing in the U.S. He says the fundamental basics are supported by a majority of people regardless of their political labels.
Chris Hedges
The New York Times published a lead column on January 18th, 2025, titled, “Are We Sleepwalking Into Autocracy?” The columnist’s answer is yes, unless, and I quote, “defenders of democracy have to stay united, focusing on ensuring that checks and balances remain intact and that crucial democratic watchdog institutions elude capture.” What is absent from the Times article is the complicity of the media, and especially the New York Times, in shutting down coverage of the fight by unions, grassroots movements, whistleblowers, and civic organizations, often led by the consumer advocate and former presidential candidate Ralph Nader, to placate their advertisers. This decision, made by newspapers such as the New York Times four decades ago, essentially erased these popular initiatives from public consciousness.
This erasure—done to placate wealthy corporations and oligarchs and boost revenue—bolstered the power of corporations and the government to dominate and shape public discourse and in the process saw them become ever more secretive and ever more autocratic. As Ralph Nader notes, the regular reporting about what activists were doing in the 1960s and 1970s made possible the consumer, environmental, labor, and freedom of information laws. Similar efforts now cannot gather momentum with media invisibility. Legislative hearings, prosecutions, and regulatory actions cannot get jump-started just by the people insistent on a just and democratic society. How often do you see op-eds from civic labor advocates, Ralph asks. How often do you read reviews of their books? How often do you see profiles of them?
How often have the groundbreaking studies by Public Citizen, Common Cause, Center for Science in the Public Interest, Veterans for Peace, Union of Concerned Scientists, etc. received coverage? This erasure stands in stark contrast to the coverage given over to those on the far right and corporations. Figures like Donald Trump, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Elon Musk get plenty of press. The media landscape is siloed. Media outlets, both the legacy media and the digital media, cater to well-defined demographics. But the power of the legacy media, should it decide to use its power, is to help set the agenda through its reporting. Most digital sites feed off of the reporting of the establishment media spinning it left or right. And what it does not cover often does not get covered. Legions of reporters, 500 full-time reporters cover the Congress, hundreds more sit at the feet of the titans of commerce and Wall Street, spit back to the public official communiques, and fawning interviews with the powerful, the famous, and the rich. Unless they are deployed outside the halls of Congress and the centers of power, what is left of our democracy, and not much of it is left, will wither and die.
Joining me to discuss our march towards tyranny, the complicity of institutions such as the media and the liberal class, including the Democratic Party, and what we must do to wrest back power is Ralph Nader, who has been fighting corporate power longer more effectively and with more integrity than any other American. Ralph, let’s go back to where we were because where we are now is a reaction to what you, you were at the epicenter of it, built. We can begin with your groundbreaking book, “Unsafe at Any Speed,” which should be taught in every journalism school. It is a masterful piece of investigative reporting. But let’s go back to what we had and then how they organized to take it away.
Ralph Nader
Yeah, thank you, Chris. It’s very well documented, the whole history of it. When I wrote the book, “Unsafe at Any Speed,” a reporter for Science Magazine picked it up and then the New York Times picked it up off of Science Magazine and it made page one. And so that was a good start.
Chris Hedges
Ralph, just want to interrupt for people who don’t know, these were cars made by GM that were not safe…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
Chris Hedges
Let me just stop you because Ralph, let’s not bypass the fact that GM mounted a pretty intense and dirty campaign against you.
Ralph Nader
Yes, they hired a private detective with several former FBI people. That’s what happened to a lot of FBI agents when they retired, they go to work for these large corporations to follow me around the country, try to get dirt on me, to discredit my testimony before Congress. ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
……………………………………………………………………………………….. Ralph Nader
Yes, and at the same time the companies hired a firm called Wilmer, Cutler and Pickering and Lloyd Cutler would go and have meetings with editors of the New York Times and Post and saying, what are you guys doing giving this guy so much print? Don’t you know he’s bad for business? And the inference was that they were going to lose advertising if they didn’t shut us out. Once the Times started scaling down, then the Washington Post took note because they were of the same mindset and both of them were about to go public and sell stock on the stock exchange, which gave them even more vulnerability to suppression. And then that dried up more and more of the evening news. We used to get on the network news.
It’s almost impossible to get on the network evening news now. And the same with radio. At the same time, there emerged public radio and public broadcasting, and they were scared from the get-go that the companies would go after their funding on Capitol Hill and crimp their style. And so they covered us very little as well.
……………………………………………………….the cycle starts again against the whole set of new injustices. But all these forces I’ve just mentioned started shutting us down. We were saved for a short period by the Jimmy Carter administration. He appointed very good people to the regulatory agencies, the auto safety agency, the job safety agency, the EPA, and so on. But that was just a four-year reprieve and they were still counter-attacking. More lobbyists, more political action committees, more indignant calls to reporters and editors and publishers to shut us down. So, you know, that was their golden age, the mass media, what we call now the corporate media. And it’s completely changed now. And I say to reporters or editors, or publishers that I can manage to reach. It’s not easy. What are you ashamed of your golden age for? Look what you did for the country, just exercising your duty and professional responsibilities for newsworthiness. And now you don’t do it.
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. we’re paying the price now in wars of empire, in the domination of corporate supremacists over everything.
They’re raising our children with that iPhone five, seven hours a day, undermining parental authority, separating these children from family, community, nature, harming their health with junk food and sedentary living, with very little kids playing outside anymore. There isn’t anything that corporate commercialism now has not invaded. They’ve commercialized the churches. They’ve commercialized the academic world. They’ve commercialized almost everything outside the marketplace they see as a profit center. So they want to corporatize the post office. They want to take over public drinking water departments and corporatize them. They want to corporatize the public school system. One way or another, they want to corporatize the public lands or take the public lands. And they’ve never been more aggressive, never been more successful. And the civic community, which used to be relied on to resist, can’t get any media. And we have tried. Last year, we made a major effort to turn Labor Day into a real workers day with events all over the country. We got the unions behind us……………………………………………………………….
………………………………………………………….. . So basically when you shut out the civic community, Chris, you shut down democracy. And I placed the responsibility not just on the Democratic Party, but first and foremost on the mass media.
…………………………………………… the independent press is not such a hot shot either. The magazines like In These Times, Washington Monthly, Progressive Magazine, The Nation, they don’t cover civic community activities. They just pontificate. They do have some good articles, and they have their columnists, many of whom are getting very tired and repetitive. They don’t cover what Public Citizen, Common Cause, Pension Rights Center, Center for Science in the Public Interest, Union of Concerned Scientists, Veterans for Peace especially gets completely blacked out regardless of their demonstrations and non-violent civil disobedience all over the country against the military machine, the empire, the weaponization of the genocide in Gaza. They haven’t had a single article, they had to put out all kinds of great material people go to veteransforpeace.org and see for yourself.
These are veterans who’ve known wars and they can’t even get any coverage. And you can’t get any coverage of the lack of coverage. You can’t get the journalism publications to do any coverage of the censorship. So this is the ultimate censorship, the shutdown of the First Amendment. When the press, which is given a cachet in the First Amendment, there’s no other industry mentioned by name in the Constitution, are abusing their privileges for a mess of prodigies.
They’re abusing them for the profits they want to make from advertising, which of course begins to replace journalists and editors who want to do the right thing with journalists and editors who got their finger to the wind and are worried about the money before reporting the truth in an equitable fashion. It even gets worse. The Times created Trump. They kept giving him more and more publicity. They created JD Vance. Whoever heard of JD Vance? They kept writing about his book. They kept writing about his Senate race more than the opponent, Tim Ryan, and the US Senate race in Ohio………………………………………………………………………….
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… Ralph Nader
In a broader sense, all it comes down to are two things. Trump will self-destruct because he knows no boundaries. So his greatest enemy is Trump. And you will see the unraveling of Trump in the succeeding weeks. I would not be surprised that if he continues his bull in the China shop, illegal, wild, flailing, affecting tens of millions of people in terms of their dire necessities of life in favor of his corporate supremacist, that he will be impeached and convicted in the U.S. Senate. His own party will turn against him because when they see the polls, which are already dropping since January 20th, by the way, when they see the polls and they realize it’s either them or Trump, they will always take their own political survival.
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. more https://scheerpost.com/2025/03/08/how-the-media-walked-us-into-autocracy-w-ralph-nader-the-chris-hedges-report/
Trump plans to make Ukraine a US economic colony, exploiting its critical minerals
COMMENT. The USA has played Zelensky for a sucker, all along. Now Ukraine is faced with trying to make the least worst deal to end the war. That is still better than annihilation and the very grave gamble with nuclear war.
Former US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin stated clearly that Washington was using Ukraine to “weaken” Russia.
Trump also revealed that the United States plans to use Ukraine’s critical minerals to create “weaponry that we’re going to use in many locations”.
GeoPolitical Economy, By Ben Norton, 2 Mar 2025
Donald Trump’s fight with Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky in the White House reflected how the US treats Ukraine as a colony. Trump demands control of the country’s rare earths and critical minerals, to weaken China, re-industrialize, and build tech products. Trump wants to be paid $350 billion, roughly twice Ukraine’s GDP.
The fight that broke out in the White House between US President Donald Trump and Ukraine’s leader, Volodymyr Zelensky, on February 28 was a stark symbol of the colonial relationship between the two countries.
“You’re in no position to dictate”, Trump yelled at Zelensky in the Oval Office. “You don’t have the cards right now. With us, you start having cards”.
The Trump administration has sought to impose an exploitative deal that will “make Ukraine a US economic colony”, in the words of the conservative British newspaper The Telegraph.
Trump is demanding control over Ukraine’s minerals, and plans to use revenue from the sale of its natural resources to pay the United States hundreds of billions of dollars, equivalent to roughly twice Ukraine’s GDP.
The US government believes that Ukraine could have trillions of dollars worth of rare earth elements and other critical minerals, which are needed for advanced technologies.
Trump wants to re-industrialize the United States, and he is offering corporations access to Ukraine’s resources to make their products.
This is part of Washington’s attempt to remove China from the supply chain for critical minerals, which has been a top priority of the Pentagon and the US House select committee on the Communist Party of China.
The Telegraph reported that Ukraine’s resources could be worth $15 trillion, writing that its “minerals offer a tantalising promise: the ability for the US to break its dependence on Chinese supplies of critical minerals that go into everything from wind turbines to iPhones and stealth fighter jets”.
Trump has stated that he wants to “un-unite” Russia and China, and his efforts to end the war in Ukraine also aim at splitting Moscow from Beijing.
Trump demands Ukraine pay the US twice its GDP
The US government pushed Ukraine into war with Russia, after expanding NATO up to Russia’s borders and backing a coup d’etat that overthrow Ukraine’s democratically elected, geopolitically neutral government in 2014. This set off a violent conflict that escalated into a massive proxy war between NATO and Russia in 2022.
Former US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin stated clearly that Washington was using Ukraine to “weaken” Russia.
At different times, Trump has falsely claimed that the United States gave Ukraine $350 billion or $500 billion in aid. This is not true.
Independent analysts have calculated that the United States spent $119.7 billion on Ukraine-related “aid” since 2022.
According to the US Department of Defense, $182.8 billion was appropriated for military operations related to Ukraine from the end of 2021 to the end of 2024. The BBC noted that this figure includes military training in Europe and US weapons supplies.
Much of this “aid” consisted of US government contracts with private, for-profit weapons corporations, which produced the arms and ammunition that were sent to Ukraine.
In other words, the US military-industrial complex made a killing off of Ukraine “aid”.
Regardless, Trump is demanding that Ukraine pay the United States at least $350 billion, which is nearly two times the size of the country’s entire economy.
Ukraine’s GDP in 2024 was reported by the IMF to be $184.1 billion — although this figure is questionable, given the war.
The US wants Ukraine’s critical minerals
Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, a close Trump ally, has repeatedly said that the United States wants to exploit Ukraine’s critical minerals.
In a June 2024 interview on CBS, Graham stated:
What did Trump do to get the weapons flowing [to Ukraine during his first term]? He created a loan system.
They’re sitting on $10 to $12 trillion of critical minerals in Ukraine. They could be the richest country in all of Europe. I don’t want to give that money and those assets to Putin, to share with China.
If we help Ukraine now, they can become the best business partner we ever dreamed of. That $10 to $12 trillion of critical mineral assets could be used by Ukraine and the West, not given to Putin and China. This is a very big deal, how Ukraine ends.
In an interview on Fox News, just two weeks after Trump won the presidential election in November 2024, Graham argued that “the war is about money”, and he promised that Trump would impose a deal to “enrich ourselves with rare earth minerals”:………………
It is not known if Ukraine actually has these large reserves of rare earths. This claim has been called into question.
Nevertheless, the Trump administration believes there could be trillions of dollars worth of untapped minerals, and it wants to carry out exploration operations.
In the disastrous White House press conference with Zelensky on February 28, Trump was asked if his plan would provide security for Ukraine, and he replied: “We have security in a different form. We’ll have workers there, digging, digging, digging, taking the raw earth [sic], so that we can create a lot of great product in this country”.
Trump also revealed that the United States plans to use Ukraine’s critical minerals to create “weaponry that we’re going to use in many locations”.
“This is an incredible agreement for Ukraine, because we have a big investment in their country now”, he said in the meeting with Zelensky. “And what they have, very few people have. And we’re able to really go forward with very, very high-tech things, and many other things, including weaponry — weaponry that we’re going to use in many locations, but that we need for our country”.
Throughout the press conference, Trump repeatedly referred to rare earth elements as “raw earth”.
A journalist asked Trump how exactly Ukraine will benefit from his one-sided deal. Trump responded by enthusiastically explaining how it will help the United States. The following is a partial transcript:
REPORTER: How does this provide long-term security for Ukraine?
DONALD TRUMP: Well, we don’t know exactly how much, because we’re going to be putting some money in a fund, that we’re going to get from the raw earth, that we’re going to be taking, and sharing, in terms of revenue. So it’s going to be a lot of money will be made from the sale, and from the use of raw earth……………………………………………….
Trump’s remarks criticizing US environmentalists over their opposition to the mining of rare earths was an implicit acknowledgment that the process is toxic.
In a peer-reviewed article published in 2024, scientific experts warned that the “long-term, large-scale mining and utilization of rare earths has caused serious environmental pollution and constitutes a global health issue, which has raised concerns regarding the safety of human health”.
The US government has apparently made the assessment that it would be better to pollute Ukraine by exploiting rare earths there, where Americans won’t suffer from the environmental impact.
Trump boasts of arming Ukraine
Trump’s discourse on Ukraine has been utterly contradictory. He has alternated between blaming Democratic Presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama for the war, while simultaneously boasting of supplying Kiev with weapons that Obama had initially refused to send.
Trump has repeatedly demanded credit for, during his first term, arming Ukraine with Javelin anti-tank missile systems, which were used to fight against Russian-backed forces in the eastern Donbas region.
In a press conference at the White House on February 25, a journalist asked Trump about the minerals deal. The following is a transcript of his response:
REPORTER: What does Ukraine get in return, Mr. President?
DONALD TRUMP: Uhh, $350 billion, and lots of equipment, and military equipment, and the right to fight on, and, originally, the right to fight.
Look, Ukraine, I will say, they’re very brave, and they’re good soldiers, but without the United States, and its money, and its military equipment, this war would have been over in a very short period of time.
In fact, I was the one that gave the Javelins. You remember the famous Javelins? That was me. That wasn’t Obama; it wasn’t Biden; it wasn’t anybody else; it was me. And they wiped out a lot of tanks with those Javelins.
And the expression was that Obama gave sheets, and I gave the Javelins. That was a big deal, at the time. It wiped out — that was the beginning, when people said, “Wow, that’s something”.
Well, that was American equipment. Without American equipment, this war would have been over very quickly. And American money, too. I mean, a lot of money.
During his fight with Zelensky on February 28, the US president made similar comments.
Trump blamed the Ukraine war on Biden, whom he called “stupid”. At the same time, however, although he denied responsibility for the war, Trump could not help but brag about sending weapons to Ukraine during his first term, which exacerbated the war that was already ongoing at the time, before it massively escalated in 2022.
“We gave you military equipment, and your men are brave, but they had to use our military equipment”, Trump yelled at Zelensky. “If you didn’t have our military equipment, this war would have been over in two weeks”.
USA will control Ukraine’s reconstruction fund
The text of the agreement that Trump has sought to impose on Ukraine has not been publicly released.
The conservative British newspaper The Telegraph obtained the early draft of the deal, which the media outlet said would “amount to the US economic colonisation of Ukraine, in legal perpetuity”.
This draft stated that the United States would get control over Ukraine’s “mineral resources, oil and gas resources, ports, other infrastructure (as agreed)”. It is based not on Ukrainian law, but rather New York law.
The Telegraph wrote:
The US will take 50pc of recurring revenues received by Ukraine from extraction of resources, and 50pc of the financial value of “all new licences issued to third parties” for the future monetisation of resources. There will be “a lien on such revenues” in favour of the US. “That clause means ‘pay us first, and then feed your children’,” said one source close to the negotiations.
It states that “for all future licences, the US will have a right of first refusal for the purchase of exportable minerals”. Washington will have sovereign immunity and acquire near total control over most of Ukraine’s commodity and resource economy. The fund “shall have the exclusive right to establish the method, selection criteria, terms, and conditions” of all future licences and projects. And so forth, in this vein. It seems to have been written by private lawyers, not the US departments of state or commerce.
This leaked draft caused international outrage, given how explicitly colonial it was.
To try to save face, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent published an op-ed in the Financial Times on February 22 explaining the Trump administration’s plans for Ukraine.
Bessent is a billionaire hedge fund manager who previously worked for the billionaire oligarch George Soros, who is ironically a bugbear of Western conservatives.
Bessent traveled to Ukraine in February to negotiate the agreement with Zelensky.
In his FT article, Bessent explained that, under the deal, the United States will oversee a joint fund with the Ukrainian government. He wrote:
The terms of our partnership propose that revenue received by the government of Ukraine from natural resources, infrastructure and other assets is allocated to a fund focused on the long-term reconstruction and development of Ukraine where the US will have economic and governance rights in those future investments.
The Treasury secretary strongly implied that US corporations will benefit from these investments, writing, “When I was in Kyiv, I met with many American companies that have been on the ground in Ukraine for years”.
Bessent stressed that the “terms of this partnership will mobilise American talent, capital, and high standards”.
In a separate, accompanying article, the Financial Times noted that, in his op-ed, Bessent had conveniently left out how much of Ukraine’s export revenue will be paid to the US.
A draft of the deal obtained by the FT stated that Ukraine’s fund will be set up “with the encumbrance (legal claim) of such revenues in favour of the United States”. The text made it clear that Washington will be given power over reconstruction projects in Ukraine.
This framework is reminiscent of the colonial arrangement that the United States imposed on Iraq, after invading the country in an illegal war of aggression in 2003 and overthrowing its government. The US central bank, the Federal Reserve, administers the money that Iraq receives from selling its crude oil.
Ukraine’s Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal stated that his country had agreed to Trump’s mineral deal, two days before Zelensky’s meeting at the White House. It is unclear if the fight changed the status of the agreement.
The other major revelation in Bessent’s FT article was that Zelensky himself had visited Trump Tower in September, just a few weeks before the presidential election. There, in Bessent’s words, “Zelenskyy proposed giving the US a stake in Ukraine’s rare earths elements and critical minerals”.
This was the biggest irony of all: Zelensky had long showed himself to be an obedient vassal of the United States, and he offered Trump some of Ukraine’s natural resources as an incentive to continue arms shipments.
Trump apparently loved the idea, but he wanted total control, not just a little. Now, Trump is demanding to be paid roughly twice the GDP of the country.
The colonial deal that the Trump administration is imposing on Ukraine recalls an infamous quote from the late US imperial strategist Henry Kissinger, who said in the context of Washington’s puppet regime in South Vietnam, “It may be dangerous to be America’s enemy, but to be America’s friend is fatal”.
The people of Ukraine have learned this lesson the hard way. https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2025/03/02/trump-ukraine-us-economic-colony-minerals/
American companies profit from Canada’s radioactive waste
Toxic radioactive waste is expensive to clean up. Canada’s contract to clean up itslegacy waste is worth billions for a three-company consortium: Canada’s AtkinsRéalisand Texas-based Fluor and Jacobs. The two American companies run nuclear weaponsfacilities in the U.S. and U.K. in addition to their Canadian nuclear interests.
Parliament’s payment to the consortium last year was $1.3 billion. The annual payments have risen each year of the 10-year contract that will end in September 2025.
The consortium operates “Canadian Nuclear Laboratories” (CNL) in a “Government-owned, Contractor-operated” (GoCo) arrangement with Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL).
The U.K. abandoned GoCo contracts because of exorbitant costs and poor value for money. Under Canada’s GoCo contract, AECL owns lands, buildings, and radioactive waste, and the three-company consortium operates AECL’s sites.
When the Harper government issued the 10-year GoCo contract during the 2015 federal election period, they said AECL lacked the ability to clean up Canada’s multi-billion radioactive waste liability dating to World War II and needed “private sector rigour. From their billion-dollar annual payout, the three partner corporations take $237 million for “contractual expenses.” The salaries of 44 senior CNL managers, mostly Americans, average over $500,000 each.
Canada’s liability includes radioactive contamination in Port Hope, Ontario where uranium was refined for the U.S. nuclear weapons industry, radioactive contamination at the Chalk River nuclear laboratory site from producing plutonium for U.S. nuclear weapons, and radioactive contamination from AECL’s shutdown “prototype” CANDU reactors and its Whiteshell research lab in Manitoba.
The radioactive clean-up cost has grown each contract year, as have the consortium’s ambitions. The focus has shifted to “revitalizing” the Chalk River facility, where Parliament has allocated additional funds to build an “Advanced Nuclear Materials Research Centre.”
The Centre will conduct SMR research including research on plutonium fuels. Both American companies have interests in SMRs. The new Centre did not undergo a licensing process or environmental assessment under the Canadian Nuclear Safety.
AECL is expected to soon announce the awarding of a new 10-year Go-Co contract. Before the contract is signed, MPs should consider whether the arrangement benefits Canada, and whether these billions should be in the hands of American managers and corporations.
Commission.
Air Force Activates Key Unit for Nuclear Modernization at VSFB
COMMENT. Well, they conned a woman into this killer industry, coddled and “educated” her into this top military job.
The nuclear lobby made keen to promote their pretence that nuclear weapons are good for women!
Most women would not like being part of this.
March 7, 2025, By Jennifer Green-Lanchoney
VANDENBERG SPACE FORCE BASE, Calif. —
In a ceremony marking a new chapter in America’s nuclear deterrence strategy, U.S. Air Force Lt. Col. Suzanne Lamar assumed command of the newly activated Site Activation Task Force (SATAF) Detachment 9 at Vandenberg Space Force Base, March 6.
The activation of SATAF Detachment 9 represents a crucial step in modernizing the nation’s Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) capabilities, as the Air Force prepares to replace the aging Minuteman III system with the new LGM-35A Sentinel.
Vandenberg SFB’s Western Range serves as the primary testing ground for the Air Force Global Strike Command’s ICBM deterrent architecture. The Sentinel program represents a significant update to U.S. nuclear deterrent capabilities.
“Space superiority and nuclear deterrence start here at Vandenberg,” said U.S. Air Force Lt. Gen. Michael Lutton, Air Force Global Strike Command deputy commander. “Seventy years ago, Vandenberg hosted the dawn of ICBM testing, and we carry that forward here as we bring this new capability to the joint force.”……………………………….
The SATAF detachments, including Detachment 9 at Vandenberg, are crucial components of AFGSC’s strategy to maintain a “continuously viable, secure, and effective land-based nuclear deterrent.” Similar detachments are scheduled for activation at F.E. Warren AFB, Wyoming (April 3); Malmstrom AFB, Montana (April 4); and Minot AFB, North Dakota (summer 2025)……………………………………………………… https://www.afgsc.af.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/4112894/air-force-activates-key-unit-for-nuclear-modernization-at-vsfb/
Does the Deep State really exist, and if so, is it being dismantled?
March 9, 2025, https://theaimn.net/does-the-deep-state-really-exist-and-if-so-is-it-being-dismantled/ .
What is the Deep State? Does it really exist?
These questions are hard to answer. I had heard the term Deep State over many years, and I connected it with all sorts of conspiracies – not just about U.S. politics and intelligence systems, but with wild ideas about satanism, reptilian shapeshifters, the antichrist, child-trafficking, blood harvesting – and all connected with extreme right-wing and pro- Trump propaganda. So I just dismissed and ignored them – there was no such thing as the Deep State !
It is not that simple.
Indeed, it is very complex.
If you start delving, the term Deep State takes you back to Turkey, over 100 years ago, where the concept of a “shadow government” a “secret state within the state” was a real thing. In more modern times the Deep State is defined as:
“The deep state conspiracy theory in the United States is an American political conspiracy theory that posits the existence of the deep state, a clandestine network of members of the federal government (especially within the FBI and CIA). The theory argues that there exist networks of collaborators within the leadership of the high-level financial and industrial entities, which exercise power alongside or within the elected United States government” – Wikipedia
So, OK it’s still just a theory – a conspiracy theory pushed by Donald Trump’s supporters in order to discredit USA’s Biden Democrat administration? And various extreme religious and other wacky groups tacked the more sinister stuff onto it.
The trouble is, as with many problems, there is some truth in it. Over the decades since World War 2, successive U.S. Presidents have turned to secret discussions with unelected officials from the CIA in particular, but also from other agencies and business circles, relying on their advice to make decisions. The decisions were then pretty much rubber-stamped by a complacent and oblivious Congress.
The following (annoying advertisement-afflicted) video from early 2024, is unmistakably a propaganda piece for the Trump campaign. But it does contain some telling information. Even from its first example, we see that J.F. Kennedy, in the Cuban missile crisis, went not to his advisors, but to a social group of very secret members of the CIA to decide what to do. The development of the very powerful, very secretive CIA, in partnership with military leaders, rocket scientists from Germany, media and business leaders, produced an information network on which Presidents relied for decision-making. The CIA’s spying powers that were appropriate in war against the enemy are now directed also against the American public, even in peacetime. Huge well-funded resources went to secret activities that included misinformation and disinformation against civil rights and peace activists. Congress accepts these secret programmes in the name of security.
That video – however pro-Trump it might be, does not mention satanism, etc. If you separate that wacky stuff from the Deep State story – it is all remarkably convincing. To an American public, fed up with the secrecy, the endless expensive pointless wars – Vietnam, Iraq Afghanistan …, Donald Trump’s promise of change, and of dismantling the Deep State sounded attractive.
And hey – presto ! Trump is doing it! He’s sacking those unelected officials, thousands and thousands of them. He’s purging law enforcement and intelligence agencies, and plans to cut 70 percent of staff from various government agencies — freezing of billions of dollars in funding,
Ain’t that great!
Actually, no.
We might welcome the disruption of a Deep State system based on militarism, with the USA forever fomenting trouble overseas, and spending unknown $squillions on military gimmickry. A phrase springs to mind – “Throwing the baby out with the bath-water” . That’s a very corny metaphor. But what is really happening is this:
Trump’s aim is nothing to do with the “Deep State” . Trump’s goal and methodology was set out, detailed in Project 2025, the Center for Renewing America and the America First Policy Institute. The goal is the destruction of democracy – removing or rendering useless the laws, regulations, protocols and rules that prevent autocratic power. No more compromise, limited power, checks and balances and accountability. He made a good start in getting control over the Supreme Court
And I don’t know if everybody noticed two salient points in Trump’s “defeat of the Deep State”
- the power and unaccountable funding of the Pentagon will continue.
- Trump’s getting rid of “unelected officials” – but apparently taking orders from unelected Elon Musk.
The end goal is the dictatorship of Donald Trump. It would be funny if it were not so deadly serious. The first step – the “Trump’s Birthday and Flag Day Holiday Establishment Act” gives a clue as to what will follow.
The President Trump phenomenon will end eventually, for sure in chaos. Western World leadership is in the hands of a powerful, but unhinged , dictator, who is taking the advice of another powerful unelected unhinged billionaire, Elon Musk.
The whole process is far too much to pay for the destruction of the Deep State. Yes, it is welcome that the secretive decision-making by unelected officials and business leaders – taking the USA into endless wars – has been stopped. But its replacement is a terrifying fascism.
And at the end of it all, after the chaos, what will emerge? If we’re lucky enough to avoid catastrophes of global heating, and war, will we again get a government of men that are happy to have decisions made by macho men in bureaucracy and industry, who are itching for war – another Deep State in the name of “security”?
1 This Month
Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes – A good documentary on Chernobyl on SBS available On Demand for the next 3 weeks– https://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/tv-program/chernobyl-the-lost-tapes/2352741955560
of the week–London Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
Tell the Ukrainian Government to Drop Prosecution of Peace Activist Yurii Sheliazhenko
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com
-
Archives
- April 2026 (114)
- March 2026 (251)
- February 2026 (268)
- January 2026 (308)
- December 2025 (358)
- November 2025 (359)
- October 2025 (376)
- September 2025 (257)
- August 2025 (319)
- July 2025 (230)
- June 2025 (348)
- May 2025 (261)
-
Categories
- 1
- 1 NUCLEAR ISSUES
- business and costs
- climate change
- culture and arts
- ENERGY
- environment
- health
- history
- indigenous issues
- Legal
- marketing of nuclear
- media
- opposition to nuclear
- PERSONAL STORIES
- politics
- politics international
- Religion and ethics
- safety
- secrets,lies and civil liberties
- spinbuster
- technology
- Uranium
- wastes
- weapons and war
- Women
- 2 WORLD
- ACTION
- AFRICA
- Atrocities
- AUSTRALIA
- Christina's notes
- Christina's themes
- culture and arts
- Events
- Fuk 2022
- Fuk 2023
- Fukushima 2017
- Fukushima 2018
- fukushima 2019
- Fukushima 2020
- Fukushima 2021
- general
- global warming
- Humour (God we need it)
- Nuclear
- RARE EARTHS
- Reference
- resources – print
- Resources -audiovicual
- Weekly Newsletter
- World
- World Nuclear
- YouTube
-
RSS
Entries RSS
Comments RSS
nuclear-news 