U.S. Nuclear Reactors will NOT Build a Strong Canada
Ontario Clean Air Alliance -Angela Bischoff, Director, Sept 17, 2025
Prime Minister Carney’s directive to the Major Projects Office to fast-track Doug Ford’s plan to build U.S. nuclear reactors in Ontario will: raise electricity rates, jeopardize national security and delay action on climate change.
New U.S. GE-Hitachi nuclear reactors are the highest-cost option to meet Ontario’s electricity needs – costing 2 to 8 times more than new solar and wind power. As a result, these U.S. reactors will make life less affordable for Ontario’s hard-working families; and they will make Ontario’s industries less competitive.
Building GE-Hitachi reactors will also jeopardize our national security by making Ontario dependent on enriched uranium imports from the U.S. – imports which President Trump could cut off at a moment’s notice.
Finally, building new nuclear reactors is the slowest option to phase-out gas power and protect our climate. Under Doug Ford’s nuclear & gas plan, 25% of our electricity will be produced by burning gas in 2030 – up from only 4% in 2017. To add insult to injury, more than 70% of Ontario’s gas supply is imported from the U.S.
With wildfires burning around the world, we need to invest in the options that can reduce our climate-damaging emissions ASAP, not decades from now. We simply can’t afford to wait 10 to 20 years for new reactors to be built, when solar and wind can be built within months to three years. Combined with batteries, wind and solar can keep our lights on at a fraction of the cost of new nuclear reactors.
Instead of subsidizing the research and development costs for a U.S. multinational’s first-of-their-kind, experimental new nuclear reactors, we should be investing in options that will build a stronger, more prosperous and more secure Canada.
Here is what Prime Minister Carney should do.
1. Rescind his request for the Major Project Office (MPO) to fast-track the building of U.S. nuclear reactors in Ontario.
2. Rescind the Canada Infrastructure Bank’s $970 million loan for the building of GE-Hitachi’s first new nuclear reactor.
3. Direct the MPO to fast-track roof top and parking lot solar in Ontario.
4. Direct the MPO to fast-track cutting the red tape that is blocking the development of Great Lakes offshore wind power.
5. Direct the MPO to fast-track the expansion of the inter-provincial electricity transmission links between Manitoba and Ontario and Ontario and Quebec to increase our ability to import low-cost water, wind and solar power from Manitoba, Quebec and the Maritimes.
U.S. Firms Boost UK Nuclear Sector with Major Deals
Oil Price By City A.M – Sep 16, 2025
- The UK and US have agreed to reduce the licensing time for nuclear projects from four years to two and broaden US companies’ access to the UK energy market.
- Several US companies have struck significant deals with UK partners, including X-Energy to build advanced modular reactors in Hartlepool, Holtec to develop data centers powered by small modular reactors, and Last Energy for a micro modular nuclear plant at London Gateway.
- The initiative aims to kickstart a “golden age of nuclear” in the UK, providing clean, homegrown energy, creating skilled jobs, and addressing high energy bills, though critics question the effectiveness of potential VAT cuts on energy bills.
…………………………………………………………………………………. Energy bills woes
The announcement comes as the government battles to bring down energy bills, which have almost doubled costs for households over the past eight years.
Alongside increasing the domestic supply of energy, Chancellor Rachel Reeves is reportedly weighing cutting VAT on energy to help lower consumer prices.
However, critics have questioned whether the move, which could cost the government nearly £2bn, would deliver tangible improvements to household budgets, warning that wealthy families with larger homes would disproportionately benefit from the tax break. https://oilprice.com/Alternative-Energy/Nuclear-Power/US-Firms-Boost-UK-Nuclear-Sector-with-Major-Deals.html
US and UK companies ink nuclear deals ahead of Trump visit
Transatlantic nuclear energy deals estimated to be worth over $100 billion
have been announced ahead of President Donald Trump’s state visit to the
United Kingdom this week. TerraPower, a Bill Gates-backed developer of
small nuclear reactors, announced Monday that it would work with
engineering firm KBR to study potential sites in the U.K. to deploy its
advanced Natrium reactors. Rockville, Maryland-based X-energy and British
energy company Centrica also announced plans to deploy up to 72 small
reactors for electricity and industrial heat in the U.K.
E&E News 16th Sept 2025, https://www.eenews.net/articles/us-and-uk-companies-ink-nuclear-deals-ahead-of-trump-visit/
What You Need to Know About the £38 Billion Sizewell C Nuclear Project inthe UK.
Project Timeline: Development Consent Order (DCO) approved: July
20, 2022; Groundworks commenced: January 15, 2024; Final Investment
Decision (FID) reached: July 22, 2025; Construction duration: Expected to
take between nine and twelve years; Operational date: Expected in the
2030s.
Construction Review 15th Sept 2025, https://constructionreviewonline.com/construction-projects/uk-government-approves-38-billion-sizewell-c-nuclear-project/
Time is now for Iran to act on inspections agreement, IAEA chief says
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Rafael Grossi on Monday
urged Iran to immediately implement the agreement it signed with the UN
watchdog last week to resume inspections at the country’s bombed nuclear
sites.
Iran International 15th Sept 2025,
https://www.iranintl.com/en/202509154534
Iran hardliners reject IAEA deal, but IRGC outlet voices support
Iranian ultra-hardliners are criticizing Tehran’s recent agreement with
the IAEA in Cairo, despite its blessing by a top decision-making body
linked to the Supreme Leader, but an outlet linked to the Revolutionary
Guards offered support. The scrambled messaging suggests deep disagreement on Iran’s diplomatic path forward as renewed UN sanctions loom by months-end and arch-foe Israel continues to moot military attacks to
chasten Tehran.
Iran International 16th Sept 2025, https://www.iranintl.com/en/202509158464
The dangerous new Washington consensus for more nuclear weapons
What are all these nuclear weapons for? What would happen if we used them? Or a fraction of them? How many would die? Would our nation survive? What would be the impact on global climate?
These are topics that are assiduously avoided by nuclear weapons proponents,
“We’re going to go on offense, not just on defense. Maximum lethality, not tepid legality. Violent effect, not politically correct.”
By Joe Cirincione | September 9, 2025
Two former Biden administration defense officials warn of a “Category 5 hurricane of nuclear threats” rapidly approaching. Their solution? Build more nuclear weapons.
The officials, Vipin Narang and Pranay Vaddi, develop their strategy in a July 17 article in Foreign Affairs. From their perches at the Department of Defense and the National Security Council, they helped guide President Joe Biden’s nuclear policies that kept—and even increased—the weapons programs and budgets inherited from the first Trump administration. Now, they say, we need more.
Much more.
Attempting to chart a course for “how to survive the new nuclear age,” they instead repeat the oldest strategic mistake of the nuclear age: seeking security through numbers.
Eighty years ago, before the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, a team of Manhattan Project scientists led by James Franck and Eugene Rabinowitz (who would later found The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists) warned that the United States could not rely on its current advantage in atomic weaponry. Nuclear research would not remain an American monopoly for long. Staying ahead in production, they said, also gave a false sense of security: “The accumulation of a larger number of bigger and better atomic bombs… will not make us safe from sudden attack.”
They were ignored. During its first nuclear build-up, the United States sprinted from two atomic weapons in 1945 to 20,000 atomic and thermonuclear weapons by 1960, over twenty times the number of weapons held by the Soviet Union. It didn’t matter. We were ahead but afraid, with false fears of “missile gaps” dominating security debates.
Twenty years later, with the US arsenal at 24,000 warheads and the Soviets with 30,000, Ronald Reagan was swept into office with the backing of the Committee on the Present Danger and their fears that a “window of vulnerability” was opening that would allow the Soviets to launch a deadly first strike unless we vastly increased our forces. Committee members filled top defense posts and began the second nuclear build-up with new weapons and the false promise of missile defense shields. The “launch on warning” policy they adopted on an “interim basis” to protect US ICBMs from Russian attack still haunts us today, argues Princeton professor Frank von Hippel. This policy has contributed to several close calls when missiles were almost mistakenly launched.
Narang and Vaddi channel these past prophets of doom. The authors cite nuclear programs in North Korea, Pakistan, and Iran as justification for increasing the size of the US arsenal, largely ignoring diplomatic efforts that in the past effectively contained some of these programs and prevented others.
They also cite the interest of US allies in Europe and Asia in considering their own national nuclear programs as a proliferation risk that can only be addressed by “more, different, and better nuclear capabilities” and “more advanced missile defense… to intercept small or residual adversary nuclear forces.” They argue that if confronted by nuclear threats in Europe in the near future, “the United States might need to respond with nuclear use, and potentially with a larger nuclear exchange if it is unable to reestablish nuclear deterrence in Europe.”…………………………….
They fully endorse the third nuclear build up now underway, with an estimated cost of $2 trillion and rising. But it is not enough. “Washington needs to deploy not only more warheads but also more systems than originally planned under the modernization program,” they urge.
It is true that China’s force may grow, but as experts at the Federation of American Scientists point out, these projections are based on some questionable assumptions, including that future growth will follow recent growth on a straight line, that all the ICBM silos that we observe will be filled by new missiles, that China will be able to produce enough plutonium for all these new warheads, and that all the new warheads will be operational and deployed—which they currently are not.
Secondly, the authors understate the current US nuclear arsenal, which is more than 3,700 operational warheads, not 1,500. The United States currently has about 1,770 nuclear weapons deployed. (The New START treaty counts only 1,550 because it assumes each US bomber is loaded with only one weapon rather than the 8 to 20 they can carry.)
But that is only the deployed force. Approximately 1,930 nuclear warheads are held in reserve, ready to be deployed if needed. Finally, there are 1,477 retired but still intact warheads awaiting dismantlement—making for a total of more than 5,177 warheads in all, including those deployed, those on reserve, and those which are formally retired but intact. So, even if China does produce 1,500 weapons in ten years, it will still have only one-third the US force.
The real problem with the authors’ analysis, however, is not threat exaggeration or funny numbers. It is the war-fighting doctrine that it openly embraces.
What are all these nuclear weapons for? What would happen if we used them? Or a fraction of them? How many would die? Would our nation survive? What would be the impact on global climate?
These are topics that are assiduously avoided by nuclear weapons proponents, whether they be the corporations that realize large profits from the now $100 billion annual nuclear budget, or by the academics and policy operatives who provide the strategic justification for the indefinite continuation of the nuclear balance of terror.
Thus, the authors say “Congress will need to back an accelerated effort to overhaul the U.S. arsenal with significant funding and give the project urgent priority” because in addition to the standard rational that the United States must maintain a large nuclear arsenal “able to survive a first strike and impose assured destruction on its attacker in retaliation,” they argue the US must have weapons and policies “to meaningfully limit the amount of damage the attacker can inflict on the United States and its allies. To do this, the United States must maintain the capability to destroy as many of the attacker’s nuclear weapons as practicable before or after they are launched.”
This “damage limitation” strategy is key to the argument for larger forces. The authors seem to favor using US nuclear weapons first, to destroy the enemy’s weapons “before” they are launched, as well as believing without evidence that there could be a national missile defense system so effective that it could destroy missiles “after” their launch.
Former dean of the Georgetown University School of Foreign Affairs Robert Gallucci writes in his brief rebuttal to the authors: “One is left to wonder how the pursuit of all the ‘counterforce’ capability required of the second part of the strategy—an extraordinary characterization of the traditional goal of ‘damage limitation’ laid out in past U.S. nuclear posture reviews—can be distinguished from the pursuit of a disarming, preemptive, ‘first strike’ capability.”
Indeed, that is precisely what may be motivating the Chinese increases that the authors claim as the justification for an urgent US build-up. Narang and Vaddi do not discuss the impact on other nations of the massive US investment in offensive and defensive nuclear systems over the past ten years, or its withdrawal form the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002 that began the deterioration of the arms control regime.
From the Chinese perspective, however, the new, more capable and proliferated offensive nuclear weapons (especially those close to their borders) must indeed appear to be first-strike weapons, particularly when combined with a massive proposed national missile defense system erected to intercept any missiles not destroyed by an initial barrage of the United States.
China expert Fiona Cunningham of the University of Pennsylvania believes that it is very possible that “China is reacting to the continued development of some of the U.S. capabilities that could hold its nuclear arsenal at risk.” These include national missile defense, “its development of conventional strike capabilities that might be able to degrade its nuclear forces,” and the “idea that you would try and attack an adversary’s nuclear forces before they end up being launched.”
The Trump administration’s decision to “go on the offense” will further exacerbate these concerns. As the newly renamed Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, said: “We’re going to go on offense, not just on defense. Maximum lethality, not tepid legality. Violent effect, not politically correct.”
The Chinese increase in forces may indeed be malevolent. But it also looks very similar to what one would do if trying to create exactly the kind of survivable force the authors say the United States must have for a credible deterrent. As Cunningham notes, “We should expect that if adversary capabilities change, then Chinese nuclear forces are going to change in tandem.”
The authors may intend to pave new ground, to develop a strategy for the “new nuclear age,” but they end up mirroring the failed policies of the past. In many ways, their article echoes the 1980 Foreign Policy article by nuclear hawks Colin Gray and Keith Payne, “Victory is Possible.” In support of that era’s nuclear modernization, they argued that “the United States must possess the ability to wage nuclear war rationally.” They, too, thought arms control was unattainable and out-of-date with current threats. They, too, thought “parity or essential equivalence is incompatible with extended deterrence.” They, too, claimed that “war-fighting… is an extension of the American theory of deterrence.”
Gray and Payne said that a war that resulted in 20 million dead Americans could still save 200 million or more. Narang and Vaddi are not as cavalier, but at the core, they are embracing the idea that the ability to fight and win a nuclear war is essential for national security.
The worst news is that they are not alone. Their views may be the dominant views in Washington now, in both parties. Cloaked in ominous strategic rhetoric, ignoring inconvenient truths, and backed by a formidable nuclear weapons lobby and massive budgets, these ideas are the new consensus. Without a vibrant, persistent pushback, these policies will not only prevail in the current Trump administration but in future governments as well. https://thebulletin.org/2025/09/the-dangerous-new-washington-consensus-for-more-nuclear-weapons/
Israel bombed Qatar to assassinate Hamas’s lead ceasefire negotiators
Amid ongoing ceasefire talks, Israel attempted to assassinate the Hamas negotiating team in an airstrike on the Doha office of its lead negotiator, senior Hamas leader Khalil al-Hayya. Hamas officials say the negotiating team survived the attack.
By Qassam Muaddi September 9, 2025 , https://mondoweiss.net/2025/09/israel-bombed-qatar-to-assassinate-hamass-lead-ceasefire-negotiators/
Amid ongoing ceasefire talks, Israel attempted to assassinate the Hamas negotiating team in an airstrike on the Doha office of its lead negotiator, senior Hamas leader Khalil al-Hayya. Hamas officials say the negotiating team survived the attack.
By Qassam Muaddi September 9, 2025
Israel attempted to assassinate top Hamas leaders in Qatar on Tuesday, after large explosions were heard in the capital city of Doha, and smoke columns rose from the building targeted in the attack. A joint statement by the Israeli army and Israel’s internal intelligence agency confirmed that it was targeting Hamas’s senior leadership in a “precise strike.” The statement added that the targeted leaders were “directly responsible” for the October 7 attack and that “measures were taken in order to mitigate harm to civilians.”
Israeli media said that the strike targeted the office of the lead Hamas negotiator in the ongoing ceasefire talks, Khalil al-Hayya, in addition to other members of the negotiating team. Hamas politburo member Suheil al-Hindi told Al Jazeera on Tuesday evening that the negotiating team led by al-Hayya had survived “the cowardly assassination attempt.” Al-Hindi also told the Qatari news network that Hamas “will not raise the white flag.”
Al Jazeera reported that five “lower-ranked members were killed.”
The Israeli strike occurred as the Hamas negotiating team met to discuss the latest ceasefire proposal presented by U.S. President Donald Trump, al-Hindi told Al Jazeera.
The Qatari Foreign Ministry strongly condemned the attack, calling it “criminal” and “cowardly.” The Ministry added that Qatar “will not tolerate” attacks that “threaten the safety of Qatar’s citizens and residents.”
An unnamed White House official told AFP that the U.S. was notified in advance of Israel’s planned attack in Qatar.
The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement that the attack was a “wholly independent Israeli operation.”
“Israel initiated it, Israel conducted it, and Israel takes full responsibility,” the statement added.
The Israeli PM and Israeli Defense Minister, Israel Katz, said in a joint statement that they had given the green light to attack the Hamas leadership following a shooting attack in Jerusalem yesterday that left six Israelis dead. Hamas’s armed wing, the Qassam Brigades, had claimed responsibility for the shooting, which was carried out by two Palestinians from the West Bank towns of Qatanna and Qebeibeh.
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres condemned the Israeli attack on the Qatari capital as a “flagrant violation of sovereignty.”
Targeting negotiators during ceasefire negotiations
The Israeli attack comes after Trump had put forward a proposal for a 60-day ceasefire that would see the release of all Israeli captives in the first 48 hours of the agreement. In exchange, negotiations to permanently end the war on Gaza would commence, with personal guarantees from the U.S. President that Israel would engage in the negotiations “in good faith.”
Trump’s proposal would also see Hamas relinquish control over Gaza and give up its arms. Hamas has repeatedly said that it is willing to relinquish control over the Strip and allow for an independent technocratic government to rule in its stead, but has maintained that disarming remains a “red line” for the group.
A previous ceasefire proposal last August was accepted by Hamas and awaited Israel’s approval, but Israel did not respond before Trump presented his most recent proposal.
The August proposal had included a 60-day ceasefire in which Israeli captives would be released in exchange for the release of 1,700 Palestinian prisoners, the entry of humanitarian aid, and the withdrawal of the Israeli army to specified areas at the edges of the Strip.
Continuous assassinations across the region
Last month, Israel killed 12 top officials in the Yemeni government, including Yemen’s Prime Minister, Ahmad al-Rahawi.
Since October 7, Israel has assassinated several top Hamas leaders in exile across the region, including Hamas’s previous politburo chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, and senior Hamas politburo member Saleh Aruri in Beirut.
Israel has also assassinated several top commanders of the al-Qassam Brigades, including its longtime commander, Muhammad al-Deif. Two weeks ago, Hamas confirmed the death of Deif’s successor, Muhammad Sinwar, the brother of Hamas’s slain Gaza leader Yahya Sinwar, who was killed by accident in October 2024 when he was struck by a tank shell during combat in Rafah.
At the end of August, Israel claimed to have assassinated Abu Obeida, the military spokesperson of the Qassam Brigades, in a strike on a residential building in Gaza City. Hamas has neither confirmed nor denied Abu Obeida’s fate.
Attempt to derail ceasefire negotiations ahead of Gaza City invasion
The attack on Doha comes as Israel continues to advance its offensive against Gaza City, levelling several high-rise buildings housing thousands of refugees, who were forced to leave the towers after receiving evacuation orders from the Israeli army. In recent weeks, the Israeli army’s offensive has flattened entire neighborhoods in eastern Gaza City, including the Shuja’iyya, Sabra, and Zeitoun neighborhoods.
The Israeli army has also dropped leaflets over the city ordering its entire population to evacuate to the overcrowded Mawasi area on the coast of Khan Younis in southern Gaza. The Israeli army says its occupation of the city will last for at least a year.
The Palestinian Civil Defense said that if the invasion of the city proceeds as announced, it expects a daily casualty count of around 300 Palestinians.
US Considers Bombing Venezuela as It Deploys F-35 Fighter Jets to Puerto Rico
ANTIWar.com, by Dave DeCamp | September 7, 2025
The Trump administration is considering multiple options for launching military strikes against alleged drug cartels in Venezuela, including hitting targets that could weaken Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, as it is deploying F-35 fighter jets to Puerto Rico, CNN has reported.
US officials told CNN that the US bombing of a boat near Venezuela last week was just the beginning of a much larger effort against drug trafficking that could lead to the ouster of Maduro. US officials claim the pressure on Venezuela and Maduro is about drug trafficking and a response to overdose deaths in the US, but fentanyl doesn’t come from or through Venezuela, and the majority of the cocaine that is transported to the US comes through the Pacific, not the Caribbean……………………
The US deployed F-35s to Puerto Rico after it claimed that two Venezuelan F-16 fighter jets flew over a US Navy vessel. The Department of Defense, now known as the Department of War, said in a press release that the Venezuelan flight was “provocative” despite the fact that the US deployed a large number of naval vessels near Venezuela’s coast…………………….https://news.antiwar.com/2025/09/07/us-considers-bombing-venezuela-as-it-deploys-f-35-fighter-jets-to-puerto-rico/
Academic agrees with NFLA’s position on management of deadly radioactive waste.
NFLA 9th Sept 2025, https://www.nuclearpolicy.info/news/academic-agrees-with-nflas-position-on-management-of-deadly-rad-waste/
Following on from last weeks joint media release with Lakes against the Nuclear Dump (LAND) https://www.nuclearpolicy.info/news/volatile-boiling-geysers-the-latest-on-nuclear-waste-plans/, the UK/Ireland Nuclear Free Local Authorities were delighted to hear that the views of another senior academic chimed with our own policy on the management of high-level radioactive waste.
David K. Smythe, Emeritus Professor and former Chair of Geophysics, University of Glasgow, said he agreed with Professor Stuart Haszeldine about the danger of trying to bury High Level Waste, whether it was conditioned or not: “The waste should be kept on the surface of the earth, and immobilised beyond any possibility of re-use, until a proper long-term solution is found.”
This concept of ongoing active stewardship pending the discovery of future treatment methods, rather than disposal and abandonment in a subterranean repository, accords with the position of the NFLAs and that of the Scottish Government.
Scottish Government Policy is that Higher Activity Radioactive Waste ‘should be managed in the long-term in near-surface facilities where it can be monitored and where there is the capability of retrieving it.’
The NFLAs have a similar long-standing policy on the management of nuclear waste; this comprises a set of clear principles which we are confident have stood the test of time and remain as relevant now as when they were originally agreed in 2004
- The idea that radioactive waste can be ‘disposed’ of be rejected in favour of radioactive waste management.
- Any process or activity that involves new or additional radioactive discharges into the environment be opposed, as this is potentially harmful to the human and natural environment.
- The policy of ‘dilution and dispersion’ of radioactive materials as a component of waste management, which leads to discharges into the estuaries, seas or atmosphere or the diversion of waste to landfill, metal recycling plants and incineration, be rejected in favour of a policy of ‘concentration and containment’, storing the waste safely on-site in isolation from the environment in bespoke facilities.
- The principle of waste minimisation be supported.
- The unnecessary transport of radioactive and other hazardous wastes be opposed.
- Wastes should ideally be managed on-site where produced (or as near as possible to the site) in a facility that allows monitoring and retrieval of the wastes.
China, Russia urge Europe to halt UN snapback after Iran-IAEA deal
Russia called on Britain, France and Germany on Tuesday to halt their move
to restore United Nations sanctions on Iran after Tehran and the
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) announced an agreement to resume nuclear inspections suspended since June.
Iran International 10th Sept 2025, https://www.iranintl.com/en/202509103977
‘Sizewell C oak tree felling would be devastating’
Campaigners say chopping down century-old oak trees as part of the
Sizewell C nuclear power station build would be “the straw that broke the
horse’s back”. Sizewell C has notified residents in Middleton, Suffolk,
that vegetation on the B1125 at Leiston Road could be cleared between the 6
and 10 October – after permission was granted. But locals fear it will mean
the loss of 10 oaks – each more than 100 years old – to improve the sight
line of the 60mph stretch, which could become part of the Sizewell C Link
Road system. It remains unclear at this stage if all or any of the trees
will be cut down, as project bosses say they will “only ever remove trees
when we absolutely have to”.
BBC 9th Sept 2025, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cgknxezy2vno
Communities Push Back against SpaceX in Tamaulipas
Conibio, which partners with federal conservation programs, expects to see the loss of more endangered turtles because of launches from Starbase. “It’s like launching bombs on their habitat,”
A Mexican conservation group says Elon Musk’s rocket launches from South Texas are killing turtles, damaging homes, and littering Tamaulipas beaches with debris.
Pablo De La Rosa, The Border Chronicle, Sep 10, 2025
Three miles south of Starbase, Texas, where SpaceX launches rockets into orbit, the beaches of Tamaulipas begin at the mouth of the Rio Grande. Further south along the water’s edge, generations of families from northern Mexico have spent Sundays on the shores of Playa Bagdad’s recreational area, renting small wooden palapas for shade. Local fishermen live off the seafood they catch nearby in the Gulf of Mexico. They sell their fried fish, spicy shrimp kabobs, and raw oysters to visitors who sunbathe and swim on the beach.
Many Tamaulipecos have grown up with fond memories of Playa Bagdad, and Jesús Elías Ibarra Rodríguez is one of them. Rodríguez is a Matamoros-based veterinarian and the founder and president of Conibio Global A.C., a nonprofit conservation organization based in the state of Tamaulipas.
For several years, residents of Brownsville and other border towns have protested losing access to public beaches and the harm to the environment and communities caused by many SpaceX rocket explosions. In August, several Texas border organizations demanded that the Federal Aviation Administration halt more rocket launches until a complete environmental impact statement is conducted.
A protest movement is also building in neighboring Mexico, Rodríguez said, as the number of launches and tests has increased. “We’ve been here years before SpaceX, working to conserve these precious ecosystems,” he said. “But everything is changing now. The beach is changing. Even people’s homes, old houses going back generations, are getting damaged from the launch vibrations.”
In 2019, SpaceX launched its first rocket prototype from Starbase, called Starhopper. Rodríguez said that during early tests, most noise and debris were contained north of the U.S.-Mexico border. But in recent years, SpaceX “began building rockets of great size, considered the largest rockets ever constructed on the planet.” It was around this time that communities in Tamaulipas began to feel the greater effects from the vibrations of engine tests and rocket launches.
A 2024 study from Brigham Young University found that the rocket launches at Starbase produced sound levels similar to “a rock concert or chainsaw” up to six miles away. The data also showed the blasts were powerful enough to cause structural damage to nearby homes and buildings.
Concerns increased in Mexico as residents in Tamaulipas began to find industrial debris on the beach, some labeled with the names of manufacturers of materials used in the space industry. “They started letting debris fall into Mexican territory,” said Rodríguez. “That was what really worried us, alarmed us, and upset us.” Rodríguez says that his organization has documented debris from SpaceX rocket launches along a 40-kilometer stretch of Tamaulipas beach.
Mexico’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum, said in June that the federal government was looking into a possible lawsuit against SpaceX based on damage sustained in the region from rocket launches. That same month, El País reported that Elon Musk had reached out to the Mexican government in the days after Sheinbaum’s comment for help in recovering any debris found in Tamaulipas that might still belong to the company.
Rodríguez says that Sheinbaum has assigned a local task force that is now present during launches along with Conibio staff and will soon make available a special team of divers to prepare reports on any major debris that is still under Mexican waters.
Rodríguez says that Conibio, which partners with federal conservation programs, expects to see the loss of more endangered turtles because of launches from Starbase. “It’s like launching bombs on their habitat,” said Rodríguez. “You have the sound and vibration of the explosions, and you have tons of millions of little pieces of plastic that are bait for them. And we worry about sea life in general consuming all that.”
Conibio reports that some 900 endangered turtles have died this year because they were trapped in their underground nests by compacted sand from Starbase launch and test vibrations, including from an accidental explosion of a rocket in June that occurred on the ground while it was still attached to its launch arm………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
While some community members in South Texas have rallied behind the Starbase project in hopes of jobs and economic benefits, that tradeoff does not exist for people in Tamaulipas.
“People here are very unhappy with this,” said Rodríguez. “There are hundreds, even thousands of Mexicans who want to join in, come together, and show that Mexico is united and that we will demand change, that those rockets explode somewhere else.” https://www.theborderchronicle.com/p/communities-push-back-against-spacex?publication_id=373432&post_id=173185930&isFreemail=true&r=3alev&triedRedirect=true&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
Spain Announces Arms Embargo on Israel and Other Steps ‘to Stop the Genocide in Gaza’
“This is not self-defense,” Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez asserted, “it is the extermination of a defenseless people and a violation of every international law.”
Brett Wilkins, Common Dreams, Sep 08, 2025
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez on Monday announced a series of nine new measures—including a total arms embargo—aimed at pressuring the government of fugitive Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “to stop the genocide in Gaza.”
Sánchez, who leads the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE), announced the steps during a speech in which he first acknowledged the historical suffering of the Jewish people, which includes the 1492 ethnic cleansing of Jews from Spain.
“The Jewish people have suffered countless persecutions, deserve to have their own state, and to feel secure,” Sánchez said. “That is why the Spanish government has condemned Hamas’ attacks from day one.”
However, “there is a difference between defending your country and bombing hospitals or starving innocent children,” the prime minister continued. “This is an unjustifiable attack on the civilian population, which the [United Nations] rapporteur has described as genocide.”
“Sixty thousand dead, two million displaced, half of them children,” Sánchez said. “This is not self-defense, it is not even an attack—it is the extermination of a defenseless people and a violation of every international law.”
The nine measures—which must be approved by lawmakers and the Cabinet—include:
- A “legal and permanent prohibition” on the purchase and sale of weapons, ammunition, and military equipment;
- A ban on transit through Spanish ports for all ships carrying fuels destined for Israel’s military;
- Denial of entry into Spanish airspace for all state aircraft carrying military equipment to Israel;
- A ban on entry to Spain for “all persons directly involved in genocide, human rights violations, and war crimes” in Gaza;
- Prohibition of imported products from illegal settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories;
- Limitation of consular services for Spanish citizens residing in illegal Israeli settlements;
- Strengthened support for the Palestinian Authority;
- An additional €10 million in support for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA); and
- An increase in overall humanitarian spending for Gaza, to reach €150 million by 2026……………………………………………………………………………….. https://www.commondreams.org/news/spain-arms-embargo-israel
A killing at sea marks America’s descent into lawless power
The people on board were not given the chance to surrender. No evidence was presented. No rules of engagement were cited. The administration claimed authority to kill on suspicion alone. A vessel in international waters is not a lawful target simply because officials say so.
International law does not permit such action.
The peremptory strike on a speedboat is a warning to all who serve. Remember your oath.
Jon Duffy, September 8, 2025, https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2025/09/killing-sea-americas-descent-lawless-power/407949/?oref=defense_one_breaking_nl&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Defense%20One%20Breaking%20News:%209/9%20killing&utm_content=C&utm_term=newsletter_d1_alert
The United States has crossed a dangerous line.
Last week, an American military platform destroyed a small vessel in the Caribbean, killing 11 people the Trump administration claims were drug traffickers. It was not an interception. It was not a boarding with Coast Guard legal authority. It was a strike—ordered from Washington, executed in international waters, and justified with little more than “trust us.” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told Fox that officials “knew exactly who was in that boat” and “exactly what they were doing.” He offered no evidence.
This was not a counterdrug operation. It was not law enforcement. It was killing without process. And it was, to all appearances, against the letter and the spirit of the law.
For decades, the U.S. military and Coast Guard have intercepted drug shipments in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific under a careful legal framework: Coast Guard officers would tactically control Navy ships, invoke law enforcement authority, stop vessels, and detain crews for prosecution. The goal is not execution; it is interdiction within international law.
This week’s strike ripped up that framework. The people on board were not given the chance to surrender. No evidence was presented. No rules of engagement were cited. The administration claimed authority to kill on suspicion alone.
International law does not permit such action. A vessel in international waters is not a lawful target simply because officials say so. Contending that narcotics pose a long-term danger to Americans is at best a weak policy argument, not a legal justification for force. Unless this boat posed an imminent threat of attack—which no one has claimed—blowing it out of the water is not self-defense. It is killing at sea. A government that ignores these distinctions is not fighting cartels. It is discarding the rule of law.
Beyond the gross violations of the law and the Constitution lies an enormous strategic danger. By redefining traffickers as legitimate military targets, the administration has plunged the United States into another war without limits.
Who is the enemy? “Cartels,” we are told. But cartels are not armies. They are networks that span countries and blend with civilians. Declaring war on them is like declaring war on poverty or terrorism—a plunge into an endless campaign that cannot be “won.”
Where is the battlefield? The Caribbean? Venezuela? Central America? Overnight, officials shifted their story about the destroyed vessel’s destination: first, it was “probably headed to Trinidad or some other country in the Caribbean,” then it was among “imminent threats to the United States.” If geography is that malleable, there is no limit to where the next strike may fall.
And what is the objective? To “blow up and get rid of them,” in the words of Secretary of State Marco Rubio. That is not strategy; it is bravado. We have tried it before, in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen. Killing “high-value targets” didn’t end the war on terror.
The U.S. is drifting into an undeclared war of assassination across half a hemisphere, led by unaccountable officials who equate explosions with effectiveness.
Even more dangerous is the backdrop: the Supreme Court’s ruling that presidents are immune from prosecution for “official acts.” Experts warned this would give the commander-in-chief license to commit murder. The majority waved those fears away. Now the president has ordered killings in international waters.
Eleven people are dead, not through due process but by fiat. The defense secretary boasts about it on television. And the president will face no consequences.
This is no longer abstract. The law has been rewritten in real time: a president can kill, and there is no recourse. That is not strength. That is authoritarianism.
What does this mean for the principle of civilian control, when those who wield it face no consequence for abuse? What does it mean for our military, when they are ordered to carry out missions that violate the standards they have sworn to uphold?
What happens abroad does not stay abroad. A government that stretches legal authority overseas will not hesitate to do the same at home. The same commander-in-chief who ordered a strike on a boat in international waters has already ordered National Guard troops into American cities over the objections of local leaders. The logic is identical: redefine the threat, erase legal distinctions, and justify force as the first tool. Today it is “traffickers” in the Caribbean. Tomorrow it will be “criminals” in Chicago or “radicals” in Atlanta.
This strike is not only about 11 lives lost at sea. It is about the precedent set when the military is unmoored from law, and when silence from senior leaders normalizes the abuse.
The cost will not be measured in a destroyed boat. It will be measured in the corrosion of law, strategy, and trust. Legally, the U.S. has abandoned the framework that distinguished interdiction from assassination. Constitutionally, presidential immunity has been laid bare: the commander-in-chief of the most destructive military power in history has been placed beyond the reach of law. Strategically, we have entered another endless war against a concept, not an enemy. Internally, the erosion of boundaries abroad feeds the erosion of boundaries at home.
The laws of war, the principles of proportionality, the training drilled into every officer—all run counter to what happened in the Caribbean. Yet silence has prevailed. And silence is acquiescence. Each concession ratifies the misuse of force until it becomes routine. That is how institutions corrode. That is how democracies die.
The strike in the Caribbean is not the action of a strong nation. It is a warning. This is about whether the U.S. military remains an institution of law and principle, or whether it becomes an obedient weapon in the hands of a lawless president.
A republic that allows its leaders to kill without law, to wage war without strategy, and to deploy troops without limit is a republic in deep peril. Congress will not stop it. The courts will not stop it. That leaves those sworn not to a man, but to the Constitution.
The oath is clear: unlawful orders—foreign or domestic—must be disobeyed. To stand silent as the military is misused is not restraint. It is betrayal.
Jon Duffy is a retired Navy captain. His active duty career included command at sea and national security roles. He writes about leadership and democracy.
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