Trump masters the art of “dobbing” on an Australian journalist.
By Vince Hooper | 20 September 2025, https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/trump-masters-the-art-of-dobbing-on-an-australian-journalist,20177
Trump turned a simple conflict-of-interest question into a schoolyard spat — threatening to “tell on” a journo to Australia’s Prime Minister, writes Vince Hooper.
IT TAKES A CERTAIN theatre of the absurd to transform a routine White House press gaggle into a diplomatic sideshow. Yet that is precisely what happened when an Australian Broadcasting Corporation journalist, researching U.S. President Donald Trump’s family business interests, asked a straightforward question about whether it is appropriate for a sitting president to be engaged in so many business activities.
The question was sober and reasonable: a matter of conflicts of interest, wealth accumulation, and transparency in public office. Trump’s response, however, veered quickly into the surreal. He first insisted that his children were running the business empire, then abruptly shifted the ground.
Instead of grappling with the premise, he went after the journalist’s nationality, declaring:
“The Australians, you’re hurting Australia.”
And then came the kicker — Trump promised to personally inform Prime Minister Anthony Albanese about the journalist’s behaviour, as if geopolitics had suddenly collapsed into a schoolyard spat where the ultimate threat was tattling to the headmaster. The art of dobbing.
At one level, the episode is comic, a reminder of Trump’s instinct for spectacle and grievance. But beneath the absurdity lies something darker: a consistent refusal to treat journalistic inquiry as a legitimate part of democracy. Instead, accountability is reframed as disloyalty. The president of the United States, confronted with a basic question about conflicts of interest, responded not with explanation but with a kind of diplomatic intimidation.
This is part of a longer pattern. From his first term to his second, Trump has cast journalists as enemies rather than interlocutors. The “war on the media” is not rhetorical garnish but central to his political style. In this worldview, truth-seekers are painted as traitors, tough questions are reframed as acts of sabotage, and now even foreign allies are enlisted as props in his domestic culture wars. By claiming that the ABC reporter was “hurting Australia,” Trump implied that the act of pressing a leader for clarity was somehow an attack on his allies themselves.
What is most revealing is how quickly Trump personalised diplomacy. The U.S.–Australia relationship is built on strategic alignment, trade, military cooperation, and shared democratic values. It is not dictated by whether a reporter poses a question he finds confrontational. Yet in his rhetoric, the fate of nations collapsed into the thin skin of one man. This habit of reducing statecraft to personal loyalty tests is not merely undignified; it is dangerous. If bilateral alliances can be bent around one leader’s grievances, they risk becoming unstable, transactional, and unpredictable.
Trump turned a simple conflict-of-interest question into a schoolyard spat — threatening to “tell on” a journo to Australia’s Prime Minister, writes Vince Hooper.
IT TAKES A CERTAIN theatre of the absurd to transform a routine White House press gaggle into a diplomatic sideshow. Yet that is precisely what happened when an Australian Broadcasting Corporation journalist, researching U.S. President Donald Trump’s family business interests, asked a straightforward question about whether it is appropriate for a sitting president to be engaged in so many business activities.
The question was sober and reasonable: a matter of conflicts of interest, wealth accumulation, and transparency in public office. Trump’s response, however, veered quickly into the surreal. He first insisted that his children were running the business empire, then abruptly shifted the ground.
Instead of grappling with the premise, he went after the journalist’s nationality, declaring:
“The Australians, you’re hurting Australia.”
And then came the kicker — Trump promised to personally inform Prime Minister Anthony Albanese about the journalist’s behaviour, as if geopolitics had suddenly collapsed into a schoolyard spat where the ultimate threat was tattling to the headmaster. The art of dobbing.
At one level, the episode is comic, a reminder of Trump’s instinct for spectacle and grievance. But beneath the absurdity lies something darker: a consistent refusal to treat journalistic inquiry as a legitimate part of democracy. Instead, accountability is reframed as disloyalty. The president of the United States, confronted with a basic question about conflicts of interest, responded not with explanation but with a kind of diplomatic intimidation.
This is part of a longer pattern. From his first term to his second, Trump has cast journalists as enemies rather than interlocutors. The “war on the media” is not rhetorical garnish but central to his political style. In this worldview, truth-seekers are painted as traitors, tough questions are reframed as acts of sabotage, and now even foreign allies are enlisted as props in his domestic culture wars. By claiming that the ABC reporter was “hurting Australia,” Trump implied that the act of pressing a leader for clarity was somehow an attack on his allies themselves.
What is most revealing is how quickly Trump personalised diplomacy. The U.S.–Australia relationship is built on strategic alignment, trade, military cooperation, and shared democratic values. It is not dictated by whether a reporter poses a question he finds confrontational. Yet in his rhetoric, the fate of nations collapsed into the thin skin of one man. This habit of reducing statecraft to personal loyalty tests is not merely undignified; it is dangerous. If bilateral alliances can be bent around one leader’s grievances, they risk becoming unstable, transactional, and unpredictable.
Compare this to other democratic leaders. Joe Biden, for all his gaffes, generally responds to press scrutiny with irritation at worst, never with the threat of raising the matter in a diplomatic call. Anthony Albanese himself fields barbed questions from Australian journalists on policy, integrity, and leadership without implying that the act of questioning undermines Australia’s alliances. Even populist figures like Britain’s ex-PM Boris Johnson or India’s Narendra Modi, while often prickly, have not suggested that reporters risk harming national security simply by doing their jobs. Trump stands almost alone in converting a press query into a matter of international loyalty.
In the end, Trump’s outburst says less about Australia than about America. It was not Australia’s reputation on trial, nor the alliance, nor the ABC reporter’s patriotism. It was the president’s tolerance for accountability — and that, once again, proved to be vanishingly thin and fake.
Vince Hooper is a proud Australian/British citizen and professor of finance and discipline head at SP Jain School of Global Management with campuses in London, Dubai, Mumbai, Singapore and Sydney.
The dangerous new Washington consensus for more nuclear weapons
What are all these nuclear weapons for? What would happen if we used them? Or a fraction of them? How many would die? Would our nation survive? What would be the impact on global climate?
These are topics that are assiduously avoided by nuclear weapons proponents,
“We’re going to go on offense, not just on defense. Maximum lethality, not tepid legality. Violent effect, not politically correct.”
By Joe Cirincione | September 9, 2025
Two former Biden administration defense officials warn of a “Category 5 hurricane of nuclear threats” rapidly approaching. Their solution? Build more nuclear weapons.
The officials, Vipin Narang and Pranay Vaddi, develop their strategy in a July 17 article in Foreign Affairs. From their perches at the Department of Defense and the National Security Council, they helped guide President Joe Biden’s nuclear policies that kept—and even increased—the weapons programs and budgets inherited from the first Trump administration. Now, they say, we need more.
Much more.
Attempting to chart a course for “how to survive the new nuclear age,” they instead repeat the oldest strategic mistake of the nuclear age: seeking security through numbers.
Eighty years ago, before the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, a team of Manhattan Project scientists led by James Franck and Eugene Rabinowitz (who would later found The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists) warned that the United States could not rely on its current advantage in atomic weaponry. Nuclear research would not remain an American monopoly for long. Staying ahead in production, they said, also gave a false sense of security: “The accumulation of a larger number of bigger and better atomic bombs… will not make us safe from sudden attack.”
They were ignored. During its first nuclear build-up, the United States sprinted from two atomic weapons in 1945 to 20,000 atomic and thermonuclear weapons by 1960, over twenty times the number of weapons held by the Soviet Union. It didn’t matter. We were ahead but afraid, with false fears of “missile gaps” dominating security debates.
Twenty years later, with the US arsenal at 24,000 warheads and the Soviets with 30,000, Ronald Reagan was swept into office with the backing of the Committee on the Present Danger and their fears that a “window of vulnerability” was opening that would allow the Soviets to launch a deadly first strike unless we vastly increased our forces. Committee members filled top defense posts and began the second nuclear build-up with new weapons and the false promise of missile defense shields. The “launch on warning” policy they adopted on an “interim basis” to protect US ICBMs from Russian attack still haunts us today, argues Princeton professor Frank von Hippel. This policy has contributed to several close calls when missiles were almost mistakenly launched.
Narang and Vaddi channel these past prophets of doom. The authors cite nuclear programs in North Korea, Pakistan, and Iran as justification for increasing the size of the US arsenal, largely ignoring diplomatic efforts that in the past effectively contained some of these programs and prevented others.
They also cite the interest of US allies in Europe and Asia in considering their own national nuclear programs as a proliferation risk that can only be addressed by “more, different, and better nuclear capabilities” and “more advanced missile defense… to intercept small or residual adversary nuclear forces.” They argue that if confronted by nuclear threats in Europe in the near future, “the United States might need to respond with nuclear use, and potentially with a larger nuclear exchange if it is unable to reestablish nuclear deterrence in Europe.”…………………………….
They fully endorse the third nuclear build up now underway, with an estimated cost of $2 trillion and rising. But it is not enough. “Washington needs to deploy not only more warheads but also more systems than originally planned under the modernization program,” they urge.
It is true that China’s force may grow, but as experts at the Federation of American Scientists point out, these projections are based on some questionable assumptions, including that future growth will follow recent growth on a straight line, that all the ICBM silos that we observe will be filled by new missiles, that China will be able to produce enough plutonium for all these new warheads, and that all the new warheads will be operational and deployed—which they currently are not.
Secondly, the authors understate the current US nuclear arsenal, which is more than 3,700 operational warheads, not 1,500. The United States currently has about 1,770 nuclear weapons deployed. (The New START treaty counts only 1,550 because it assumes each US bomber is loaded with only one weapon rather than the 8 to 20 they can carry.)
But that is only the deployed force. Approximately 1,930 nuclear warheads are held in reserve, ready to be deployed if needed. Finally, there are 1,477 retired but still intact warheads awaiting dismantlement—making for a total of more than 5,177 warheads in all, including those deployed, those on reserve, and those which are formally retired but intact. So, even if China does produce 1,500 weapons in ten years, it will still have only one-third the US force.
The real problem with the authors’ analysis, however, is not threat exaggeration or funny numbers. It is the war-fighting doctrine that it openly embraces.
What are all these nuclear weapons for? What would happen if we used them? Or a fraction of them? How many would die? Would our nation survive? What would be the impact on global climate?
These are topics that are assiduously avoided by nuclear weapons proponents, whether they be the corporations that realize large profits from the now $100 billion annual nuclear budget, or by the academics and policy operatives who provide the strategic justification for the indefinite continuation of the nuclear balance of terror.
Thus, the authors say “Congress will need to back an accelerated effort to overhaul the U.S. arsenal with significant funding and give the project urgent priority” because in addition to the standard rational that the United States must maintain a large nuclear arsenal “able to survive a first strike and impose assured destruction on its attacker in retaliation,” they argue the US must have weapons and policies “to meaningfully limit the amount of damage the attacker can inflict on the United States and its allies. To do this, the United States must maintain the capability to destroy as many of the attacker’s nuclear weapons as practicable before or after they are launched.”
This “damage limitation” strategy is key to the argument for larger forces. The authors seem to favor using US nuclear weapons first, to destroy the enemy’s weapons “before” they are launched, as well as believing without evidence that there could be a national missile defense system so effective that it could destroy missiles “after” their launch.
Former dean of the Georgetown University School of Foreign Affairs Robert Gallucci writes in his brief rebuttal to the authors: “One is left to wonder how the pursuit of all the ‘counterforce’ capability required of the second part of the strategy—an extraordinary characterization of the traditional goal of ‘damage limitation’ laid out in past U.S. nuclear posture reviews—can be distinguished from the pursuit of a disarming, preemptive, ‘first strike’ capability.”
Indeed, that is precisely what may be motivating the Chinese increases that the authors claim as the justification for an urgent US build-up. Narang and Vaddi do not discuss the impact on other nations of the massive US investment in offensive and defensive nuclear systems over the past ten years, or its withdrawal form the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002 that began the deterioration of the arms control regime.
From the Chinese perspective, however, the new, more capable and proliferated offensive nuclear weapons (especially those close to their borders) must indeed appear to be first-strike weapons, particularly when combined with a massive proposed national missile defense system erected to intercept any missiles not destroyed by an initial barrage of the United States.
China expert Fiona Cunningham of the University of Pennsylvania believes that it is very possible that “China is reacting to the continued development of some of the U.S. capabilities that could hold its nuclear arsenal at risk.” These include national missile defense, “its development of conventional strike capabilities that might be able to degrade its nuclear forces,” and the “idea that you would try and attack an adversary’s nuclear forces before they end up being launched.”
The Trump administration’s decision to “go on the offense” will further exacerbate these concerns. As the newly renamed Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, said: “We’re going to go on offense, not just on defense. Maximum lethality, not tepid legality. Violent effect, not politically correct.”
The Chinese increase in forces may indeed be malevolent. But it also looks very similar to what one would do if trying to create exactly the kind of survivable force the authors say the United States must have for a credible deterrent. As Cunningham notes, “We should expect that if adversary capabilities change, then Chinese nuclear forces are going to change in tandem.”
The authors may intend to pave new ground, to develop a strategy for the “new nuclear age,” but they end up mirroring the failed policies of the past. In many ways, their article echoes the 1980 Foreign Policy article by nuclear hawks Colin Gray and Keith Payne, “Victory is Possible.” In support of that era’s nuclear modernization, they argued that “the United States must possess the ability to wage nuclear war rationally.” They, too, thought arms control was unattainable and out-of-date with current threats. They, too, thought “parity or essential equivalence is incompatible with extended deterrence.” They, too, claimed that “war-fighting… is an extension of the American theory of deterrence.”
Gray and Payne said that a war that resulted in 20 million dead Americans could still save 200 million or more. Narang and Vaddi are not as cavalier, but at the core, they are embracing the idea that the ability to fight and win a nuclear war is essential for national security.
The worst news is that they are not alone. Their views may be the dominant views in Washington now, in both parties. Cloaked in ominous strategic rhetoric, ignoring inconvenient truths, and backed by a formidable nuclear weapons lobby and massive budgets, these ideas are the new consensus. Without a vibrant, persistent pushback, these policies will not only prevail in the current Trump administration but in future governments as well. https://thebulletin.org/2025/09/the-dangerous-new-washington-consensus-for-more-nuclear-weapons/
Israel bombed Qatar to assassinate Hamas’s lead ceasefire negotiators
Amid ongoing ceasefire talks, Israel attempted to assassinate the Hamas negotiating team in an airstrike on the Doha office of its lead negotiator, senior Hamas leader Khalil al-Hayya. Hamas officials say the negotiating team survived the attack.
By Qassam Muaddi September 9, 2025 , https://mondoweiss.net/2025/09/israel-bombed-qatar-to-assassinate-hamass-lead-ceasefire-negotiators/
Amid ongoing ceasefire talks, Israel attempted to assassinate the Hamas negotiating team in an airstrike on the Doha office of its lead negotiator, senior Hamas leader Khalil al-Hayya. Hamas officials say the negotiating team survived the attack.
By Qassam Muaddi September 9, 2025
Israel attempted to assassinate top Hamas leaders in Qatar on Tuesday, after large explosions were heard in the capital city of Doha, and smoke columns rose from the building targeted in the attack. A joint statement by the Israeli army and Israel’s internal intelligence agency confirmed that it was targeting Hamas’s senior leadership in a “precise strike.” The statement added that the targeted leaders were “directly responsible” for the October 7 attack and that “measures were taken in order to mitigate harm to civilians.”
Israeli media said that the strike targeted the office of the lead Hamas negotiator in the ongoing ceasefire talks, Khalil al-Hayya, in addition to other members of the negotiating team. Hamas politburo member Suheil al-Hindi told Al Jazeera on Tuesday evening that the negotiating team led by al-Hayya had survived “the cowardly assassination attempt.” Al-Hindi also told the Qatari news network that Hamas “will not raise the white flag.”
Al Jazeera reported that five “lower-ranked members were killed.”
The Israeli strike occurred as the Hamas negotiating team met to discuss the latest ceasefire proposal presented by U.S. President Donald Trump, al-Hindi told Al Jazeera.
The Qatari Foreign Ministry strongly condemned the attack, calling it “criminal” and “cowardly.” The Ministry added that Qatar “will not tolerate” attacks that “threaten the safety of Qatar’s citizens and residents.”
An unnamed White House official told AFP that the U.S. was notified in advance of Israel’s planned attack in Qatar.
The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement that the attack was a “wholly independent Israeli operation.”
“Israel initiated it, Israel conducted it, and Israel takes full responsibility,” the statement added.
The Israeli PM and Israeli Defense Minister, Israel Katz, said in a joint statement that they had given the green light to attack the Hamas leadership following a shooting attack in Jerusalem yesterday that left six Israelis dead. Hamas’s armed wing, the Qassam Brigades, had claimed responsibility for the shooting, which was carried out by two Palestinians from the West Bank towns of Qatanna and Qebeibeh.
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres condemned the Israeli attack on the Qatari capital as a “flagrant violation of sovereignty.”
Targeting negotiators during ceasefire negotiations
The Israeli attack comes after Trump had put forward a proposal for a 60-day ceasefire that would see the release of all Israeli captives in the first 48 hours of the agreement. In exchange, negotiations to permanently end the war on Gaza would commence, with personal guarantees from the U.S. President that Israel would engage in the negotiations “in good faith.”
Trump’s proposal would also see Hamas relinquish control over Gaza and give up its arms. Hamas has repeatedly said that it is willing to relinquish control over the Strip and allow for an independent technocratic government to rule in its stead, but has maintained that disarming remains a “red line” for the group.
A previous ceasefire proposal last August was accepted by Hamas and awaited Israel’s approval, but Israel did not respond before Trump presented his most recent proposal.
The August proposal had included a 60-day ceasefire in which Israeli captives would be released in exchange for the release of 1,700 Palestinian prisoners, the entry of humanitarian aid, and the withdrawal of the Israeli army to specified areas at the edges of the Strip.
Continuous assassinations across the region
Last month, Israel killed 12 top officials in the Yemeni government, including Yemen’s Prime Minister, Ahmad al-Rahawi.
Since October 7, Israel has assassinated several top Hamas leaders in exile across the region, including Hamas’s previous politburo chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, and senior Hamas politburo member Saleh Aruri in Beirut.
Israel has also assassinated several top commanders of the al-Qassam Brigades, including its longtime commander, Muhammad al-Deif. Two weeks ago, Hamas confirmed the death of Deif’s successor, Muhammad Sinwar, the brother of Hamas’s slain Gaza leader Yahya Sinwar, who was killed by accident in October 2024 when he was struck by a tank shell during combat in Rafah.
At the end of August, Israel claimed to have assassinated Abu Obeida, the military spokesperson of the Qassam Brigades, in a strike on a residential building in Gaza City. Hamas has neither confirmed nor denied Abu Obeida’s fate.
Attempt to derail ceasefire negotiations ahead of Gaza City invasion
The attack on Doha comes as Israel continues to advance its offensive against Gaza City, levelling several high-rise buildings housing thousands of refugees, who were forced to leave the towers after receiving evacuation orders from the Israeli army. In recent weeks, the Israeli army’s offensive has flattened entire neighborhoods in eastern Gaza City, including the Shuja’iyya, Sabra, and Zeitoun neighborhoods.
The Israeli army has also dropped leaflets over the city ordering its entire population to evacuate to the overcrowded Mawasi area on the coast of Khan Younis in southern Gaza. The Israeli army says its occupation of the city will last for at least a year.
The Palestinian Civil Defense said that if the invasion of the city proceeds as announced, it expects a daily casualty count of around 300 Palestinians.
US Considers Bombing Venezuela as It Deploys F-35 Fighter Jets to Puerto Rico
ANTIWar.com, by Dave DeCamp | September 7, 2025
The Trump administration is considering multiple options for launching military strikes against alleged drug cartels in Venezuela, including hitting targets that could weaken Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, as it is deploying F-35 fighter jets to Puerto Rico, CNN has reported.
US officials told CNN that the US bombing of a boat near Venezuela last week was just the beginning of a much larger effort against drug trafficking that could lead to the ouster of Maduro. US officials claim the pressure on Venezuela and Maduro is about drug trafficking and a response to overdose deaths in the US, but fentanyl doesn’t come from or through Venezuela, and the majority of the cocaine that is transported to the US comes through the Pacific, not the Caribbean……………………
The US deployed F-35s to Puerto Rico after it claimed that two Venezuelan F-16 fighter jets flew over a US Navy vessel. The Department of Defense, now known as the Department of War, said in a press release that the Venezuelan flight was “provocative” despite the fact that the US deployed a large number of naval vessels near Venezuela’s coast…………………….https://news.antiwar.com/2025/09/07/us-considers-bombing-venezuela-as-it-deploys-f-35-fighter-jets-to-puerto-rico/
A killing at sea marks America’s descent into lawless power
The people on board were not given the chance to surrender. No evidence was presented. No rules of engagement were cited. The administration claimed authority to kill on suspicion alone. A vessel in international waters is not a lawful target simply because officials say so.
International law does not permit such action.
The peremptory strike on a speedboat is a warning to all who serve. Remember your oath.
Jon Duffy, September 8, 2025, https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2025/09/killing-sea-americas-descent-lawless-power/407949/?oref=defense_one_breaking_nl&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Defense%20One%20Breaking%20News:%209/9%20killing&utm_content=C&utm_term=newsletter_d1_alert
The United States has crossed a dangerous line.
Last week, an American military platform destroyed a small vessel in the Caribbean, killing 11 people the Trump administration claims were drug traffickers. It was not an interception. It was not a boarding with Coast Guard legal authority. It was a strike—ordered from Washington, executed in international waters, and justified with little more than “trust us.” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told Fox that officials “knew exactly who was in that boat” and “exactly what they were doing.” He offered no evidence.
This was not a counterdrug operation. It was not law enforcement. It was killing without process. And it was, to all appearances, against the letter and the spirit of the law.
For decades, the U.S. military and Coast Guard have intercepted drug shipments in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific under a careful legal framework: Coast Guard officers would tactically control Navy ships, invoke law enforcement authority, stop vessels, and detain crews for prosecution. The goal is not execution; it is interdiction within international law.
This week’s strike ripped up that framework. The people on board were not given the chance to surrender. No evidence was presented. No rules of engagement were cited. The administration claimed authority to kill on suspicion alone.
International law does not permit such action. A vessel in international waters is not a lawful target simply because officials say so. Contending that narcotics pose a long-term danger to Americans is at best a weak policy argument, not a legal justification for force. Unless this boat posed an imminent threat of attack—which no one has claimed—blowing it out of the water is not self-defense. It is killing at sea. A government that ignores these distinctions is not fighting cartels. It is discarding the rule of law.
Beyond the gross violations of the law and the Constitution lies an enormous strategic danger. By redefining traffickers as legitimate military targets, the administration has plunged the United States into another war without limits.
Who is the enemy? “Cartels,” we are told. But cartels are not armies. They are networks that span countries and blend with civilians. Declaring war on them is like declaring war on poverty or terrorism—a plunge into an endless campaign that cannot be “won.”
Where is the battlefield? The Caribbean? Venezuela? Central America? Overnight, officials shifted their story about the destroyed vessel’s destination: first, it was “probably headed to Trinidad or some other country in the Caribbean,” then it was among “imminent threats to the United States.” If geography is that malleable, there is no limit to where the next strike may fall.
And what is the objective? To “blow up and get rid of them,” in the words of Secretary of State Marco Rubio. That is not strategy; it is bravado. We have tried it before, in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen. Killing “high-value targets” didn’t end the war on terror.
The U.S. is drifting into an undeclared war of assassination across half a hemisphere, led by unaccountable officials who equate explosions with effectiveness.
Even more dangerous is the backdrop: the Supreme Court’s ruling that presidents are immune from prosecution for “official acts.” Experts warned this would give the commander-in-chief license to commit murder. The majority waved those fears away. Now the president has ordered killings in international waters.
Eleven people are dead, not through due process but by fiat. The defense secretary boasts about it on television. And the president will face no consequences.
This is no longer abstract. The law has been rewritten in real time: a president can kill, and there is no recourse. That is not strength. That is authoritarianism.
What does this mean for the principle of civilian control, when those who wield it face no consequence for abuse? What does it mean for our military, when they are ordered to carry out missions that violate the standards they have sworn to uphold?
What happens abroad does not stay abroad. A government that stretches legal authority overseas will not hesitate to do the same at home. The same commander-in-chief who ordered a strike on a boat in international waters has already ordered National Guard troops into American cities over the objections of local leaders. The logic is identical: redefine the threat, erase legal distinctions, and justify force as the first tool. Today it is “traffickers” in the Caribbean. Tomorrow it will be “criminals” in Chicago or “radicals” in Atlanta.
This strike is not only about 11 lives lost at sea. It is about the precedent set when the military is unmoored from law, and when silence from senior leaders normalizes the abuse.
The cost will not be measured in a destroyed boat. It will be measured in the corrosion of law, strategy, and trust. Legally, the U.S. has abandoned the framework that distinguished interdiction from assassination. Constitutionally, presidential immunity has been laid bare: the commander-in-chief of the most destructive military power in history has been placed beyond the reach of law. Strategically, we have entered another endless war against a concept, not an enemy. Internally, the erosion of boundaries abroad feeds the erosion of boundaries at home.
The laws of war, the principles of proportionality, the training drilled into every officer—all run counter to what happened in the Caribbean. Yet silence has prevailed. And silence is acquiescence. Each concession ratifies the misuse of force until it becomes routine. That is how institutions corrode. That is how democracies die.
The strike in the Caribbean is not the action of a strong nation. It is a warning. This is about whether the U.S. military remains an institution of law and principle, or whether it becomes an obedient weapon in the hands of a lawless president.
A republic that allows its leaders to kill without law, to wage war without strategy, and to deploy troops without limit is a republic in deep peril. Congress will not stop it. The courts will not stop it. That leaves those sworn not to a man, but to the Constitution.
The oath is clear: unlawful orders—foreign or domestic—must be disobeyed. To stand silent as the military is misused is not restraint. It is betrayal.
Jon Duffy is a retired Navy captain. His active duty career included command at sea and national security roles. He writes about leadership and democracy.
The future of Gaza as seen from the White House
the Gaza Strip would be “administered by the United States for at least 10 years while it is transformed into a glittering tourist resort and a center for high-tech manufacturing and technology.”
The future Gaza project, according to its real estate developers (the three professionals Jared Kushner, Donald Trump, and Steve Witkoff), is worthy of Dubai. Many transnational corporations have already joined forces.
by Thierry Meyssan, Voltaire Network | Paris (France) | 3 September 2025, https://www.voltairenet.org/article222723.html
This possible operation is in line with the vision of the “Jacksonians.” In 1830, President Andrew Jackson (1829-1837) enacted the Indian Removal Act. To end the Indian wars, he proposed assigning them reservations rather than continuing to massacre them. The transfer of the Indians was particularly deadly for the Cherokees (the “Trail of Tears” episode), but they accepted this form of peace, while almost all other Indian tribes rejected it. Two centuries later, only the Cherokee tribe has become wealthy and integrated, while all the other tribes have been marginalized. Without a doubt, Jackson’s method succeeded in ending the genocide of the Indians, but at what cost?
Trump’s plan, currently in development, is just as shocking to Palestinians as Jackson’s was to the Cherokee, but it offers a solution where no one else has. Will Palestinians, who have been fighting for generations to assert their rights, be satisfied with this? International law states that no people can be expelled from their own land. The United Nations General Assembly has consistently guaranteed the right of return for those who were forcibly expelled in 1948—UN General Assembly Resolution 194 (December 11, 1948) and UN Security Council Resolution 237 (June 14, 1967). Seven years ago, Palestinian civilians organized the “March of Return.” The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) fired on a peaceful crowd, killing at least 120 people and wounding 4,000. It is obviously illusory to believe that such a people will easily rally to this project.
So the participants at the White House meeting considered paying $23,000 per person to any family willing to go into exile. Contacts have already been made with Libya, Ethiopia, South Sudan, Indonesia, and Somaliland, although none of these states has confirmed this. The Trump team is considering voluntarily relocating a quarter of the Gaza population in this way.
According to the Financial Times, the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change (TIT) and the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) held joint working meetings on the Gaza Riviera project, known as The Gaza Reconstitution, Economic Acceleration and Transformation Trust (GREAT* Trust). It was during these preparatory meetings that the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) project was born. During the summer, this Swiss-registered foundation distributed humanitarian aid in Gaza instead of the occupying authority, the United Nations, the International Red Cross, and various humanitarian associations. This certainly bypassed Hamas, but it also led to the IDF killing nearly a thousand civilians who had come to seek food aid. The GHF scandal was unanimously condemned, including by prominent Israeli Jews. In practice, the GHF was created by the Mikveh Yisrael Forum, bringing together Yotam HaCohen, strategic advisor to Benjamin Netanyahu and son of former General Gershon HaCohen, Liran Tankman, a former intelligence officer who switched to high-tech, and Michael Eisenberg, an Israeli-American venture capitalist. Most of the leaders of the Mikveh Yisrael Forum have joined the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), Ghassan Alian, convinced that the Netanyahu government is doing nothing to help the people of Gaza and that it is up to the Israelis to take action.
TRIAL International, a Swiss-based NGO, has filed two legal submissions asking the Swiss authorities to investigate the GHF’s compliance with Swiss law and international humanitarian law. The central issue raised by TRIAL International is whether humanitarian organizations can use private military companies. From the outset, GHF’s executive director, former US Marine Jake Wood, resigned. The “Foundation” then enlisted the services of Philip F. Reilly and his company Safe Reach Solutions. However, Reilly is a former soldier in the 7th Special Forces Group, which focused on counter-narcotics missions in Latin America. He became head of the CIA’s paramilitary branch, then known as the Special Activities Division but renamed the Special Activities Center. He was head of the CIA’s Afghan station around 2008 and 2009, as well as head of operations for the agency’s Counterterrorism Mission Center, which led the agency’s highly controversial drone strike program during the War on Terror. He then joined the private sector as senior vice president of special operations for the private military company Constellis, owner of the mercenary company formerly known as Blackwater. Finally, he worked for another private army, Orbis. While it is true that the IDF did not kill the Palestinian civilians who came to look for food, Philip F. Reilly’s men did.
The future Gaza project, according to its real estate developers (the three professionals Jared Kushner, Donald Trump, and Steve Witkoff), is worthy of Dubai. Many transnational corporations have already joined forces.
President Donald Trump, who had rebuffed Benjamin Netanyahu when he came to ask him to annex Gaza, is now preparing to take control of the Palestinian territory. While Tel Aviv is preparing to annex the entire Mandate of Palestine and, on the contrary, Egypt and Jordan are preparing to hand over the keys to the Palestinian Authority, a vast $100 billion real estate operation is being planned
In August 27, President Donald Trump convened a meeting at the White House to gather suggestions for the future of Gaza. In attendance were JD Vance, Vice President; Steve Witkoff, Special Envoy; Marco Rubio, Secretary of State; Jared Kushner, former advisor during the first term; Tony Blair, former British Prime Minister; and Ron Dermer, Israeli Minister of Strategic Affairs.
No statement was released after this consultation. However, according to the Washington Post, the Gaza Strip would be “administered by the United States for at least 10 years while it is transformed into a glittering tourist resort and a center for high-tech manufacturing and technology.” A colossal $100 million would be invested there.
To facilitate the regrouping of Gazans, Benjamin Netanyahu’s revisionist Zionist government has given instructions to create a tent city for 600,000 people in Rafah. They would have food and hospitals, but would not be able to leave.
Bezalel Smotrich, Minister of Finance, said at a conference on Jewish settlement in the occupied West Bank on May 14: “Civilians will be sent south to a humanitarian zone, and from there they will begin to leave in large numbers for third countries.”
The Prime Minister himself finally made the decision on August 13 on i24News in Hebrew. He claimed a “historic and spiritual mission,” assuring that he is ‘very’ attached to the vision of a “Greater Israel.” At 75, he publicly claims to be a follower of his father’s mentor, Vladimir Jabotinsky, the founder of “revisionist Zionism.”
At the same time, on July 23, the Knesset passed a non-binding law by 71 votes to 13, calling on the government to annex the West Bank before new permanent members of the UN Security Council fully recognize the State of Palestine.
In addition, the IDF reports that 618 settler attacks were recorded in the West Bank in 2024, compared to 404 in the first half of 2025.
Republican Mike Johnson, Speaker of the US House of Representatives, has expressed his support for annexation. He visited the Ariel settlement in early August 2025 and said he believed that “Judea and Samaria” belonged to the Jewish people and expressed his support for the extension of Israeli sovereignty over the West Bank. This was the first time that a US figure of this stature had visited Israeli settlements in the West Bank. The Trump administration is currently keeping a cautious distance from this movement, especially as it is focusing all its efforts on strengthening the Abraham Accords with Arab states.
According to a December 2024 survey by the Institute for National Security Studies, 34% of the Israeli public rejects the annexation of Palestinian territories, 21% supports annexing the current settlements, and 21% supports annexing everything.
For their part, Egypt and Jordan, unwilling to believe this, continue to train hundreds of young Palestinians loyal to Fatah to form a 10,000-strong private security force to put the Palestinian Authority in power in Gaza. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia and France plan to fully recognize the State of Palestine at the UN General Assembly, which is preparing to proclaim its independence.
Main sources :………………………………….
The Military-Industrial Complex
How the permanent armaments industry keeps the United States of America engaged in endless conflict
Grant Klusmann, Sep 10, 2025, https://ddgeopolitics.substack.com/p/the-military-industrial-complex?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=1769298&post_id=173240478&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
“This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence-economic, political, even spiritual-is felt in every city, every state house, every office of the federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources, and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.”
These were the words of then-President Dwight D. Eisenhower in his 1961 farewell address in which he warned the American people of the perils of the military-industrial complex. Such a relationship between the military and defense industry increased the incentives for endless war. As Eisenhower campaigned on ending combat operations on the Korean peninsula and favored an overall cautious foreign policy, it would not come as a surprise then that Eisenhower would be concerned by the heightened influence held by the armaments industry.
The military-industrial complex is a relationship in which lawmakers are motivated by campaign contributions from the defense industry to provide funding to the Department of Defense for military spending, and the defense industry profits from their lobbying due to the Department of Defense paying various defense firms for the production of military hardware and other services. Such a state of affairs incentivizes an interventionist foreign policy due to conflict generating demand for the equipment produced by the defense industry. Throughout the second half of the twentieth century and the first two decades of the twenty-first century, there had been no shortage of conflicts that were motivated, at least in part, by the military-industrial complex.
The Vietnam War, which the United States entered into over a false flag in which the American government accused North Vietnamese forces of launching two unprovoked attacks on the U.S.S. Maddox, saw President Johnson’s personal wealth increase due to his investing in the kinds of products required to wage war. In 1992, President George H.W. Bush ordered American forces to Somalia under the guise of humanitarianism to justify maintaining the size and expenditures of the post-Cold War military establishment. Nearly a decade later, America would engage in a global campaign across the Greater Middle East in which the objectives and the enemy were left poorly defined, seemingly to drag the conflict out so the defense industry could make as large a profit as possible.
What’s more, is that the military-industrial complex continues to guide our foreign policy in the present. As it stands, the defense establishment and their allies in corporate media are in the process of manufacturing a new ideological bogeyman to justify defense spending. With tensions rising with Russia, China, and Iran, there is a real danger that the powers that be may lie our nation into yet another forever war to justify their wages.
Zelensky has insulted Trump. Is he suicidal?
Comment: When Zelensky speaks about Ukraine’s survival, what he really means is, his own survival. To that end, he is happy to sacrifice Ukraine and its people.
The battlefield is not tilting in Kiev’s favor. Russia’s position, bolstered by sheer resources and strategic depth, is proving resilient. Ukraine’s European backers continue to speak in lofty terms of standing “as long as it takes,” but they lack the power to deliver a Ukrainian victory.
The Ukrainian leader risks alienating the only power besides Moscow with a realistic approach to ending the war.
By Nadezhda Romanenko, political analyst, 8 Sept 25, https://www.rt.com/news/624279-zelensky-insults-trump-suicidal/
In a weekend interview with ABC News, Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky accused US President Donald Trump of giving Russian President Vladimir Putin “what he wanted” at the Alaska summit in August.
Whether a passing complaint or a calculated jab, it may come at a steep cost for Zelensky. To suggest that Trump bent to Putin’s will is to imply weakness, and weakness is something Trump never tolerates being accused of. This rhetorical swipe was directed at a man who holds significant sway over the trajectory of the Russia-Ukraine war. For Zelensky, the insult may prove more damaging than cathartic.
Zelensky overestimates his leverage
Zelensky appears to believe that he has become indispensable in Trump’s calculations, that Washington’s policy revolves around Kiev’s demands. But this overstates his importance. Trump has been consistent about one priority: he wants the war to end, and more than that, he wants the US disentangled from it. His approach reflects the sentiment of much of the American public – weary of sending weapons and aid overseas while domestic problems fester.
By framing Trump’s summit with Putin as a giveaway, Zelensky risks alienating the one Western leader positioned to actually shift the direction of the war. Trump is sensitive to personal slights. For years, allies and adversaries alike have learned that once he feels personally insulted, he hardens, not softens. To tell Trump, in effect, that he’s Putin’s stooge is to court precisely that reaction.
Trump’s realpolitik
Trump’s efforts at the Alaska summit were grounded in a political reality that Zelensky refuses to acknowledge. The battlefield is not tilting in Kiev’s favor. Russia’s position, bolstered by sheer resources and strategic depth, is proving resilient. Ukraine’s European backers continue to speak in lofty terms of standing “as long as it takes,” but they lack the power to deliver a Ukrainian victory.
Trump, by contrast, pursued a path that might actually move events forward: direct talks with Russia, engagement on security concerns, and the search for a negotiated framework. It is not an approach designed to satisfy Zelensky and the Europeans’ maximalist goals but rather one rooted in ending an exhausting conflict. To dismiss this effort as capitulation is to ignore that it may be the most realistic option still on the table.
The rhetoric of survival vs. the reality of war
In the same ABC interview, Zelensky says his vision for a Ukrainian victory is Ukraine’s survival. Yet his strategy as evident from his actions appears geared less toward survival and more toward dragging the war on for as long as possible. Each new demand for weapons, each new appeal for escalated sanctions, pushes the conflict forward without changing the battlefield reality of Russia grinding forward toward its objectives – and whatever Zelensky claims, total occupation of Ukraine is not one of those objectives. In the name of “survival,” Ukraine is exhausting its people, its infrastructure, and its economy.
If survival truly is the goal, then ending the war must be the only priority. Right now, Trump has the best shot at it, because he is realistically engages with the interests of Russia – the side that has the clear upper hand on the battlefield. And Zelensky is pushing that opportunity away.
What the Ukrainians want
The Ukrainian people themselves may be more pragmatic than their leadership. Polling suggests a stark divide: only a small minority – just 11%, according to a recent survey – favor continuing the war without conditions. Meanwhile, overwhelming majorities favor pursuing talks with Russia. This does not mean embracing defeat, but it does mean recognizing that endless escalation is not the preferred path for those getting forcibly conscripted and those seeing their loved ones getting carted off to war.
For Zelensky, this creates a dangerous disconnect. Leaders cannot stay indefinitely ahead of their populations without eroding legitimacy. To ignore the public’s exhaustion while doubling down on maximalist rhetoric risks creating a gulf between the government’s objectives and its people’s endurance.
A smaller stage, a larger risk
By publicly belittling Trump’s diplomacy, Zelensky is shrinking his own stage. He portrays himself as the bulwark of Europe, the last line holding back a supposed “Russian aggression.” Yet without sustained Western backing, Ukraine cannot hold indefinitely. And of all Ukraine’s backers, the US remains the most consequential. Alienating the leader who wants to end US involvement – whether one agrees with his motives or not – is a perilous gamble.
Zelensky’s rhetoric may win applause in certain European capitals. It may even rally a domestic audience for a time. But it risks costing him the one relationship he cannot afford to lose. Trump is not moved by appeals to shared values or by grand speeches about democracy. He is moved by respect and recognition of his central role. By suggesting Trump has already caved to Putin, Zelensky undermines both.
Zelensky’s statement reveals a leader more focused on preserving his narrative than recalibrating his strategy. Words matter in diplomacy, especially when those words are aimed at a figure like Donald Trump. In calling Trump weak, Zelensky may have weakened his own hand. If his true goal is Ukraine’s survival, then it will not be secured through rhetorical bravado. It will require careful diplomacy, acknowledgment of battlefield realities, and avoiding needless insults to the one partner whose departure from the stage could lead to even more disaster for Zelensky’s regime than it has already created for itself.
The Building of the First Atomic Bombs Impacted Workers and Residents, Too
Eighty years after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, workers who mined the uranium and people who lived near the test sites are still dying from exposure to radiation.
by Jim Carrier, August 7, 2025, https://progressive.org/magazine/the-building-of-the-first-atomic-bombs-impacted-workers-and-residents-too-carrier-20250807/
The road to Nagasaki was littered with radiation.
Eighty years after an atomic bomb called Fat Man was dropped, killing and poisoning about 100,000 people in Nagasaki, at least a dozen sites around the world—sites that contributed to the bomb’s creation—are still dealing with its deadly legacy.
Under the pressure to win World War II, U.S. military leaders pulled out all stops to prioritize the creation and testing of an atomic bomb, indifferent to the cost on the lives and livelihood of everyday people. Landscapes were polluted, workers were exposed to radiation, and civilian neighbors to the nuclear test sites—the first “downwinders”—were ignored or lied to.
The Manhattan Project—a top-secret research and development program created by the U.S. government during World War II to develop a nuclear bomb—sourced nearly all of its much-needed uranium from the Belgian Congo’s Shinkolobwe mine. Located in the modern-day Haut-Katanga province in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Shinkolonwe mine was the world’s richest source of high-grade uranium, radium, and other valuable minerals. First opened in 1921, the Belgian-owned mine employed artisanal miners who dug the radioactive ore with handheld tools and carried it out in sacks on their shoulders, further exposing them to the toxic substance. While the environmental impact was visible and more difficult to conceal, any known records of lasting health impacts were disappeared by the authorities or never recorded at all.
In 1939, fearing Adolf Hitler and the German discovery of nuclear fission in uranium—with its potential to create a bomb—the mine’s manager shipped more than 1,000 tons of ore from Katanga to a warehouse on Staten Island, New York. Spilled ore contaminated a portion of the site where it sat for three years. A 1980 study later determined that the site might harm trespassers beneath the Bayonne Bridge, but by that time the site had already been demolished.
President Franklin Roosevelt’s January 19, 1942, decision to build an atomic bomb touched off the $2 billion Manhattan Project with its extraordinary mix of secret research at Los Alamos, New Mexico, and massive construction projects at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and Hanford, Washington. All of these needed hundreds of tons of uranium to make a few pounds of plutonium.
In November 1942, the U.S. Army discovered and bought the Staten Island uranium stockpile and shipped 1,823 drums by barge and railroad to the Seneca Army Depot in Romulus, New York, where it was put into large concrete igloos before being shipped to various refineries. Now part of an Environmental Protection Agency Superfund site, the depot stored all kinds of munitions and even some classified military equipment that was burned and buried. Most of the site was cleaned up in the early 2000s and opened for recreation and industrial warehousing.
The Army’s search for uranium ore also uncovered 500 tons among vanadium tailings in western Colorado, and 300 tons at Port Hope, Ontario, Canada, where the Eldorado Gold Mines refinery processed ore into more pure concentrations. Eldorado’s own mine, on Great Bear Lake in the Northwest Territories of Canada, employed First Nations Dene workers who would later suffer cancers and die from handling sacks of ore. Their community of Délı̨nę became known as a “village of widows.” Without contemporary health records, a re-created exposure study found that overall cancer rates for Délı̨nę were “not statistically significantly different from the Northwest Territories.”
Port Hope, on the northern shore of Lake Ontario, which processed all the African and North American uranium ore for the Manhattan Project, spread tailings in neighborhoods and in the lake, eventually requiring a $1.3 billion cleanup that did not begin until 2018. Residents blame the contamination for cancers, although a 2013 study found no statistical evidence of greater radiosensitive cancers.
An enduring and poetic legend links the labors of Délı̨nę villagers to the Japanese bombs, a story told in A Village of Widows, a documentary film that followed ten Dine to Hiroshima in 1998 where they paid their respects and shared mutual sorrow with hibakusha, the Japanese word for the survivors of the atomic bombs. The uranium ore from Great Bear Lake did, in fact, contribute to the Manhattan Project—a U.S. government history found that Great Bear Lake ore amounted to one-sixth of the uranium used in the Manhattan Project, Colorado ore contributed one-seventh, and the rest came from the Belgian Congo. However, a detailed 2008 analysis of the ore’s movements concluded that “the fissile material in the Nagasaki weapon was almost certainly derived from oxide processed by Eldorado which would have been mostly of Belgian Congo origin. The same is probably true for the Hiroshima weapon. It is also possible that there was some uranium of U.S. origin in both of these weapons.”
After Port Hope, the uranium was further refined at nineteen industrial sites including: Linde Air in Tonawanda, New York; Dupont’s Deepwater Works in New Jersey; Metal Hydrides Inc. in Beverly, Massachusetts; Harshaw Chemical in Cleveland, Ohio; and at Mallinckrodt Chemical Company in St. Louis, Missouri. All of these sites have undergone expensive remediation. Mallinckrodt, whose radiation contamination caused numerous cancers in children and adults, has yet to be scrubbed clean.
Uranium salts were then delivered to either Oak Ridge, Tennessee, where the Y-12 refinery produced enriched uranium for the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, or to Hanford, Washington, where refineries produced the plutonium used in both the Trinity test bomb and the Nagasaki bomb. Both reactor sites deliberately released radioactive material into the air and water. Cleaning the mess has cost much more than the original Manhattan Project. The cost to clean Hanford, considered the most radioactive spot in the world, is estimated at $640 billion. Oak Ridge’s cleanup won’t be finished until 2050. Hanford’s effort to meld radioactive sludge into glass containers and bury them in salt caves is only beginning.
The first atomic bomb blast in history, the Trinity test of the plutonium implosion “gadget” in the Alamogordo, New Mexico, desert on July 16, 1945, left permanent marks on the land and the people downwind. The airborne plume from Trinity drifted across the Tularosa Basin, landing on vegetables, cattle, and water, poisoning residents who would later report leukemia, cancers, and heart disease. Subsequent studies have found Trinity fallout reached forty-six states, Canada, and Mexico. After five years of lobbying, the Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium won a two-year window—until December 31, 2028—to be included in the federal Radiation Exposure Compensation Act which covers U.S. uranium workers and downwinders exposed at the Nevada Test Site during the Cold War. As of June 24, 2025, 42,575 people have received $2.7 billion dollars. Tourists can visit the test site one day a year, on the third Saturday in October. Radiation at ground zero is ten times the region’s natural radiation.
The area around Los Alamos, where brilliant physicists and world-class machinists created the bombs that fell on Japan eighty years ago, has realized that the work of those scientists also left plutonium contamination close to home. Wartime practices that dumped raw radioactive waste into Acid Canyon continued until 1951, and despite several cleanup efforts, measurable plutonium remains. The Los Alamos National Laboratory says the risks to humans walking the canyon are “tiny.” However, plutonium has a half-life of 24,000 years.
For more on the story of Nagasaki, Japan, today, see Jim Carrier’s article “The Bombs Still Ticking” from the August/September 2025 issue of The Progressive.
South Carolina’s dormant nuclear volcanoes
by beyondnuclearinternational, https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2025/09/07/south-carolinas-dormant-nuclear-volcanos/
Resuming construction of the abandoned V.C. Summer reactors is rife with challenges, says a new report from Savannah River Site Watch
The proposal to restart the failed nuclear reactor construction project in South Carolina faces a host of unexamined challenges, according to a just-released report. The report, prepared by the nuclear policy expert who led the intervention against the project since its inception in 2008 through its collapse and termination in the face of ratepayer outrage 2017, outlines major stumbling blocks to the revival of the nation’s most shocking failure of a nuclear reactor construction project in the United States in the 21stcentury.
The V.C. Summer project involved the botched attempt by now-defunct South Carolina Electric & Gas (SCE&G) to construct two large Westinghouse AP1000 nuclear reactors 2 – units 2 & 3 – 25 miles north of Columbia, South Carolina. Over $10 billion was wasted on the construction of project.
Its abrupt termination was one of the most impactful and costly nuclear construction-project collapses in U.S. history, which was the death knell for the so-called “nuclear renaissance” in the U.S. Customers were hit hard and are still left holding the bag with nothing in return for a reported $2 billion payment so far, for financing costs, an amount that grows daily. Though far-fetched, project restart is now being discussed.
The report – presenting 14 unanalyzed challenges to the restart idea and prepared by the Columbia-based public-interest, non-profit group Savannah River Site Watch – is titled Economic, Technical and Regulatory Challenges Confound Restart of the Terminated V.C. Summer Nuclear Reactor Construction Project in South Carolina.
The 24-page report was written by Tom Clements, director of SRS Watch, who led interventions before the PSC by the environmental group Friends of The Earth beginning in 2008 and running through the bankruptcy of SCE&G and its takeover by Dominion Energy South Carolina in January 2019.
“As the public was so abused during the V.C Summer construction project, they now deserve a voice in raising concerns about proposals concerning rebirth of the project in which they still have financial ownership and that’s for whom this report speaks” said Clements. “We reveal in the report that Dominion ratepayers are right now paying 5.22% of the bill for the terminated project and are paying, since 2019, an additional $2.8 billion over 20 years. The restart effort could once again saddle customers with additional massive costs if VCSummer 2.0 proceeds.”
The 5.22% monthly rate hidden in the Dominion monthly bill was revealed in a Freedom of Information Act document provided by the S.C. Office of Regulatory Staff to SRS Watch on August 7, 2025. In January 2019, the S.C. Public Service Commission ordered Dominion customers to pay an additional $2.8 billion over the next 20 years for the cost of the bungled project. That monthly fee should be eliminated and consumer investment rebated, especially if restart is pursued, according to SRS Watch.
Themes covered in the “restart challenges” report include:
Nuclear Advisory Council restart report not a reliable guidepost;- Nuclear Regulatory Commission license terminated in 2019, hard to regain a new license;
- Reestablishing NRC certification for equipment will be difficult;
- Environmental permits must be secured anew or renewed;
- Unclear how much equipment remains and if it’s to be resold for reuse or just scrap;
- Dominion and Santee Cooper not interested in involvement in restart;
- Westinghouse plans for new AP1000s unclear, rhetoric might not be accurate;
- Cost and schedule of new Westinghouse AP1000s unclear; Last-of-a-Kind (LOAK) reactor?
- Ratepayers in South Carolina could be put on the hook again;
- S.C. Public Service Commission and Dominion ratepayers will be involved, can’t be sidelined;
- Federal rhetoric supporting nuclear power won’t carry the day or overcome big obstacles;
- Reactor restart fails to secure funds or protection from South Carolina legislature;
- Highly radioactive spent fuel at new units a challenge;
- When will the community near V.C. Summer be consulted?
Project 2025 agenda revives Nevada’s Yucca Mountain fears
By Judy Treichel, Thursday, Aug. 21, 2025, https://lasvegassun.com/news/2025/aug/21/project-2025-agenda-revives-nevadas-yucca-mountain/ Judy Treichel is the executive director of the Nevada Nuclear Waste Task Force.
A meeting was held in Las Vegas last month, paid for by a Department of Energy grant and hosted by Mothers for Nuclear and Native Nuclear .
The host groups tried to put a friendlier slant on the DOE message, but it was clear that the government and commercial nuclear industry have never gotten out of the rut they have been in from the start: advertise the glory of nuclear power and never get very far into the problem of what to do with the waste.
The purpose of the invitation-only event was to “elicit public feedback on consent-based siting and management of spent nuclear fuel…”
But my takeaway was that they hoped to get the audience to love new nuclear power more than we hate its waste.
The presenters sang the praises of nuclear power and shared frustration with many audience members about how the public was frightened of or opposed to nuclear power after watching “The Simpsons” on TV! There was a brief mention of the disastrous events at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima, but the impression left was that those were now over and that current public fears arose from “The Simpsons”!
Thirty years ago, the DOE was a huge presence in Nevada, studying Yucca Mountain 80 miles northwest of downtown Las Vegas, as the site for underground disposal of the nation’s high-level nuclear waste. Public meetings at that time brought out many longtime residents who related stories about the damage older family members or friends had suffered from widespread exposure to radiation from nuclear weapons testing at the Nevada Test Site. They described how they had been lied to about safety and how there was a lack of accountability for human and property damage. They wanted no part of any future nuclear experiments, be it nuclear power plants or a disposal site for the nation’s high-level nuclear waste.
The Yucca Mountain nuclear waste disposal program was determined to be “unworkable” by the Energy secretary in 2010. It has remained unfunded by Congress since then, but it has not been terminated by law.
When the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 became public, my colleagues and I were dismayed when we saw the recommendation to resume licensing the “unworkable” Yucca Mountain project. It was as if a switch could be flipped and the site’s safety flaws and the long-enduring opposition of Nevadans could be ignored.
Independent scientists determined that Yucca Mountain could not isolate the dangerous radiation for the long time period necessary. Those findings are reflected in the more than 200 contentions filed by Nevada that would have to be adjudicated during any future licensing proceeding.
Project 2025 would give us two unwanted nuclear-related gifts: a nuclear waste repository and a restart to nuclear weapons testing, side by side! The assurances we heard from the DOE at those long-ago meetings were that it had learned lessons during weapons testing. The DOE claimed that safety comes first now. But I’m not so sure.
Were Project 2025’s nuclear goals to be realized, there would be an operating repository at Yucca Mountain. It would have above-ground facilities and a decadeslong national nuclear waste transportation campaign flowing into Nevada on a currently nonexistent 200-plus-milelong rail access corridor to the repository site. Next door would be ground-blasting nuclear weapons testing. and flying over both of those operations would be the training and testing of military planes and drones from Creech Air Force Base. This would surely be a dangerous and untenable combination.
Project 2025 was not friendly to Southern Nevada. In addition to its calls for increased use of nuclear power, it also calls for — and President Donald Trump has largely followed through on — removing federal government support and incentives for solar power. This is shortsighted, as rooftop solar shades the underlying buildings while generating power and drastically reduces the power bills of consumers. Perhaps most importantly, solar power generation does not leave a legacy of lethal waste.
The Department of Energy was right 16 years ago when it announced that a national high-level nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain was unworkable. It still is. Convention attendees and visitors come to our great hotels and meeting venues. Nuclear waste shipments on the railroad tracks behind the hotels and through our downtown area may make some of that business choose other locations. If there was any sort of accident or incident on the tracks within Clark County, the national news services would blast out the images far and wide, and economic damage would occur whether there was radiation released or not.
Las Vegas has a fragile economy, and it is highly dependent on fun and enjoyment. We are becoming a major sports destination, continuing to be home to important conventions and putting on the best shows in the world. We must find ways to make our precious resources available for the worthwhile activities we have, with no backdrop of dreaded nuclear contamination and waste. We need to apply a compatibility test that honors our past and preserves our future.
Pentagon Document: U.S. Wants to “Suppress Dissenting Arguments” Using AI Propaganda.
August 25, 2025, The Intercept
https://theintercept.com/2025/08/25/pentagon-military-ai-propaganda-influence/
The United States hopes to use machine learning to create and distribute propaganda overseas in a bid to “influence foreign target audiences” and “suppress dissenting arguments,” according to a U.S. Special Operations Command document.
SOCOM is looking for a contractor that can “Provide a capability leveraging agentic Al or multi LLM agent systems with specialized roles to increase the scale of influence operations.” So-called “agentic” systems … can be used in conjunction with large language models, or LLMs, like ChatGPT, which generate text based on user prompts.
While much marketing hype orbits around these agentic systems and LLMs for their potential to execute mundane tasks like online shopping and booking tickets, SOCOM believes the techniques could be well suited for running an autonomous propaganda outfit. Whether AI-generated propaganda works remains an open question, but the practice has already been amply documented in the wild.
In May 2024, OpenAI issued a report revealing efforts by Iranian, Chinese, and Russian actors to use the company’s tools to engage in covert influence campaigns, but found none had been particularly successful. The military has a history of manipulating civilian populations for political or ideological purposes. A troubling example was uncovered in 2024, when Reuters reported the Defense Department had operated a clandestine anti-vax social media campaign.
Donald Trump orders ‘take down’ of 44-year-old peace vigil opposite White House.
The White House Peace Vigil has stood near the White House since 1981, calling for global disarmament. After a reporter asked about the “eyesore” tent, Donald Trump said he will look into taking it down.
One of the world’s longest-running peace vigils could be under threat after Donald Trump ordered to “take it down”.
The White House Peace Vigil, which has stood near the president’s residence since 1981, is a tent manned around the clock in a call for peace and global disarmament.
Flanked by various anti-war placards, the small blue tent was described as an “eyesore” by a reporter from conservative outlet Real America’s Voice, who asked Mr Trump about it.
“Take it down, today, right now,” he said, after asking where the tent is and claiming he hadn’t heard of it.
“We’re going to look into it right now.”
On Friday night, police were seen talking to what appeared to be demonstrators near the vigil, in Lafayette Park, across the street from the White House.
The vigil-keeper Philipos Melaku-Bello was seen hugging another protester, who feared the 44-year-old site could be torn down.
It follows another threat against the vigil earlier this year, when Representative Jeff Van Drew wrote a letter to the Interior Department describing the site as a “24-7 eyesore”.
In the letter, shared by the Washington Post, he said people have “every right to protest their government”, but not to “hijack a national park and turn it into a 24/7 eyesore”.
The site of the vigil is in a park run by the National Park Service (NPS), which stipulates this tent must be manned at all times to remain standing.
In 2013, the vigil was briefly taken down by park police when it was found abandoned.
Organisers said the man responsible for staying at the tent overnight that day was a veteran who had an episode of post-traumatic stress disorder.
Renaming Defense Dept. War Dept. wrong but accurately describes deranged US perpetual war policy
7 September 2025 AIMN Editorial By Walt Zlotow, https://theaimn.net/renaming-defense-dept-war-dept-wrong-but-accurately-describes-deranged-us-perpetual-war-policy/
President Trump’s Executive Order renaming the Department of Defense the Department of War disgraces and dishonours everything America should stand for in the community of nations.
What is that? Most importantly, peace and tranquility in our dealings with the other 192 UN states.
Early on Presidents George Washington and John Quincy Adams set the tone for this wise governing agenda.
Washington, in his Farewell Address on September 19, 1796 warned against foreign entanglements and alliances that could lead to war and jeopardise American independence and prosperity.
Before he was President, then Secretary of State John Quincy Adams advised on July 4, 1821 that America:
“… goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own. She will commend the general cause by the countenance of her voice, and the benignant sympathy of her example. She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom. The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force… She might become the dictatress of the world. She would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit.”
Washington and Adams both spoke when America had a Department of War, but not a Military Industrial Complex such as the one that arose following WWII to wage perpetual war. Tho the US embarked on 80 years of senseless wars and regime change operations worldwide, it sugarcoated its belligerence by renaming the War Department, Defense. The only connection to defense was America’s willingness to intervene, even make war, wherever, whenever it suited America’s ‘defense’ of its unipolar world dominance.
So when Trump decreed it’s no longer defense but war at the Pentagon, he truly reflects our foreign policy enabling Israeli genocide in Gaza, destroying Ukraine to weaken, isolate Russia, preparing for war with China over Taiwan, obliterating a Venezuelan ship to “send a massage”, repeatedly bombing imagined bad guys in Somalia… and on and on.
If America doesn’t succeed in triggering nuclear war first, it would be wise to seek a third name change for the folks working at the Pentagon, CIA and a myriad of other perpetual war facilities. How about a Department of Peace? Then make peace, not war, its governing mission.
The U.S. visa cancellations for Palestinians mark another step towards West Bank annexation.
Mondoweiss, 7 Sept 25
The cancellation of visas for Palestinian officials is part of a a wider effort by Israel and the U.S. to prevent international recognition of a Palestinian state, and to further Trump’s grandiose plans for Gaza and Israel’s plans for the West Bank.
Mondoweiss, By Mitchell Plitnick , September 5, 2025
Last week, the U.S. State Department revoked visas for leaders of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), including Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. That effectively blocked them from attending the upcoming United Nations General Assembly session in New York.
Abbas had hoped to address the assembly, where France and Saudi Arabia are planning to co-chair a meeting intended to salvage the long-dead and mythical “two-state solution.” The assembly is also expected to see a number of European states respond to Israel’s genocide in Gaza with recognition of Palestinian statehood. Of course, the recognition is largely symbolic and ineffective, given that no Palestinian state actually exists, thanks to Israel.
The U.S. claims its decision is based on “security concerns,” but this is obviously nonsense. A delegation from the PLO or Palestinian Authority presents no security issues. On the contrary, Abbas has lost all the legitimacy he once had many years ago due to his kowtowing to Israeli demands and American pressure in the vain hope that this would win the Palestinians some concessions toward self-governance.
The entirely predictable, and predicted, outcome of the PA’s quisling behavior is that Israel and the United States, under successive administrations and through years of congressional formations, routinely degrade and condescend to it, and offer it no boon or rewards for its genuflection.
The PA has seen Israel seize its tax revenues, and it continues to be demonized as a terrorist organization by virtue of nothing more than being Palestinian. Meanwhile, the Palestinian people living under its threadbare “authority” have lost all faith in the PA after years of “security coordination” with Israel, corruption, ineffective governance, and significant human rights violations against Palestinians, often in service of Israeli concerns and interests.
So no, it is not about the PA being a security threat. This was about sending messages to states recognizing Palestine as a state, and laying the groundwork for continuing the Gaza genocide and moving annexation forward on the West Bank.
When Reagan tried to stifle Yasser Arafat
This isn’t the first time the United States has abused its position as custodian of the United Nations building in New York to prevent a Palestinian leader from addressing the General Assembly. But the circumstances and, especially, the result, were very different the last time.
In November 1988, as Ronald Reagan was serving out the lame duck period of his second term as president, Secretary of State George Shultz denied visas to Yasser Arafat and his PLO delegation, preventing them from addressing the UN General Assembly. The technical excuse Shultz invoked — security concerns — was the same one the current Secretary, Marco Rubio, is using to block Abbas from speaking at the UN.
Other circumstances were markedly different……………………………………………………………………………………………. https://mondoweiss.net/2025/09/the-u-s-visa-cancellations-for-palestinians-marks-another-the-step-towards-west-bank-annexation/
1 This Month
Tell the Ukrainian Government to Drop Prosecution of Peace Activist Yurii Sheliazhenko
Petition to revoke the licensing of the Near Surface Nuclear Disposal Facility (NSDF) at Chalk River. https://www.ourcommons.ca/petitions/en/Petition/Details?Petition=e-7247
of the week – STOP SMALL MODULAR REACTORS IN CANADA
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com
-
Archives
- March 2026 (222)
- February 2026 (268)
- January 2026 (308)
- December 2025 (358)
- November 2025 (359)
- October 2025 (376)
- September 2025 (258)
- August 2025 (319)
- July 2025 (230)
- June 2025 (348)
- May 2025 (261)
- April 2025 (305)
-
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 