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Gaza to Donbass: How Israel and Ukraine Built a Fascist, Transnational War Machine.

 Orinoco Tribune By Sarah B. – Aug 20, 2025

From Bandera to Ben-Gurion, a new axis of ethno-supremacy is rising, fueled by U.S. backing. Same guns. Same flags. Same ideology. Gaza and Donbass are not separate wars. They are one machine.

The Ukraine–Israel Nexus: Pragmatic Alliances Amid Paradoxes and Shared Challenges
From Bandera to Ben-Gurion, echoes of ethno-nationalist revival resonate in the modern trajectories of Ukraine and Israel, two states forged through war, hardened by siege mentalities, and fueled by historical narratives of existential struggle. But these similarities are no accident of parallel development. They reflect a deepening alignment shaped by shared adversaries like Russia and Iran, backed and brokered by the same Western patrons.

In 2022, an officer of Ukraine’s Azov Regiment, toured Israel after surviving the siege of Mariupol. By 2025, Israeli drones were flying missions over Rafah, while American-made PSRL-1 rocket launchers, initially supplied to Ukraine, were spotted in conflict zones across the Middle East. Some experts suggest these may have reached Gaza through black-market channels, though a direct transfer remains unproven. What is undeniable, however, is the convergence of military technologies, intelligence doctrines, and battlefield logistics spanning both theaters.

In April 2022, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, himself a stalwart ally to the Zionist cause, declared that he envisioned Ukraine becoming “a big Israel.” In doing so, he abandoned the pretense of liberal reform and embraced a future defined by permanent militarization, domestic surveillance, and an ideologically mobilized citizenry. Ukraine, he suggested, would survive not by joining Europe’s post-national dream, only by imitating the ethos of a heavily securitized Middle Eastern state.

Zelenskyy’s statement didn’t emerge in a vacuum. It followed decades of quietly intensifying Ukrainian–Israeli ties, in historical memory, military cooperation, tech integration, and shared narratives of victimhood. But it also exposed a deeper and more disturbing fusion. When the president of a country still reckoning with the legacy of the Holocaust and its own fascist collaborators calls for the building of a “Big Israel,” he is not just invoking a model of defense, he is invoking a model of justified violence, permanent siege, and a long tradition of selective memory, one that both Ukraine and Israel have wielded to reconcile uncomfortable historical alliances of culpability.

Just as the OUN’s collaboration with Nazi Germany is selectively reframed within the Ukrainian national mythos, Israel’s founding story often omits its own moments of strategic accommodation with fascism.

In the 1930s and ’40s, elements of the Zionist movement, most notably the Haavara Agreement between Nazi Germany and the Jewish Agency, facilitated Jewish emigration to Palestine while bypassing international boycotts of the Nazi regime. Revisionist factions like Lehi (the Stern Gang) and Irgun Zvai Leumi even sought military cooperation with the Axis powers against the British. These uncomfortable truths, long buried beneath the moral absolutism of Holocaust remembrance, underscore a shared willingness, Ukrainian and Zionist alike, to collaborate with and even become genocidal regimes when national aspirations were at stake.

What binds Gaza and Donbass is not a monolithic “machine of violence” but a transnational matrix of ideological alignment, technical cooperation, and strategic utility. Ukraine’s campaign of “decommunization” often mirrors Israel’s internal securitization and demographic engineering, both clad in the moral armor of historical trauma. In practice, both states justify aggressive internal and external policies through the language of survival.

This article maps the ideological, military, economic, and cultural architecture of the Ukraine–Israel relationship. From Soviet-era tensions to the post-2014 reconfiguration of alliances, we explore how pragmatic imperatives have forged a new axis of ethno-nationalist power, increasingly central to NATO’s long-term vision of regional dominance.

I. Historical Ties
To understand the modern partnership between Ukraine and Israel, one must begin with their shared, and often contradictory past. Ukraine was both a cradle of early Zionism and a site of violent antisemitic pogroms. Movements like Hibbat Zion, emerged in the 1880s in cities like Odessa and Kiev, decades before Theodor Herzl’s more famous Vienna-based political Zionism. Their mission: to restore the Jewish people to their ancestral homeland in Palestine. Ukraine, in this sense, was an incubator for the ideological DNA of the Israeli state……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

…………………….The historical relationship between Israel and Ukraine is not one of ideological clarity. It is a pragmatic evolution, shaped by war, memory, trauma, and strategy. The next sections will examine how these contradictions manifest on the battlefield through weapons, doctrine, personnel, and propaganda, across Gaza and Donbass alike.

Selective Memory: How Competing Genocides Forged Strategic Amnesia
In the narrative war between historical truth and political utility, few examples are as revealing, or as cynical, as the ways Ukraine and Israel have reframed and often embellished their respective traumas to enable strategic cooperation.

By the 1980s, Ukrainian nationalist émigrés began aggressively promoting the 1932–33 Soviet famine, or Holodomor, as the “Ukrainian Holocaust.” This was a calculated response to the rising global awareness of Jewish suffering, spurred by the 1978 NBC miniseries Holocaust, which explicitly portrayed Ukrainians as Nazi collaborators. For diaspora groups still loyal to Stepan Bandera’s legacy, the documentary posed a threat to their rehabilitated image, which they had worked fervently to whitewash. In turn, they constructed a counter-narrative of equal, if not greater, Ukrainian victimhood, one that would cast the Soviet state as genocidal and reframe Ukrainian history through the lens of national martyrdom.

This rhetorical project relied on inflating death tolls,………………………………………………………………..

The result is a pact built on strategic amnesia: a cold alliance between two states whose foundational traumas have been rewritten to serve military alignment, ideological affinity, and common enemies………………………….

…………II. Blood Ties and Battle Lines: Commanders, Crusaders, and Collaborators
The machinery of transnational warfare is not only built with weapons, laws, and doctrines, but with men. Individuals who embody the ideological convergence between Zionist ethno-nationalism and Ukrainian fascism do not operate in the shadows; they are often celebrated, recruited, and strategically deployed across theaters like Gaza and Donbass. These figures serve as ideological evangelists, field commanders, propaganda tools, and networking nodes between far-right militias, Western intelligence networks, and private security structures.

Some are Azov veterans turned actors and influencers. Others are American-Israeli contractors building bridges between Tel Aviv and Kiev. ……………………..

Continue reading →

August 28, 2025 Posted by | Israel, politics international, Reference, Ukraine | Leave a comment

Unaudited Power: The Military Budget That Nobody Controls

 August 26, 2025 By Ellen Brown ScheerPost, https://scheerpost.com/2025/08/26/ellen-brown-unaudited-power-the-military-budget-nobody-controls/

The U.S. federal debt has now passed $37 trillion and is growing at the rate of $1 trillion every five months. Interest on the debt exceeds $1 trillion annually, second only to Social Security in the federal budget. The military outlay is also close to $1 trillion, consuming nearly half of the discretionary budget.  

As a sovereign nation, the United States could avoid debt altogether by simply paying for the budget deficit with Treasury-issued “Greenbacks,” as Abraham Lincoln’s government did. But I have written on that before (see here and here), so this article will focus on that other elephant in the room, the Department of Defense.

Under the Constitution, the military budget should not be paid at all, because the Pentagon has never passed an audit. Expenditures of public funds without a public accounting violate Article 1, Section 9, Clause 7of the Constitution, which provides:

“No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law; and a regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and Expenditures of all public Money shall be published from time to time.” 

The Pentagon failed its seventh financial audit in 2024, with 63% of its $4.1 trillion in assets—approximately $2.58 trillion—untracked. From 1998 to 2015, it failed to account for $21 trillion in spending. 

As concerning today as the financial burden is the wielding of secret power. Pres. Dwight Eisenhower warned in his 1961 farewell address, “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”  

Pres. John F. Kennedy echoed that concern, warning in 1961 that “secret societies” and excessive secrecy are “repugnant in a free and open society,” threatening democracy by withholding truth from the public. He warned that excessive concealment, even for national security, undermines democracy by denying citizens the facts needed to hold power accountable. “No expenditure is questioned, no rumor is printed, no secret is revealed,” he said.  If untracked billions fund classified programs, citizens are left powerless, governed by a shadow entity answerable to no one. 

Those concerns persist today. On Aug. 13, 2025, Joe Rogan interviewed U.S. Representative Anna Paulina Luna, who leads a House Oversight Committee focused on government transparency regarding various topics, including UAPs (Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena, formerly UFOs). Luna said the committee had been formed after she and two other congressmen were denied access at Eglin Air Force Base to information on UAPs provided by whistleblowers. The problem, she said, was that Congress was supposed to represent the public and be an investigative body for it, “and you have unelected people operating basically in secrecy. … I think this goes all the way back even to JFK, with how they basically have operated outside of the purview of Congress and basically… have gone rogue ….” 

A Behemoth Without Oversight

The Department of Defense’s $885.7 billion budget for 2025, approved by the House of Representatives, dwarfs the military spending of China ($296 billion), Russia ($84 billion), and the next eight nations combined. Managing $4.1 trillion in assets—from aircraft carriers to secret drones—along with $4.3 trillion in liabilities (e.g. personnel costs and pensions), the federal government’s largest agency oversees a military empire spanning over 4,790 sites worldwide. Yet it operates with minimal oversight. 

The Chief Financial Officers Act of 1990 mandated audits for all federal agencies, but the National Defense Authorization Act of 2018 delayed the Pentagon’s first department-wide audit to 2018 due to its unwieldy size, its decentralized systems, and its outdated software. The DOD has failed every audit since that time. In 2024, it could not account for its $824 billion FY 2024 budget, with 2,500 new audit issues identified. Of 24 reporting entities, only nine received clean opinions, while 15 received disclaimers due to insufficient data. In fact the Government Accountability Office (GAO) has flagged DoD financial management as high-risk for waste, fraud, and abuse ever since 1995. 

As observed in a January 2019 article in Rolling Stone by Matt Taibbi, openly secret budgets were first legalized in 1949 with the passage of the Central Intelligence Agency Act, which exempted that newly created agency from public financial disclosure. The Act stated, “The sums made available to the Agency may be expended without regard to the provisions of law and regulations related to the expenditure of Government funds.” 

The aim of the Chief Financial Officers Act of 1990 was to curb billions of dollars said to be lost each year through fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement of public budgets. Despite the mandated audits for all federal agencies, the DoD – the only major agency without a clean audit – has received $3.9 trillion in congressionally approved funding since 2018. “Every year that members of Congress vote to boost Pentagon spending with no strings attached,” observed federal budgeting expert Lindsay Kosgharian, “they choose to spend untold billions on weapons and war with no accountability.”


The Audit the Pentagon Act of 2023, backed by Sens. Bernie Sanders and Chuck Grassley, proposes docking 0.5–1% of budgets for audit failures, but the measure has not received a vote.

The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), launched with promises to strip waste, fraud, and abuse from federal agencies, has conspicuously sidestepped the Pentagon. A June 2025 article titled “Why DOGE Was Always Doomed: The Pentagon Problem,” points out that the DOGE mission was seriously hampered by the Pentagon’s exemption from auditing:

In FY 2024, total discretionary spending was about $1.6 trillion. Of that, the Pentagon alone received $842 billion. In other words, it got more funding than all other departments combined. You read that right: one (very special) department received more than all the rest put together.

Funds that are not accounted for divert resources from critical needs like troop readiness, healthcare, and infrastructure. Overbilling by contractors enriches corporations while taxpayers foot the bill. And the lack of transparency erodes public confidence, as Americans struggle with domestic priorities. 

The Missing $21 Trillion: Fraud, Waste or Something Worse?

The Pentagon’s audit failures mask not just inefficiency and waste but pervasive fraud and corruption. Between 1998 and 2015, Inspector General reports show that the DoD could not account for $21 trillion in spending—65% of federal spending during that period. For perspective, the entire U.S. GDP in 2015 was $18.2 trillion. In 2023, the agency failed to document 63% of its $3.8 trillion in assets, up from 61% the prior year. A 2015 DoD report identifying $125 billion in administrative waste was suppressed to protect budget increases.

There is plenty of verified waste to support the case for mismanagement. Military contractors, who receive over half of the Pentagon’s budget, are a major culprit. The F-35 program, managed by Lockheed Martin, was reported in 2021 to be $165 billion over budget, with $220 billion in spare parts poorly tracked. A 2023 CBS News investigation found that contractors routinely overcharged by 40–50%, with some markups reaching 4,451%. A 2016 report in the Nation highlighted $640 for a toilet seat and $7,600 for a coffee pot.  

It is no longer even necessary to cover up fraud and corruption by wildly inflated prices. In 2017, former HUD official Catherine Austin Fitts collaborated with Mark Skidmore, an economics professor at Michigan State University, to document the missing $21 trillion in unsupported journal voucher adjustments at the DoD and HUD. In a June 2025 article published in Fitts’ journal The Solari Report titled “Should We Care about Secrecy in Financial Reporting?,” Dr. Skidmore discussed how the government responded to the publication of his research with Fitts. Its response was to immediately eliminate the paper trail leading to its covert financial operations. In particular, “Pentagon officials turned to the Federal Accounting Standards Advisory Board (FASAB) for advice. Several months later, FASAB posted a new document (FASAB 56), which recommended that the government be allowed to misstate and move funds to conceal expenditures if it is deemed necessary to protect national security interests.” 


Fitts remarked, “The White House and Congress just opened a pipeline into the back of the US Treasury, and announced to every private army, mercenary and thug in the world that we are open for business.”

Speculation Run Rampant

In a widely-viewed interview by Tucker Carlson on April 28, 2025, Fitts expressed her belief that the missing trillions had been funneled into classified projects involving advanced technologies, including massive underground bunkers to protect elites from a “near-extinction event;” and that they were using advanced energy systems and hidden transit networks possibly linked to extraterrestrial tech. She discussed “interdimensional intelligence” and a secret space program linked to a “breakaway civilization.” The latter term was coined by UFO researcher Richard Dolan and is defined by Google as “a theoretical, hidden society that operates outside of mainstream civilization with advanced technology, often linked to UFO phenomena and secret space programs.” 

In a Danny Jones interview in May 2025, Fitts alluded to Deep Underground Military Bases (“DUMBs”), perhaps used for “advanced technology or off-world operations.” Existence of these bases was confirmed two decades earlier by whistleblower Philip Schneider, a U.S. government geologist and engineer involved in their construction. In his last presentation in 1995, Schneider said there were 131 of these cities connected underground by mag-lev rail, built at a cost of $17-26 billion each. According to his biographer, Schneider was assassinated in 1996 by a U.S. intelligence agency for disclosing the government cover-up of UFOs and aliens. 

Too over the top? Perhaps, but the Pentagon is so secretive that the public is left to speculate. Are we dealing with a scenario like that in such Hollywood movies as the 1997 film Men in Black, in which hidden forces—human or alien—control our fate?

The Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) contends that no verifiable evidence supports extraterrestrial activity. But other prominent figures support the UFO/UAP narrative. In 2017, the New York Times exposed the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP), said to be a $22 million DoD initiative run by Luis Elizondo investigating UAPs from 2007–2012. 

According to BBC News, Haim Eshed, former head of Israel’s space security program, claimed in a 2020 interview with the Yediot Aharonot newspaper that the U.S. government has an “agreement” with a “Galactic Federation” of extraterrestrials. He alleged aliens have been in contact with the U.S. and Israel, with secret underground bases where they collaborate on experiments. Eshed claimed the United States was on the verge of disclosing this under President Trump but withheld it to avoid “mass hysteria.” The claims were unverified but provocative. 

In recent years, Congress has increased its focus on UAPs, with high-profile hearings in 2022, 2023, and 2024. In 2023, whistleblower David Grusch, a former intelligence officer, testified that the U.S. possesses “non-human origin” craft and “dead pilots,” based on classified briefings. On November 13, 2024, the House Oversight Committee’s hearing, “Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena: Exposing the Truth,” featured testimony from Luis Elizondo, retired Navy Rear Admiral Tim Gallaudet, journalist Michael Shellenberger, and former NASA official Michael Gold, who claimed the U.S. possesses UAP technologies and has harmed personnel in secret retrieval programs. Shellenberger alleged that a covert “Immaculate Constellation” program hides UAP data from Congress.

Some lawmakers, including Rep. Luna and Rep. Tim Burchett, continue to criticize Pentagon secrecy and to push for transparency. In May 2024, Burchett introduced the UAP Transparency Act, requiring the declassification of all UAP-related documents within 270 days. He stated:

This bill isn’t all about finding little green men or flying saucers, it’s about forcing the Pentagon and federal agencies to be transparent with the American people. I’m sick of hearing bureaucrats telling me these things don’t exist while we’ve spent millions of taxpayer dollars on studying them for decades. 

Secrecy Undermines Democracy

With $21 trillion unaccounted for historically, $165 billion in F-35 overruns, and $125 billion in buried waste, the DoD’s financial mismanagement needs urgent reform. Congress is primarily responsible for overseeing the DoD budget, exercising its constitutional “power of the purse” under Article 1 of the U.S. Constitution. So why isn’t it enforcing this mandate? 

The chief excuse given is the need for secrecy for security reasons, but a congressional committee could be given access to the Pentagon’s financial data in closed session in order to exercise public oversight and enforce accountability. Other factors are obviously at play, including political influence, lobbying, campaign contributions from the defense sector, and a lack of penalties for noncompliance. 

To restore accountability, Congress needs to enforce the Audit the Pentagon Act, modernize DoD systems, and investigate contractors profiting from lax oversight. UAP transparency is also critical, whether to debunk myths or uncover truths. 

As taxpayers footing the bill, we are entitled to know not only where our money is being spent but who is really in charge of our government. The Pentagon’s secrecy and lack of accountability could be shielding anything from contractor fraud to UAP programs and alien alliances. If there is information so secret that even our elected representatives don’t have access to it, who does have access? Is there a secret government above the government we know? Without fiscal transparency and accountability, we can no longer call ourselves a democracy, as JFK warned. 

August 28, 2025 Posted by | business and costs, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Indonesia Bets On Thorcon’s Molten Salt Reactor, But History Suggests Trouble Ahead.

Indonesia has none of the ingredients that historically led to nuclear success. It has no prior nuclear fleet, no experience operating reactors, no large-scale nuclear workforce, no plans to build nuclear weapons and no tradition of standardized reactor builds.

Michael Barnard, Clean Technica, 27 Aug 25

Indonesia has taken a bold and likely problematic step with the announcement of its first, early stage regulatory approval for a nuclear power project. Thorcon International, a Singapore-based developer of molten salt reactors, has received permission from Indonesia’s regulator to evaluate a site for a demonstration plant on Kelasa Island. For a country of more than 270 million people with electricity demand that is still growing rapidly, this might appear to be a turning point. Yet if one examines history, technology, and the context in which this project is being launched, the chances of it succeeding look vanishingly small.

Indonesia is the world’s largest archipelago, stretching across more than 17,000 islands, with only about 6,000 of them inhabited. This geography creates enormous challenges for the national grid, which is fragmented into multiple regional systems rather than a single interconnected backbone. Java and Sumatra host most of the country’s transmission infrastructure, while many outlying islands depend on small isolated grids. Remote communities often rely on diesel generators for electricity, which are expensive to operate and create significant local pollution…………………………………………………………….

 the government has announced a target of 10 GW of nuclear capacity by 2040, marking its first commitment to nuclear power.

If delivered, these additions would lift renewables to roughly 35% of the national mix while also introducing nuclear into the system for the first time. Looking further ahead, Indonesia targets 75 GW of new renewable capacity by 2035, supported by more than 10 GW of storage, reflecting the scale of investment needed to diversify away from coal and meet climate commitments.

Nuclear power has only succeeded when certain conditions were in place. In the mid-twentieth century, large economies aligned nuclear energy programs with nuclear weapons programs. They standardized on one design, built dozens of gigawatt-scale plants in sequence, trained workforces through government-led programs, and maintained focus for decades. Those programs were not efficient by today’s standards, but they were coherent and well-resourced.

Countries that did not follow that formula, such as Canada’s stop-start approach with CANDUs or the the last couple of decades of western nuclear reactor builds, ended up with mixed results and rising costs. Even China, which has mastered megaproject delivery, is struggling with nuclear because it has spread effort across too many designs and has not locked into the necessary standardization. While nuclear advocates in the west point to China’s build out as impressive, it is years behind on targets and falling further behind. It only achieved its 2020 target in 2024, is still well under its 2% of grid capacity target for 2025 and its scheduled construction through 2030 will leave it tens of GW off that target.

Indonesia has none of the ingredients that historically led to nuclear success. It has no prior nuclear fleet, no experience operating reactors, no large-scale nuclear workforce, no plans to build nuclear weapons and no tradition of standardized reactor builds. It’s not building dozens of standard and proven GW-scale reactors, but only 10 GW in total, starting with a 500 MW unproven design, and not necessarily repeating that one solution multiple times. So far they appear to have little political opposition to nuclear, but that doesn’t mean the bipartisan support required for a two to four decade strategic national construction program. The country is signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and has eliminated highly enriched uranium that might be transferable to nuclear weapons from the countyr, so there is military strategic alignment and discipline to call upon.

The choice of a molten salt reactor adds another layer of difficulty. Molten salt designs were first tested at Oak Ridge in the 1960s. They worked in the lab but ran into issues with corrosion, material embrittlement, plugging of salt lines, and complex chemistry that had to be actively managed. They never scaled beyond a few megawatts of thermal output. In recent years, startups from North America to Scandinavia have revived the concept, promising walk-away safety and lower costs. Yet not a single one has delivered a commercial plant. Thorcon itself has never built or operated a reactor, anywhere. It is proposing to build large sealed modules in shipyards and tow them to Indonesia, an approach that exists only on paper.

……………………………..Germany tried thorium in its pebble-bed reactor, and India built an entire nuclear strategy around its domestic thorium reserves, planning a three-stage cycle that would eventually rely on advanced heavy water reactors fueled with uranium-233 bred from thorium. Yet in every case, thorium stopped short of commercial deployment. The complexity of fuel handling, the need for an initial fissile inventory of uranium or plutonium, and the sheer momentum of the uranium-fueled reactor fleet kept thorium in the category of “promising but not delivered.”

Thorcon’s original vision was built on thorium’s promise. Its very name, short for “Thorium Concept,” signaled an intention to commercialize molten salt reactors running on a thorium cycle. Early designs envisioned dissolving thorium in molten fluoride salt, breeding uranium-233 in situ, and demonstrating the fuel’s long-touted advantages. But as the company moved from concept to trying to build an actual plant in Indonesia, pragmatism set in. For a first-of-a-kind power reactor, relying on thorium would mean untested chemistry, uncertain licensing pathways, and even greater risk.

Indonesia’s proposed demonstration plant is therefore designed to run on conventional low-enriched uranium fuel dissolved in molten salt, not thorium. Thorium remains a potential long-term option in the design, but the Indonesian reactor will take the easier, more familiar path to get the project off the ground. In other words, while Thorcon began as a bet on thorium, its first potential real-world deployment has been scaled back to uranium, underscoring how thorium continues to hover at the edge of nuclear power rather than forming its core.

Bent Flyvbjerg’s work on megaprojects should be a warning. He has shown repeatedly that nine out of ten large projects go over budget and over schedule, and nuclear projects are consistently among the very worst. The average nuclear build is more than 100% over budget and about a decade late. Add in the fact that this is a first-of-a-kind reactor by a company with no track record, in a country with no nuclear infrastructure, and the probability of delivering on time, on budget, and at promised cost of electricity falls close to zero. Even if the project is eventually completed, it will almost certainly take much longer and cost much more than advertised, and the benefits to Indonesia will not match the rhetoric.

The alternative paths are clearer and less risky. Indonesia sits on some of the world’s richest geothermal resources and has significant hydro potential. Solar costs continue to fall and the archipelago has ample land and rooftops for deployment. With investment in storage, interconnections, and grid modernization, these resources could supply reliable and cheap electricity without the risks of nuclear. International partnerships like the Just Energy Transition Partnership are already funneling billions into renewables and grid upgrades. Building out this system is not trivial, but it does not carry the weight of unproven technologies, uncertain regulation, and the specter of megaproject failure that Thorcon does.

……………………..A better bet would be to double down on renewables, expand storage, and build the transmission backbone to connect islands and balance supply. That path has its own challenges but rests on proven technologies already delivering results worldwide. Indonesia has made a bold gesture toward nuclear. The sober assessment is that it will not pay off. https://cleantechnica.com/2025/08/26/indonesia-bets-on-thorcons-molten-salt-reactor-but-history-suggests-trouble-ahead/

August 28, 2025 Posted by | Indonesia, politics, thorium | Leave a comment

Iran parliament presses government to apply law limiting IAEA cooperation

 Iran’s parliament on Tuesday urged the Foreign Ministry and Atomic
Energy Organization to fully implement existing legislation limiting
cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency, amid growing
pressure from Western powers and renewed nuclear talks in Geneva. In a
strongly worded statement, the National Security and Foreign Policy
Committee of Iran’s parliament described IAEA chief Rafael Grossi as “a
servant of the US and the Zionist regime,” accusing him of siding with
hostile powers and remaining silent over attacks on Iranian nuclear sites,
according to remarks published by state media.

 Iran International 26th Aug 2025, https://www.iranintl.com/en/202508262134

August 28, 2025 Posted by | Iran, politics international | Leave a comment

UN inspectors back in Iran as IAEA chief gets protection over Tehran threat

 The UN nuclear watchdog’s inspectors have returned to Iran after their
expulsion during a brief war with Israel and the US, IAEA chief Rafael
Grossi said Tuesday, amid reports he has been placed under 24/7 protection
following Iran’s threat to his life. “Now the first team of IAEA inspectors
is back in Iran, and we are about to restart,” International Atomic Energy
Agency (IAEA) director general Grossi said. Grossi, who was in Washington
DC for the annual meeting of the Institute of Nuclear Materials Management,
stopped short of saying there was an agreement or timeline for them to
resume their work. “When it comes to Iran, as you know, there are many
facilities. Some were attacked, some were not. So we are discussing what
kind of modalities, practical modalities, can be implemented in order to
facilitate the restart of our work there.”

 Iran International 26th Aug 2025, https://www.iranintl.com/en/202508265100

August 28, 2025 Posted by | Iran, politics international | Leave a comment

Israel Bombs Gaza Hospital, Kills 5 Journalists from AP, Al Jazeera, Reuters, NBC

 August 26, 2025 

Transcript………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… https://www.democracynow.org/2025/8/25/gaza_journalists

August 28, 2025 Posted by | Israel, media | Leave a comment

How France’s nuclear dream became a financial nightmare

Decades of neglect, spiralling costs and political denial have turned France’s once-vaunted nuclear program into a cautionary tale, writes Jean-Luc Porquet (translated by Dr Evan Jones).

By Jean-Luc Porquet | 22 August 2025, https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/how-frances-nuclear-dream-became-a-financial-nightmare,20076

Translator’s note: The French nuclear power sector is in deep trouble technically and financially. Formally a cheap source of power, embedded costs have not been counted. There has been a dramatic loss of skills over the decades, inhibiting effective maintenance of existing plants and turning the construction of France’s then most powerful reactor at Flamanville on the Normandy coast into a nightmare.

Technological and resource challenges have escalated, including water availability in the face of climate change. The plan to bury accumulated highly radioactive waste at Bure, 250 kilometres east of Paris, remains at an impasse. And the political class lives in denial.

Meanwhile, sections of the Coalition parties cling to nuclear power as Australia’s post-coal salvation. Australia has uranium. However, regarding nuclear power prospects, there is no history, no capacities, no acceptable locations, no acceptable burial sites and no water. In short, local nuclear power adherents have no brains.

EVERYTHING WAS SUPPOSED to work to plan.

The 58 French nuclear reactors built at an accelerated pace between 1977 and 1996 were due to tranquilly finish their life after 30 years of good and faithful service. And the new super-powerful EPRs [European Pressurised Reactors], designed and built by Éléctricité de France, were to effect a seamless transition.

It was estimated that, by 2012, the first French EPR would be put into operation at Flamanville.

Kapow! Not only has its cost, initially fixed at €3.3 billion [AU$5.9 billion], multiplied by six (!), but its construction site has proved a nightmare. The EPR was connected to the grid only in 2024. And it has hardly run since (it is currently in shutdown).

An emergency patch-up job has been necessary on the aged French nuclear park so that its tired reactors can hang on for another 20 years. Total cost of this major overhaul now in progress: €100 billion [AU$180 billion].

At the moment when the urgent necessity to find €40 billion [AU$72 billion] in economies for the 2026 budget obsesses the Bayrou Government [under pressure from Brussels], Reporterre publishes on YouTube a remarkable documentary by journalist Laure Noualhat, titled Nucléaire – Comment il va ruiner la France. (See also Noulhat’s book, Le nucléaire va ruiner la France, Seuil-Reporterre, 224p.) It is noted there that, in the fairytale world that is nuclear energy, billions waltz out by the dozens. The golden rule is: “Whatever it costs!”

Other inescapable costs to come? To prolong the life of the plant at The Hague, where nuclear fuel is processed and which is at the end of its life — rough estimate: €34 billion [AU$61 billion]. To continue to dig deep at Bure, where the most dangerous nuclear waste will be buried 500 metres below ground — estimated cost: €35 billion [AU$63 billion]. To dismantle the 58 reactors, which, even patched up, will finish by being at the end of their life in ten or 20 years — cost: €50 billion. Total: €219 billion [AU$395.8 billion] to find. This is not all.

The EDF has sold an EPR to Finland for €3 billion [AU$5.4 billion] and two others to the United Kingdom for €22 billion [AU$39.7 billion]. And has promised to take care of any additional costs. Such comes in at €12 billion [AU$21.6 billion] for the former, €56 billion [AU$101 billion] for the latter. Do the maths.

Thomas Piquemal, the EDF’s chief financial officer at the time, went into meltdown. And resigned [in March 2016]. And this is not all.

In 2022, President Macron announced that, at his demand, the EDF will launch six “new generation” EPRs [initially, then eight more to 2050]. Hand on heart, it will happen (in fact, one knows nothing about them). Estimated total price: €100 billion [AU$180.7 billion] (more or less). A former EDF Director, Philippe Huet, interviewed by Laure Noualhat, called this a “crazy gamble”.

If ever this delusional program (transparently dismissed by the Cour des comptes [equivalent to the National Audit Office] as inadvisable) sees the day, who will pay for it? Not the EDF, already indebted to the tune of €55 billion [AU$99 billion]. Nor any private investor (not mad!). Guess… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjfHyhkpef8

Jean-Luc Porquet has been a journalist at Le Canard enchaîné since 1994, where this article appeared on 9 July. He writes a column on ecology and technocratic society, as well as theatre reviews. He has written a dozen books, the latest of which, Le grand procès des animaux, is a satirical fictional account of the sixth extinction in progress.

August 27, 2025 Posted by | France, politics | Leave a comment

‘Nuclear Priests’ could warn future people about wastes under the Irish Sea

 When Sir Keir Starmer entered No 10 last summer, it did not take long for
him to pick up where his predecessors left off on delivering more nuclear
power stations with a promise to “build, baby, build”. The Prime
Minister has vowed to “fast forward on nuclear” and so far has stuck
true to his word, with the Government taking up a larger stake in the
Sizewell C power plant in Suffolk, while loosening planning rules to allow
new small modular reactors to be built across the country.

But with the push for more nuclear power, bringing with it a steady supply of low-carbon energy, the question is inevitably asked: what do you do with all the
nuclear waste?

The answer is to dig a hole nearly the size of Wembley
Stadium 1km down beneath the Irish Sea, that could one day see the rise of
a new “atomic priesthood” and even, some have jokingly claimed, the
creation of glow in the dark cats.

But policymakers are aware that to push
ahead with this new nuclear drive, they will need to develop a stable,
long-term storage facility in which to hold not just future nuclear waste,
but all the nuclear waste the country has produced since the dawn of the
nuclear energy age in the 1950s. This is what the proposed Geological
Disposal Facility will provide.

And when they say long term, they mean long
term. “The purpose of the facility is to keep the radioactivity away from
humans and the environment so that it can’t cause harm for a sufficient
period of time – and that’s of the order of a few hundred thousand
years,” Neil Hyatt, Chief Scientific Adviser at the Nuclear Waste
Services, tells The i Paper.

 iNews 24th Aug 2025, https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/nuclear-priests-glowing-cats-how-warn-future-generations-atomic-danger-3875319

August 27, 2025 Posted by | UK, wastes | Leave a comment

Report: Smotrich Told IDF Chief That Anyone Who Doesn’t Evacuate Gaza City Can ‘Die of Hunger or Surrender’

Israel’s Channel 12 also reported that Netanyahu has said he has Trump’s full support for the planned offensive to take over Gaza City but has limited time

by Dave DeCamp | August 24, 2025, https://news.antiwar.com/2025/08/24/report-smotrich-told-idf-chief-that-anyone-who-doesnt-evacuate-gaza-city-can-die-of-hunger-or-surrender/

Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has told the head of the Israeli military that anyone who remains in Gaza City after an IDF evacuation order can “die of hunger or surrender,” The Times of Israel reported on Saturday, citing a TV report from Israel’s Channel 12.

“We ordered you [to carry out] a quick operation. In my opinion, you can besiege them,” Smotrich reportedly told IDF Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir. “Whoever doesn’t evacuate, don’t let them. No water, no electricity, they can die of hunger or surrender. This is what we want and your capable [of doing it].”

The Channel 12 report said that during the same meeting, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer said that President Trump fully supports Israe’s plans to conquer Gaza City, which involves the forced displacement of over 1 million civilians amid a famine in the area, but that the US president wants a quick and decisive operation.

Thousands of Palestinians have fled Gaza City amid ramped-up Israeli attacks in the area, but there’s been no sign of a mass evacuation despite Israel’s orders to leave. Palestinians in Gaza City have rejected the idea of another displacement since most of them have been forced to move many times, and they don’t believe the area they’re being told to flee to will be much safer since the IDF continues to bomb the south.

The Palestinians in Gaza City are also likely aware that Israel’s plans involve the complete destruction of the city, which means they almost certainly won’t be able to return. The IDF has told the Israeli government that it will likely take months or possibly over a year to demolish the city.

The Channel 12 report said that Zamir clashed with Smotrich and Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir over the length of time the plan to take over Gaza City will take. Smotrich’s call to starve the remaining Palestinians to death aligns with previous comments he has made.

In April of this year, about a month after Israel imposed a total blockade on Gaza, Smotrich said Israel wouldn’t allow a “grain of wheat” to enter the Strip. Last year, Smotrich said at a conference that it may be “justified and moral” for Israel to starve two million Palestinians to death, but that the world wouldn’t allow it to happen.

“We are bringing in aid because there is no choice,” Smotrich said in August 2024. “We can’t, in the current global reality, manage a war. Nobody will let us cause 2 million civilians to die of hunger even though it might be justified and moral until our hostages are returned.”

August 27, 2025 Posted by | Atrocities, Gaza, Israel | Leave a comment

Why has Donald Trump not spoken out about the famine in Gaza? – Inside Story

26 Aug 2025 Al Jazeera

A global hunger monitor, backed by the United Nations, has declared famine in Gaza City and the surrounding areas. The confirmation that Israel has engineered a man-made catastrophe prompted outrage from many nations, with a notable exception.

Neither the White House nor the US State Department has uttered a word in response. While Israel says it’s ‘an outright lie’, how much longer can the US remain silent? Is that silence an implicit go-ahead for the Israeli military’s large-scale assault on Gaza City and the drip-feeding of aid?

August 27, 2025 Posted by | Gaza, Israel, USA | Leave a comment

Eighteen Palestinians Starve to Death in Gaza Over Three Days Due to Israeli Siege

The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) has confirmed that famine is taking place in Gaza City.

by Dave DeCamp | August 24, 2025, https://news.antiwar.com/2025/08/24/eighteen-palestinians-starve-to-death-in-gaza-over-three-days-due-to-israeli-siege/

Gaza hospitals have recorded 18 more malnutrition deaths in Gaza over the past three days, according to press releases from Gaza’s Health Ministry, as Palestinians continue to starve due to the US-backed Israeli siege.

In its latest release on Sunday, the Health Ministry said at least eight Palestinians, including one child, had starved to death over the previous 24-hour period. “This brings the total number of victims of famine and malnutrition to 289, including 115 children,” the ministry said.

On Friday, the UN-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) confirmed that famine was taking place in the Gaza Governorate, which includes Gaza City and nearby towns, and that more than 500,000 people in the area were facing “catastrophic conditions characterised by starvation, destitution and death.”

The IPC said that conditions are expected to worsen and that between mid-August and the end of September, famine is expected spread to Deir el-Balah, central Gaza, and Khan Younis in the south.

The Israeli government and its supporters are denying that famine is occurring, pointing to the fact that many children suffering from severe malnutrition had pre-existing medical conditions. But the most vulnerable are always the first to be impacted when famine sets in, and there have been many cases recorded of people suffering from severe malnutrition who have no pre-existing conditions.

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz published a report on August 21 based on virtual tours of hospitals and health centers in Gaza that examined the cases of 27 children and found that 17 of them “deteriorated into a state of severe malnutrition without preexisting health conditions” while 10 suffered from previous illnesses.

“Based on our conversations, a simple fact emerged: Anyone who claims that the images of starvation in the Strip are a result of acute genetic or other diseases, and not due to a grave shortage of food, are lying to themselves,” the report said.

The IPC said that in order to prevent further catastrophe, there must be an immediate ceasefire and the lifting of all restrictions on aid entering Gaza. But Israel is planning a major escalation to take over Gaza City, and President Trump, who has the power to stop the genocidal war by cutting off weapons shipments to Israel, has signaled he’ll back whatever the Israeli government chooses to do.

August 27, 2025 Posted by | Atrocities, Gaza, Israel | Leave a comment

Ukraine drone hits Russian nuclear plant, sparks huge fire at Novatek’s Ust-Luga terminal

Reuters, By Guy Faulconbridge and Lidia Kelly, August 24, 2025

  • Summary
  • Ukrainian drone sparks fire at nuclear plant
  • Nuclear reactor cuts capacity after attack
  • Ukrainian drones strike Ust-Luga fuel export terminal
  • Attacks come on Ukraine’s Independence Day

MOSCOW, Aug 24 (Reuters) – Ukraine launched a drone attack on Russia on Sunday, forcing a sharp fall in the capacity of a reactor at one of Russia’s biggest nuclear power plants and sparking a huge blaze at the major Ust-Luga fuel export terminal, Russian officials said.

Despite talk of peace by Russia and Ukraine, the deadliest European war since World War Two is continuing along the 2,000 km (1,250 mile) front line accompanied by missile and drone attacks deep into both Russia and Ukraine.

Russia’s defence ministry said at least 95 Ukrainian drones had been intercepted across more than a dozen Russian regions on August 24, the day that Ukraine celebrates its declaration of independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.

The Kursk nuclear power plant, just 60 km (38 miles) from the border with Ukraine, said that air defences shot down a drone that detonated near the plant just after midnight, damaging an auxiliary transformer and forcing a 50% reduction in the operating capacity at reactor No. 3.

Radiation levels were normal and there were no injuries from the fire which the drone sparked, the plant said. Two other reactors are operating without power generation and one is undergoing scheduled repairs.

The United Nations’ nuclear agency, the International Atomic Energy Agency, said it was aware of reports that a transformer at the plant caught fire due to military activity and stressed that every nuclear facility should be protected at all times.

A thousand km north, on the Gulf of Finland, at least 10 Ukrainian drones were downed over the port of Ust-Luga in Russia’s northern Leningrad region, with debris sparking fire at the Novatek-operated terminal – a huge Baltic Sea fuel export terminal and processing complex, the regional governor said.

PLUME OF BLACK SMOKE

Unverified footage on Russian Telegram channels showed a drone flying directly into a fuel terminal, followed by a huge ball of fire rising high into the sky followed by a plume of black smoke billowing into the horizon.

“Firefighters and emergency services are currently working to extinguish the blaze,” Alexander Drozdenko, governor of Russia’s Leningrad region, said. There were no injuries, he added……………………..

Ukrainian drones also attacked an industrial enterprise in the southern Russian city of Syzran, the governor of the Samara region said on Sunday. A child was injured in the attack, according to the governor, who did not specify exactly what had been attacked.

………………………………………………………………….Earlier this month, the Ukrainian military said it had struck the Syzran oil refinery. The Rosneft-owned (ROSN.MM)
, opens new tab refinery was forced to suspend production and crude intake after the attack, sources told Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/ukraine-drone-hits-russian-nuclear-plant-sparks-huge-fire-novateks-ust-luga-2025-08-24/

August 27, 2025 Posted by | incidents, Russia, Ukraine | Leave a comment

Russia reports blaze at one of its biggest nuclear power plants.

Guy Faulconbridge & Lidia Kelly, Sunday 24 August 2025, https://www.independent.co.uk/bulletin/news/ukraine-russia-kursk-nuclear-power-plant-b2813260.html


  • Russia     accused Ukraine of launching multiple drone attacks on Sunday, targeting critical infrastructure.
  • A drone strike near the Kursk nuclear power plant damaged an auxiliary transformer, leading to a 50 per cent reduction in operating capacity at reactor No. 3, though radiation levels remained normal and there were no injuries from the fire that the drone sparked.
  • A separate significant blaze erupted at the Novatek-operated Ust-Luga fuel export terminal in Russia’s Leningrad region after it was reportedly hit by Ukrainian drones.
  • Drone activity resulted in temporary flight suspensions at several Russian airports, including Pulkovo.
  • Ukrainian drones also attacked an industrial enterprise in Syzran, with Ukraine stating its strikes target infrastructure crucial to Russia’s military efforts.

August 27, 2025 Posted by | Russia, Ukraine, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Fears are rising about the safety of a nuclear power plant in Russia after a Ukrainian attack overnight

Metro, 24 Aug 25

A fire broke out at the Kursk Nuclear Power Plant after military forces shot down what they claimed was a Ukrainian drone flying near the site.

The ‘device detonated’ upon impact, sparking a blaze which the facility said ‘was extinguished by fire crews,’ authorities in Kursk said in a statement.

It added: ‘A combat unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) belonging to the Armed Forces of Ukraine was shot down by air defence systems near the Kursk Nuclear Power Plant………………….

Alexander Khinshtein, the regional acting governor, blamed Ukraine for the strikes in a post on Telegram, adding: ‘They are a threat to nuclear safety and a violation of all international conventions.’

The incident marks one of the most serious escalations in the targeting of energy facilities, fueling anxiety about fighting creeping dangerously close to nuclear assets.

Ukraine’s drone strike on Kursk was one of several reported overnights by Russian authorities.

Firefighters were also sent to an explosion and a fire at the port of Ust-Luga in Russia’s Leningrad region, which holds a large fuel export terminal.

The regional governor said about 10 Ukrainian drones were brought down and debris had sparked the fire.

Ukraine has not commented on the Russian accusations………….

August 27, 2025 Posted by | Russia, safety | Leave a comment

Wastewater release from Fukushima nuclear plant enters third year.

By Ian Stark, Aug. 25 (UPI) — 

The Japanese utility that keeps the nuclear fuel inside the damaged Fukushima plant cool reports its release of treated wastewater has entered its third year.

The Tokyo Electric Power Company announced Monday that it has completed its third discharge of Advanced Liquid Processing System treated water into the sea on Monday…………………

According to TEPCO, the ALPS is designed to remove 62 types of radioactive materials from the affected sea and dilute the water to lower the tritium levels. The water is considered “treated” to distinguish it from water yet to be decontaminated…………………………..

Around 70 tons of radioactive wastewater is produced daily at the plant, which cools the nuclear fuel that melted inside the reactor buildings at the Fukushima nuclear power plant. As of the first week of August, around 102,000 tons of treated water have been released. https://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2025/08/25/Japan-Fukushima-nuclear-wastewater-TEPCO-radioactive/9871756140747/

August 27, 2025 Posted by | Fukushima continuing, wastes | Leave a comment

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