The Wall Street Journal Has Many Ways to Deny Genocide
Gregory Shupak, FAIR, October 9, 2025
As more and more scholars, and one rights group after another, confirm that Israel is carrying out a genocide in Gaza, it’s becoming ever more obvious that those who deny the genocide are the intellectual and moral equivalents of people who deny other genocides, such as the ones inflicted on the Indigenous peoples of the Americas, or the Holocaust, or the Armenian Genocide.
Yet the Wall Street Journal persists in running genocide denial. Looking at how the paper does so enables us to not only refute their falsehoods, but also to gain insight into the tactics Gaza genocide denialists, and genocide deniers in general, employ. These include:
- Hand-waving: brushing off the cataclysmic damage Israel and the US have done to Palestinians as merely the unavoidable byproducts of war;
- Victim-blaming: saying that Palestinian resistance groups such as Hamas are to blame for the suffering in Gaza;
- Inverting perpetrator and victim: presenting Palestinians, and not Israelis, as genocidal, with Israelis, rather than Palestinians, cast as the targets;
- Obscurantism: offering dubious pieces of information, usually in a decontextualized manner, as if they showed that Israel has pursued its military objectives humanely;
- Repudiation: flatly rejecting well-documented facts while offering little or no counter-evidence.
‘Justifiable, even necessary’
Ami Magazine columnist Avi Shafran’s Journal piece (7/22/25) utilized both hand-waving and victim-blaming. He asserted:
When critics distort Israel’s goal of self-preservation into a desire for genocide, the accusers have gone from righteous protesters to ignorant haters…. Civilians suffer and die in the prosecution of justifiable, even necessary, wars. That tragedy is intensified when you are fighting an enemy who hides behind human shields. Eradicating the engines of terror in Gaza requires attacking the places from which they operate: hospitals, schools and mosques.
Israel’s supposedly “justifiable, even necessary” war has entailed such policies (as Human Rights Watch—12/19/24—notes) as
intentionally depriv[ing] Palestinian civilians in Gaza of adequate access to water since October 2023, most likely resulting in thousands of deaths and thus committing the crime against humanity of extermination and acts of genocide.
Rather than offering a reasoned, evidence-based defense of such Israeli conduct, Shafran blithely wrote as if consciously withholding drinking water from a civilian population were as natural and inevitable as water boiling at a hundred degrees Celsius.
The author’s next move was to blame Palestinians for Israel killing Palestinians. Shafran, of course, didn’t offer a scintilla of proof for his claim that Palestinian fighters force their own people to be human shields, probably because it’s Israel—not Hamas—that routinely uses Palestinians as shields (FAIR.org, 5/13/25).
‘Systematically and deliberately devastated’
Equally weak is Shafran’s suggestion that it’s Palestinians’ fault that Israel attacks Palestinian hospitals, schools and mosques. The UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory said that Israel damaged and destroyed more than 90% of the school and university buildings in Gaza, and found just one case where Hamas had also used a school for military purposes. The commission also said that Israeli attacks have damaged more than half of all religious and cultural sites in Gaza, and noted that
all ten religious and cultural sites in Gaza investigated by the Commission constituted civilian objects at the time of attack, and suffered devastating destruction for which the Commission could not identify a legitimate military need.
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… https://fair.org/home/the-wall-street-journal-has-many-ways-to-deny-genocide/
Israel illegally detained UK citizens, and Starmer did nothing
John McEvoy, 9 Oct 25
This week, Israeli forces kidnapped British citizens participating in the Global Sumud Flotilla, which aimed to break the siege of Gaza and deliver aid to starving Palestinians. The flotilla, carrying some 470 activists from over 40 countries, had been sailing in international waters some 90 nautical miles from Gaza when it was approached by Israeli naval boats and boarded by armed soldiers. The aid vessels were subsequently towed to the port of Ashdod in Israel, where the activists were unloaded and taken to Israeli prisons. Most of them were transferred to the notorious Ketziot prison, a maximum-security facility in the Negev desert which has served as a detention and torture site for Palestinian captives. The cells were infested with bed bugs, and the activists were deprived of food and water. “We had to drink out of a tap in the toilets that produced water infected with fecal matter”, said British-Palestinian journalist Kieran Andrieu. Israel’s national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who travelled to Ketziot and taunted the activists, said they “should get a good feel for the conditions in Ketziot prison and think twice before they approach Israel again”. This was not the first time that the Global Sumud Flotilla had been attacked by the Israel Defence Forces (IDF). |
Back to Great Power Rivalry and Nuclear Risk as Russia Quits US Plutonium Pact.
8 Oct, 2025 – Defense News Army 2025
Russia’s State Duma on Oct. 8, 2025 approved withdrawing from the 2000 Plutonium Management and Disposition Agreement, which required the U.S. and Russia to each dispose of 34 metric tons of weapons-grade plutonium. The move deepens the unraveling of U.S.-Russia arms control as New START’s limits on deployed warheads and delivery systems face expiration in early 2026.
According to Reuters on 8 October 2025, the Duma approved Russia’s withdrawal from the Plutonium Management and Disposition Agreement, signed in 2000 and in force since 2011, which required Washington and Moscow to dispose of 34 metric tons each of weapons-grade plutonium, enough for thousands of Cold War-era warheads. The decision, taken in Moscow by the lower house of parliament, ends a key pillar of managing military-plutonium stockpiles, with the Kremlin citing the deterioration of the arms-control framework with the United States. This break comes as New START approaches its early-2026 expiry, a treaty that caps forces at 1,550 deployed warheads and 700 deployed strategic delivery systems, and as Moscow “suspended” inspections in 2023 while stating it would observe the ceilings. In September 2025, the Kremlin also pledged to remain close to those limits if Washington did the same.
The announcement lands while New START remains the last strategic-arms-limitation accord still in effect. It sets identical caps for both sides with well-defined counting rules, even though routine inspections have been suspended by Russia since 2023 and the outlook for any extension is uncertain. Practitioners of deterrence know these parameters and the compliance mechanics; what matters here is the dynamic they create, less verification means greater distrust and more room for edge-gaming…………………………………………………………………………………..
Finally, nuclear risks are rising across the board, driven by the rapid modernization of Russian, Chinese, and North Korean arsenals, joint patrols, and questions over the perceived credibility of U.S. extended deterrence in several regions. Washington and its allies face a clear, if costly, set of tasks. Hold the line in Ukraine, step up counter-proliferation measures that target dual-use parts and component networks, and reopen, wherever feasible, risk-reduction channels with Moscow, Beijing, and Pyongyang, including areas not covered by classic treaties. In the absence of a treaty, some experts advocate transparency gestures and minimal operational constraints to shrink uncertainty. The hard problem now is competition with two nuclear peers, China growing its warhead count and Russia preserving upload margins plus out-of-framework systems from Avangard to Poseidon. In this landscape, leaving the PMDA is not a technical footnote, it is a stitch in the safety net coming undone. https://www.armyrecognition.com/news/army-news/2025/back-to-great-power-rivalry-and-nuclear-risk-as-russia-quits-us-plutonium-pact
‘Humanitarian’ visa must be created for Pacific Islanders displaced by climate crisis, experts say
Climate and migration experts are calling for urgent action to create
legal pathways for people displaced by the climate crisis, as a new report
highlights the scale of the problem across the Pacific.
Research by Amnesty
International released on Thursday found current immigration systems are
inadequate for Pacific Islanders seeking safety and stability, as rising
seas threaten to make their homelands uninhabitable. Amnesty has called on
New Zealand – home to the world’s largest Pacific diaspora – to
urgently reform its policies to provide “rights-based approach to
climate-related displacement”. “This would include offering a dedicated
humanitarian visa,” the report said.
Guardian 9th Oct 2025, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/oct/09/climate-crisis-humanitarian-visa-displaced-pacific-islanders
A Philadelphia company’s obscured support for killing Palestinians with autonomous flying bombs
Ghost and RoboTiCan were quick to capitalize on the Israeli invasion of Gaza, with Ghost’s Vision 60 robot dogs being deployed into Gazan tunnels
Philadelphia’s Ghost Robotics elevated its exclusive partnership with the Israeli military drone manufacturer RoboTiCan as the company began advertising its usage for bombing indoor Palestinians.
Jack Poulson, Oct 09, 2025, https://jackpoulson.substack.com/p/ghost-robotics-robotican-gaza-lethal-reyburn?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=1269175&post_id=175669807&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=8cf96&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
It was a simple idea. Enclose the left and right sides of a quadcopter drone with 12-inch wireframe wheels to form a nearly 16-inch-long cylinder. In addition to providing the ability to switch between flying and rolling across the floors of houses and tunnels, the surrounding cage would further act as a sort of bumper to prevent the drone’s rotors from hitting walls in cramped spaces.
The Omer, Israel-based manufacturer RoboTiCan labeled the resulting product a ‘Rooster’ and pronounced it “the ultimate indoor drone system.” A February 2023 promotional video made explicit the driving use case for the product, showing a first-person view of the Rooster alternating between rolling and flying through a set of war-torn buildings, including by passing a brick wall graffitied with the slogan “FREE PALESTINE.”
Despite an initial pretense of nonlethality, the Rooster drones are now advertised as supporting 300 gram explosive payloads, and the flagship customers — beyond the Israeli military — include the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The result is an industrialized nation’s analogue of urban suicide bombers, though the weapons industry prefers the sanitized label of ‘loitering munition’.
The University of Pennsylvania spin-out Ghost Robotics — widely known as the weaponized competitor to Boston Dynamics — recently began advertising itself as the exclusive reseller of the Rooster in the United States. The move follows Ghost pitching its robots to U.S. commandos, including through a polished portrayal of its flagship four-legged ‘Vision 60’ robot executing two humans with attached SigSauer rifles. The U.S. Army’s 10th Mountain Division similarly experimented with attaching M16 rifles to the Vision 60 robots as part of Operation Hard Kill on August 1, 2024.
Adding further international complexity to the partnership between RoboTiCan and Ghost, the South Korean weapons manufacturer LIG Nex1 bought a 60% stake in Ghost for $240 million last year, establishing a beachhead in the United States for exporting its products. The majority control followed a separate contract between the Philadelphia-based Ghost and the South Korean company Ghost Robotics Technology (GRT), with GRT both serving as a reseller of the Vision 60 within Korea and as an intermediary for Vision 60 parts manufactured by its close affiliate and investee, Korea Robot Manufacturing Co. (KRM).
Following the Hamas raid of Israel on October 7, 2023, the Israeli military responded with unprecedented death and destruction, killing at least 67,074 and injuring at least 168,716 of the roughly two million Palestinians in Gaza prior to Wednesday’s nominal ceasefire deal. Alongside the mass murder — including of at least 20,000 children — Israeli soldiers became infamous for posting photos of themselves modeling the clothing of Palestinian women whose homes had been assaulted. Israeli commandos also openly raided humanitarian flotillas bound for Gaza, brazenly portraying their kidnappings of peaceful human rights activists as counter-terrorism.
Ghost and RoboTiCan were quick to capitalize on the Israeli invasion of Gaza, with Ghost’s Vision 60 robot dogs being deployed into Gazan tunnels as a sort of aircraft carrier for the RoboTiCan Roosters. Promotional photos of the Rooster docked on top of the Ghost Vision 60 robot were widely published in the international press by early 2024, but RoboTiCan had begun promoting the usage of Vision 60 robots in Gaza by the end of 2023, including with footage of the robots firing assault rifles.
The Gazan use cases for the robotic duo were reported almost universally as surveillance and reconnaissance, despite RoboTiCan in December 2023 promoting its Channel 13 coverage with the headline “A robot in the Hamas tunnels: the electric dog that can neutralize charges and shoot.” RoboTiCan last month publicly repositioned the Rooster as a tool for lethal urban warfare, with CEO Hagai Balshai stating that the Rooster was “bringing precision and autonomy to environments that were previously off-limits to loitering munitions,” adding that, “Forces can now conduct surgical strikes inside structures.”
Ghost’s explicit promotion of its company as the exclusive U.S. reseller of the Rooster has come since the product’s lethal reorientation. Ghost’s nominally nonviolent support for the Israeli invasion of Gaza through RoboTiCan had already led to sustained protests against the company, including Ghost CEO and UPenn PhD Gavin Kenneally having the front door of his Fairmount townhome spraypainted with the word ‘MURDERER’ in the early morning of July 9, 2024, according to an apparent confession on the Philly Anti-Capitalist website.
A subsequent post to the same website the following October detailed both another defacement of Dr. Kenneally’s home — allegedly writing “Funded By Genocide” across his garage and smashing his windows— as well as the spraypainting of “NO KILLER TECH” across Ghost’s then-headquarters within UPenn’s innovation center. “Ghost Robotics AI-enabled machine-gun-armed robot dogs have been used against Palestinians in Gaza,” stated the explanation.
Ghost Robotics appears to have attempted to prevent further protests of its facilities by hiding its headquarters. A January 22 press release stated that the firm had “signed a lease and relocated from Pennovation Works to a new, larger location in Philadelphia, PA.” But Ghost remained tight-lipped about where this “larger location” would be, with the firm’s LinkedIn profile and corporate records continuing to list the Pennovation Works address.
But a recently public, $120,000 agreement for Ghost to sell the U.S. Army Research Laboratory two of its Vision 60 robots lists a new address for the company. As recently as February, Ghost sold the U.S. Army’s Armaments Center a $3.2 million “Wolfpack” of Vision 60 robots through its old Pennovation Works address. Ghost’s newest contract instead lists its headquarters as Apartment 170 within the refurbished former central factory of the Pep Boys auto services company in the northwest Philadelphia region of Bala Cynwyd.
Acquired by Icahn Enterprises in 2016, Pep Boys ceased operations at the factory by early 2021, with investors turning what is now known as the Reyburn Manufacturing Company Building into a beautiful five-story condominium, complete with a rooftop pool and a podcasting studio.
With its loft-style apartments only located on the second through fifth floors, the Reyburn’s first-floor addresses are assigned to a detached, single-story partitioned warehouse on the north side of the building, with addresses counting down as you move north. The nonprofit Share Food Program occupies a section just north of a pink sign reading ‘106’, while the section assigned to Ghost remains unadorned.
Despite months of Ghost Robotics and its parent company refusing to respond to questions about the location of the company’s new headquarters, apparent confirmation came three weeks after the firm’s latest contract to sell the U.S. Army two Vision 60 robots. According to U.S. Customs records, a 740 kilogram “40 Foot General Purpose Container” with three motors from Korea Robot Manufacturing arrived at Ghost’s Suite 107 at the Reyburn Building on July 30, 2025.Subscribe
Israel Attacks Another Group of Civilian Ships Bound for Gaza
Israeli forces have once again targeted civilian vessels sailing to Gaza, aiming to break the blockade and deliver medical supplies.
October 08, 2025 by Ana Vračar, https://peoplesdispatch.org/2025/10/08/israel-attacks-another-group-of-civilian-ships-bound-for-gaza/
In a new act of state terrorism, Israel has assaulted vessels from the Freedom Flotilla Coalition and the Thousand Madleens to Gaza initiative in international waters, abducting more than 140 crew members. The attack comes barely a week after Israeli armed forces targeted the Global Sumud Flotilla, another civilian fleet sailing to break the illegal blockade of Gaza and deliver essential supplies.
“Unarmed crew aboard, including doctors, journalists, and elected officials, have been abducted, as well as the vital aid worth over USD 110,000 in medicines, respiratory equipment, and nutritional supplies that were destined for Gaza’s starving hospitals,” the Freedom Flotilla Coalition stated soon after the event.
The latest mission to open a humanitarian corridor to Gaza by sea was specific considering that most of its crew consisted of health and media workers, two groups continuously targeted by Israeli forces during the genocide in Gaza. Nurse Stefano Argerio, speaking shortly before his abduction, emphasized the peaceful and civilian character of the initiative. “It’s a humanitarian, medical mission,” he told Public Services International (PSI), stressing that obstructing it would only add to Israel’s long list of crimes.
Aboard the “Conscience”, the fleet’s largest vessel, was Belgian physician Hanne Bosselaers of Medics for the People (MPLP-GVHV), who is also active in the People’s Health Movement (PHM). Having participated in preparations for the Global Sumud Flotilla, she joined this mission to help keep global attention on Gaza. “The Israeli armed forces want to totally annihilate it [Gaza], and they’re accelerating the process,” Bosselaers told the Workers’ Party of Belgium (PTB–PVDA). “Even if our media no longer shows it, we absolutely must keep our eyes on it. Humanity must heed the call of the Palestinians to stop the genocide.”
Bosselaers, who previously volunteered in Gaza, established contact with staff from the Awda Association while en route. “[They] told us live about how they experience genocide in their hospitals and health centers,” she said. “They have great confidence in our arrival and it gives them hope and courage to see that caregivers around the world are mobilizing, that they are not forgotten.”
Members of the Freedom Flotilla and Thousand Madleens to Gaza initiatives anticipated the risk of Israeli attacks, especially after the assault on the Global Sumud Flotilla. Yet, instead of retreating, they called for even stronger mobilization from the medical community in support of Gaza’s health workers and the flotillas’ missions. “We know that what can happen to us is still only a fraction of what Palestinians have endured every day for 77 years,” Bosselaers said. “We hope that seeing our rights violated as white Europeans might amplify the message and draw attention to the Palestinians.”
Pharmacist Aziz Rhali among GSF crew still held by Israel
As of the morning of October 8, six members of the Global Sumud Flotilla remain imprisoned in Israel: Abdeladim Bendraoui and Aziz Rhali from Morocco; Christoforos Schuff O’Moore, Eline Norli, and Samuel Rostol from Norway; and Reyes Rigo Cervilla from Spain.
Before departure, Rhali, a pharmacist and long-time human rights defender, highlighted the importance of global solidarity among health professionals. “We must also emphasize the role of Gaza’s healthcare workers, who remain on the front line of resistance,” he said. “Despite everything, they stay, they work, they do their best to help the population … They need us, and we need them. Just as lawyers are pursuing justice through the courts – the International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Court – our role, as health workers, is to stand with our Palestinian colleagues. We can do that directly, by being on the ground with them.”
PHM Global Coordinator Román Vega told People’s Health Dispatch that Rhali had been struggling for months to reach Gaza and support his colleagues and patients. Instead of being allowed to provide essential care, “he was abducted by the genocidal Israeli regime,” Vega said. “We are deeply concerned for his safety, especially after hearing of the abuse suffered by members of the flotilla who have returned home. We are calling for his immediate release and for the protection of his life and rights.”
Russian Nuke Plant Latest To Suffer War-Inflicted Damage
The Novovoronezh Nuclear Power Plant was damaged in a string of incidents at four facilities in the region over the past two weeks.
Howard Altman, Oct 7, 2025, https://www.twz.com/news-features/russian-nuke-plant-latest-to-suffer-war-inflicted-damage
ussia’s atomic energy agency said a Ukrainian drone struck a cooling tower of the Novovoronezh Nuclear Power Plant (NNPP), located about 100 miles north of the border. While officials say there was no substantial damage to the plant, it was the fourth nuclear power facility in the region to have munitions land on or very close to it in the past two weeks.
Regardless of the level of damage incurred at NNPP, Russia is worried enough about drone strikes on its nuclear facilities that it is beefing up its defenses at a test site in the Arctic. You can read more about that later in this story.
The NNPP cooling tower was hit by a drone flying near the plant that was downed by electronic warfare, Russia’s Rosenergoatom claimed on Telegram. As a result, the agency said it hit the cooling tower of the No. 6 reactor and exploded upon impact. These structures are generally built to withstand light aircraft impacts
“There is no destruction or casualties; however, a dark mark remained on the cooling tower from the consequences of the detonation,” Rosenergoatom stated. “The safety of the nuclear power plant operation is ensured, the radiation background at the industrial site of the Novovoronezh Nuclear Power Plant and the adjacent territory has not changed and corresponds to natural background levels. Law enforcement agencies are working at the scene.”………………………………………………………………………………………..
Ukrainian officials have yet to comment on this incident, which took place as Kyiv’s drones frequently attack the Voronezh region. Despite Ukraine’s ongoing campaign against energy facilities in Russia, it is quite likely that this strike was inadvertent. Kyiv has been attacking oil and gas plants, not nuclear ones, though Russia claims it downed a drone in August that caused a fire and temporarily reduced the electrical output at the Kursk Nuclear Power Plant. However, we can’t tell for sure if either of these strikes was deliberate or not. Russia frequently blames damage from drone strikes on electronic warfare or air defense shootdowns, even if an intended target was hit.
It is also possible that the damage at NNPP was caused by Russian air defenses. These systems can fail, as you can see in the following video [on original] . Russia has also claimed that damage caused by failed air defenses was caused by enemy munitions in the past.
Regardless, as Ukraine develops newer long-range weapons with far larger warheads, even an accidental strike on one of these sites could have far greater consequences. You can read more about one of Ukraine’s newest long-range weapons in our story we published today here.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has yet to comment, but has expressed high concern about drones flying near the South (SNPP) and Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP).
IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi issued warnings about ZNPP. That plant has been operating on backup diesel fuel generators since Sept. 23, after power lines were downed. Ukrainian officials claim Russia cut the lines on purpose, which Russia denies. ZNPP is inactive; however, pumps are needed to keep water cooling reactors so they don’t melt down. The power outage is the longest experienced by ZNPP during this conflict, Grossi stated.
Trump Says Israel and Hamas ‘Signed Off on the First Phase’ of Gaza Plan
The announcement came as the confirmed death toll from Israel’s two-year genocidal assault on Gaza rose to 67,183 Palestinians, widely believed to be an undercount.
Common Dreams Staff, October 9, 2025, https://www.commondreams.org/news/israel-ceasefire
Just over a week after unveiling a proposal for the Gaza Strip at the White House with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, US President Donald Trump said on social media Wednesday night that “I am very proud to announce that Israel and Hamas have both signed off on the first Phase of our Peace Plan.”
“This means that ALL of the Hostages will be released very soon, and Israel will withdraw their Troops to an agreed-upon line as the first steps toward a Strong, Durable, and Everlasting Peace,” he claimed on Truth Social. “All Parties will be treated fairly!”
“This is a GREAT Day for the Arab and Muslim World, Israel, all surrounding Nations, and the United States of America, and we thank the mediators from Qatar, Egypt, and Turkey, who worked with us to make this Historic and Unprecedented Event happen,” Trump added. “BLESSED ARE THE PEACEMAKERS!”
Netanyahu—who faces an International Criminal Court warrant over his country’s genocidal assault of Gaza—also took to social media, writing in Hebrew that it was “a great day for Israel” and he would “convene the government to approve the agreement and bring all our dear hostages home.” The prime minister then thanked the Israel Defense Forces and Trump.
Trump’s announcement came shortly after Drop Site News‘ Jeremy Scahill spoke with a Hamas official who confirmed that “from our side, yes,” the Palestinians reached a deal, but they still needed to “finalize some points” with the mediators.
“It’s over, it’s over. It’s been decided,” a second source told the journalist. “Everybody’s agreed on it. There are a few things that will be discussed, but it’s over.”
Hamas led an attack on southern Israel that killed over 1,100 people on October 7, 2023. Since then, Israeli forces have bombed and blockaded Gaza, whose health officials put the death toll at 67,183, with another 169,841 injured. Global experts have warned that these are likely undercounts, given the thousands of people missing and presumed dead and buried beneath the strip’s destroyed infrastructure.
After 2 years, Israel genocidal ethnic cleansing of Gaza has failed
Walt Zlotow, West Suburban Peace Coalition, Glen Ellyn IL 9 Oct 25
Israel has a grisly method of negotiating peace and release of remaining Israeli hostages in Gaza. They’re continuing their genocidal ethnic cleansing of those pesky Palestinians who just won’t leave so Israel can annex Gaza to Greater Israel.
On Tuesday Israel bombed Gaza City, Khan Younis, even the Mawasi safe zone, killing at least 10. Hundreds of been slaughtered in the five days Israel has ignored President Trump’s demand to stop the genocide while peace talks continue in Egypt.
That should surprise no one interested in ending the genocide. Israel’s primary goal since the Hamas attack 2 years ago Tuesday was to exploit the attack to rid Gaza of all 2,300,000 Palestinians. While killing over 100,000, with the remaining 2,200,000 suffering starvation, degraded health, no habitable living conditions, Israel has failed to achieve its cherished goal: no Palestinians left in a Gaza annexed into Greater Israel.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu needs to maintain the genocide for political and personal reasons. The political is the aforementioned completion of Greater Israel including not only Gaza but the West Bank. The personal reason is to delay indefinitely his possible date with prison on corruption crimes.
Dead last on Netanyahu’s grotesque agenda? Getting back the remaining 48 Israeli hostages. Had he cared a whit about the original 251, many of whom his delay killed, he wouldn’t have embarked on genocide.
None of this could have occurred without the $20 billion in genocide weapons gifted to Israel by presidents Biden and Trump, paid for by John Q. Taxpayer. US near total support of the genocide continues even tho an increasing majority of Americans call it genocide and demand we end enabling it.
The current talks in Egypt are doing nothing to achieve the only path to peace: Palestinian statehood, recognized by 158 of 193 UN countries but not the US. Trump’s 20 point peace plan is simply US imagined neocolonialism to keep Gaza totally controlled by outside forces. Palestinians are excluded, keeping Gaza stateless in perpetuity.
The peace plan may release the remaining 48 hostages and achieve ceasefire. But it will neither achieve a Palestinian state nor Netanyahu’s dream of a Palestinian free Gaza annexed to Israel. Both likely outcomes may doom the peace negotiations to failure.
Flamanville EPR: EDF anticipates limited power until 2031.
Flamanville EPR: EDF anticipates limited power until 2031. EDF has
informed the energy regulator that it has selected a final electrical power
output lower than that officially communicated. The reason: the hypothesis
of a deteriorated performance of the Normandy reactor, leading to a
restriction of its electricity production.
These are just five short lines
in a document of over 200 pages. But they are very important. In its report
on the cost of nuclear power, published Tuesday, September 30, the Energy
Regulatory Commission (CRE) addresses the issue of the electrical power of
the Flamanville 3 EPR, the restart of which was recently postponed until
mid-October, after numerous delays since its shutdown last June following a
leak in a primary circuit protection valve.
The energy regulator explains
that the production of Flamanville 3 is difficult to predict due to the
level of uncertainty over the timetable for the continuation of reactor
tests. Above all, it specifies that in terms of “the final nominal
electrical power of the EPR, EDF declared to the CRE a power 35 megawatts
(MW) lower than the power declared in the public data framework . “
La Tribune 7th Oct 2025, https://www.latribune.fr/article/entreprises-finance/energie-environnement/10816924410568/epr-de-flamanville-edf-anticipe-une-puissance-bridee-jusquen-2031
RADIOACTIVE material was accidentally released at Scotland’s Dounreay nuclear.
An investigation was launched in June 2024 after Nuclear Restoration Services
(NRS) – the firm which is responsible for the north Caithness complex’s
clean-up and demolition – informed the Scottish Environmental Protection
Agency (Sepa) of a potential leak of contaminated water. Scotland’s
environmental regulator confirmed that a “small leak” from a carbon bed
filter had occurred. Three different radioactive substances –
alpha-emitting Radionuclides, alpha-emitting Radionuclides and Caesium-137
– were all released, according to the Scottish Pollutant Release
Inventory (SPRI) data. Monitoring from NRS didn’t detect any increase in
radioactivity in groundwater downstream. But Sepa found that the firm had
breached environmental regulations and has ordered it to review its
groundwater monitoring arrangements and “establish the extent of
contamination” which has arisen from the leak.
The National 7th Oct 2025, https://www.thenational.scot/news/25525191.radioactive-water-highland-nuclear-site-leaked-major-breach/
Ukraine has just generated another cash sink for Western taxpayers
In the meantime, Canadian cash for weapons, “for Ukraine,” is sure pumping up the integrated US/Canada military-industrial complex, which seems to be the go-to Western strategy for boosting their GDP these days
The office of the “Special Representative for the Reconstruction of Ukraine” has been created for Canada’s ex-deputy prime minister
Rachel Marsden, a columnist, political strategist, and host of independently produced talk-shows in French and English. 4 Oct 25
Last month, former Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s deputy prime minister, Chrystia Freeland, was dropkicked from newish Prime Minister Mark Carney’s cabinet. He did her a massive favor. Because now she doesn’t have to pretend to represent Canada anymore while following her true passion: representing Ukraine.
Freeland has a new role: “Special Representative for the Reconstruction of Ukraine,” officially speaking. The first question that came to mind when hearing this was, “When does she finally get to move to Kiev, already?” Imagine my disappointment to learn that she doesn’t.
Well, actually, my first question was, “Is Ukraine under reconstruction now? Did I slip into a coma and miss the bomb show wrapping up?” Nope, the conflict is still raging. But I guess it makes it sound like she’s going to be keeping a careful watch over the money that Carney has “pledged” to Ukraine – perhaps in the same way that people “pledged” to pay me a dollar per lap for my childhood swim-a-thons, then bailed when I came back to collect after competing 500 laps. I guess time will tell. Canadian taxpayers can only pray that will be the case, and that Carney is just virtue signaling Canadian cash for Ukraine and not actually sending any there, in the same way that the jokers running the EU make a big stink about the evils of Russian energy while importing it on the down-low through third countries.
In the meantime, Canadian cash for weapons, “for Ukraine,” is sure pumping up the integrated US/Canada military-industrial complex, which seems to be the go-to Western strategy for boosting their GDP these days amid their tanking economies.
Another question: Will Freeland use her experience in blocking Canadian bank accounts as Trudeau’s finance minister during the Covid-era Freedom Convoy anti-mandate protests to block shady cash flowing to Ukraine? I’m guessing not, if only because those Canadian bank accounts were blocked under the ultimately false pretext (as determined by Canadian intelligence) that foreign cash was funding interference with Canadian government decisions. In Ukraine’s case, that foreign cash is considered a plus because it’s coming from the West. Seems like she’d be more likely to tackle anything that got in its way.
Anyway, Freeland has just used her new Canadian taxpayer-funded role to plead Ukraine’s case in the pages of the Financial Times.
She wrote that “the fact is that we need Ukraine to save us,” presumably from the other side of the world, in Ottawa. She then goes on to qualify some murky, contentious drone activity around the Ukraine–EU border as “recent incursions into Central and even Western Europe.” At least I think that’s what she’s referring to. Unless I somehow missed the Russian tanks rolling down the Champs-Élysées. She doesn’t specify. But no matter. All the better, apparently, to argue that these incidents “show NATO needs Ukraine as a shield against Russia.”
Sounds like what Vladimir Zelensky was saying just the other day. The Ukrainian leader was going off about an incident last month of some alleged 90 drones over Ukraine, which he said were heading for Poland. He said that if only 20 of them actually ended up there, it was only because Kiev shot the rest down. The implication? That Ukraine was saving Poland. Trump was asked about it at the time and didn’t exactly praise Zelensky as Poland’s savior. He basically shrugged, saying, look, whatever – could have just been accidental.
Freeland also cited Trump’s tongue-in-cheek remarks from the other week when he rapped on social media about how Ukraine was winning on the battlefield against Russia and probably could even conquer Russian territory. He then offered to sell the Europeans all the American weapons they wanted in that endeavor. What part of Trump’s wishing them “good luck” did Freeland not understand as a commentary on Trump being keen to profit off the EU’s delusions, as long as Washington doesn’t have to get its hands dirty? She grasped none of it, apparently. Because she wrote in the FT that “US President Donald Trump got it right at the UN last week: Ukraine is a winner, and Ukraine can win.”
Freeland literally had just written of Ukraine in the same piece, a bit further up, that “we have assumed it would lose, at least without extraordinary effort from us.” Really? Your whole posse in Canada has been saying otherwise for years. “Ukraine will win and Canada will be there until the end,” said Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand, in early 2023, when she was defense minister.
So now we’ve gone from “Ukraine will win” to “Ukraine will only win if we do everything except pull the trigger” to “we need Ukraine because NATO is so weak.” Yeah, so weak that NATO is actually contemplating blasting Temu-grade drones out of the sky with F-16s, as the Romanian defense minister suggested during a recent Warsaw Security Forum panel.
Freeland adds that the West can learn from Ukraine about “how to fight a 21st-century war, and how to invent, manufacture and then keep reinventing the weapons we need for this new way of war in real time.” Look out, folks! Freeland has just discovered guerrilla warfare – but apparently not the double-edged sword it represents.
It’s all good when Ukrainian Nazis are getting schooled by NATO forces to fight Russia, and when they then graduate to fulfilling Freeland’s fantasy of pretending to teach NATO how to do guerrilla warfare – as though it’s a matter of NATO lacking ability and not just guerrilla warfare being way too cheap for NATO to justify washing tax cash into defense coffers.
What could possibly go wrong with letting Ukraine play asymmetric warfare “teacher” to justify the West turning it into a giant weapons toy box? It’s not like there haven’t been reports lately of Latin American drug cartels getting their drone training in Ukraine to use back home. We’re talking about Mexican and Colombian gangsters, according to Defense News, one of the leading military publications. Just your average start-up, really.
Freeland then proceeds to cheerlead the idea recently promoted by German Chancellor Friedrich Merz of straight-up stealing €140 billion in European-held Russian assets as a “loan” for Ukraine. Ukraine apparently just pays it back once Russia admits fault and writes a check, huh? In other words: never.
It’s one thing for Freeland to justify her new role by bloviating and virtue-signaling in the Western press. It’s another to make taxpayers foot the bill for it when her real job should be to end this war as quickly as possible through diplomacy so some legitimate reconstruction business can be done in Ukraine’s interests that doesn’t just involve perpetuating a taxpayer-funded racket.
Everything Before AND After October 7 Explains Why October 7 Happened
Caitlin Johnstone, Oct 07, 2025, https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/everything-before-and-after-october?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=175515184&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
Everything before October 7 explains why October 7 happened, and so does everything that’s happened since.
Look at what happened before October 7 and you’ll see year after year of murder, oppression and abuse.
Look at everything that’s happened since October 7 and you’ll understand the kind of sadistic, psychopathic regime the Palestinians have been living under this entire time.
Israel supporters don’t want you looking at what happened before October 7, and they don’t want you looking at anything that’s happened since. They just want you to pretend history began and ended with a bunch of Hitlerite savages attacking innocent Jews for no reason.
And they don’t even want you looking at the day of October 7 too closely, either. Looking too closely at the events of that day bring up inconvenient questions about the Hannibal Directive and what percentage of the death toll was actually caused by the IDF firing on their own people. Inconvenient questions about the suspicious stock trading in the lead-up to the attack and the mountains upon mountains upon mountains of evidence that high-level Israeli officials allowed the attack to proceed undefended in order to advance the genocidal land grab we’re seeing advanced now.
They only want you looking at the parts of October 7 that make Israel look like an innocent little lamb who was attacked completely out of the blue and had no choice but to reluctantly respond with military force.
Forget the scorched earth incineration of the Gaza Strip.
Forget the bombed-out hospitals and methodically dismantled healthcare system.
Forget the hundreds upon hundreds of Palestinians in Gaza who’ve been deliberately starved to death.
Forget the fact that every relevant human rights institution on earth has determined that Israel is committing genocide, and that zero comparable humanitarian institutions have said it isn’t.
Forget the fact that human rights experts had been describing Gaza as a giant concentration camp or open-air prison for years prior to October 7.
Forget the fact that Israel had been routinely murdering Palestinian children and other civilians in the months prior to the Hamas attack.
Don’t look at any of that stuff. Just look at the stuff that makes Israel look like the victim.
That’s the story, anyway. Luckily, fewer and fewer people are buying into it.
The longer this genocide goes on for, the more the world has come to view October 7 as Israel reaping what it had long been sowing.
Boosting Nuclear Power Is Not Nation-Building
| Cathy Vakil, 8 Oct 25 |
Prime Minister Mark Carney has released his priority “nation-building projects,” including the Darlington New Nuclear Project (DNNP) in Ontario. He claims this project will “build Canada strong,” but nuclear power is the slowest, most expensive way of providing electricity, far greater than the costs of renewables and energy storage.
Canada’s nuclear regulator has already fast-tracked the DNNP, awarding a construction license despite the lack of a credible environmental assessment or an approved design.
The projected cost of the DNNP’s “small modular reactor” (SMR) is in the billions, greatly exceeding the $970 million contribution from the Canada Infrastructure Bank in 2022. There is essentially no interest by private investors in nuclear power owing to its substantial financial risks, so it is funded by taxpayers and ratepayers.
The BWRX-300 SMR planned for the DNNP is American, made by GE Hitachi. Its projected completion date is 2030, though almost all reactors built in the past have overshot their expected completion dates by years, often decades. Canada would have to buy enriched uranium fuel for this American reactor from the U.S. because enriched fuel is not produced in Canada.
Many unanswered questions remain about this dubious “nation-building project”. Prime Minister Carney may hope that Canada will become a global energy “superpower” by selling SMRs all over the world, but how likely is this? The BWRX-300 is untested technology with no performance track record. SMRs are far from being built at scale to bring the exorbitant price down. Canada has not sold a reactor since the 1970s. Canada would have an American reactor, reliant on American fuel, and subject to the whims of an unpredictable American administration.
Spending billions of taxpayer dollars on nuclear power, using an American reactor that uses American fuel, when cheaper, cleaner technologies already exist, does not make sense as a “nation-building project.”
University of Stirling hosts Hiroshima and Nagasaki exhibition
The University of Stirling is hosting the UK debut of Remembered: 80 years
since the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, marking eight decades since
the atomic bombings of Japan at the end of the Second World War.
The exhibition, curated by the Nagasaki National Peace Memorial Hall for the
Atomic Bomb Victims, offers a deeply moving account of the destruction
caused by the bombings and their long-term human and environmental
consequences.
Stirling News 8th Oct 2025, https://www.stirlingnews.co.uk/news/25528466.university-stirling-hosts-hiroshima-nagasaki-exhibition/
1 This Month
26 September – International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons
PLEASE OPPOSE HR 8255 AND S.3639 – bills would accelerate satellite deployment, with no environmental review or safeguards – https://ncstd5li.quorum.us/campaign/169331/
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com
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