Trump to America…’No dough for the Commons. I need it for my criminal wars’
Walt Zlotow West Suburban Peace Coalition Glen Ellyn IL. 26 Apr 26, https://theaimn.net/trump-to-america-no-dough-for-the-commons-i-need-it-for-my-criminal-wars/
President Trump has a bizarre way of demonstrating his claim of being the Peace President deserving the Nobel Peace Prize
He spent his first term raining down tens of thousands of bombs on 7 countries posing not a whit of danger to the Homeland. He assassinated a top Iranian general in Baghdad, a monstrous war crime. He withdrew from Obama’s Iran nuclear deal (JCPOA) which silenced Iran’s nuclear bomb potential and should have ended the isolation of Iran. Instead, it set the table for Trump’s senseless, now failed war on Iran 8 years later that may crash the world economy if not ended soon. That is madness.
Trump’s obsession with murder and mayhem worldwide has collateral damage to every sensible domestic function of government. Trump has spent 10 years trying to demolish Obama’s Affordable Care Act, a relatively meager improvement to America’s failed health insurance system to the less fortunate. He hasn’t spent dollar one to fix it. He’s ignored our crumbling infrastructure. He’s invested zilch in green energy while the world overheats relentlessly.
But Trump sure has invested in war. His last term one National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) budget in 2021 was a massive $740 billion. His first in term two for 2026 crashed the trillion mark by $42 billion. But mimicking Al Jolson in ‘The Jazz Singer’, Trump proclaimed ‘You ain’t seen nothing yet.’ His 2027 NDAA sours to $1,500,000,000, a 44% increase. Combined with massive tax cuts for the billionaire class, Trump’s profligate military spending has goosed the national debt by $10 billion in his first 6 years.
While silent about spending on the Commons to improve life for all Americans, Trump is ecstatic about his trillion and a half bucks for endless wars. “We’re fighting wars. We can’t take care of day care. “It’s not possible for us to take care of day care, Medicaid, Medicare — all these individual things They can do it on a state basis. You can’t do it on a federal.”
To paraphrase first predecessor Obama, ‘Yes you can…yes you must.’
On April 7, 1967, exactly one year before he was gunned down, Rev. Martin Luther King courageously spoke out against the Vietnam War at New York’s Riverside Church, ahead of a massive antiwar rally. In ‘A Time To Break the Silence’, King decried, “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”
Under Donald Trump’s endless, senseless wars…America’s spiritual death is here.
Jeffrey Sachs: Trump’s Failure in Iran Exposes the Crumbling Myth of U.S. Hegemony
April 25, 2026 , ScheerPost Staff, https://scheerpost.com/2026/04/25/jeffrey-sachs-trumps-failure-in-iran-exposes-the-crumbling-myth-of-u-s-hegemony/
Jeffrey Sachs has been warning for years that the “unipolar moment” was never real — and in this conversation with Glenn Diesen, he lays out the clearest case yet. Trump’s failure in the Iran War, Sachs argues, didn’t just expose the limits of one administration. It exposed the limits of the entire post‑Cold War American project: a foreign policy built on illusions of dominance, ideological entitlement, and a refusal to accept a multipolar world already taking shape.
Sachs traces the long arc of Western hegemony — from the European empires to Washington’s brief moment of post‑1991 triumphalism — and shows how the Iran conflict has become the breaking point. The U.S. could not impose its will on Tehran. It could not bend Russia through sanctions. It cannot contain China’s rise. And yet its political class continues to behave as if history stopped in 1991.
This interview is not just analysis. It’s an autopsy of an empire that still believes it is immortal.
From the 1953 Coup to Today: Jeffrey Sachs Explains America’s Endless War on Iran
April 25, 2026 Joshua Scheer, https://scheerpost.com/2026/04/25/from-the-1953-coup-to-today-jeffrey-sachs-explains-americas-endless-war-on-iran/
Jeffrey Sachs doesn’t raise his voice — he doesn’t have to. In this wide‑ranging conversation with Tucker Carlson, Sachs lays out a devastating, historically grounded indictment of U.S. foreign policy, the manufactured “Iran threat,” and the decades‑long fusion of American empire with Israel’s regional ambitions. What emerges is not a hot take but a cold, clinical autopsy of a war machine that has slipped beyond democratic control.
From the 1953 coup to the present blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, Sachs traces how Washington’s obsession with dominance — and Israel’s pursuit of permanent military supremacy — has pushed the world to the brink of a conflict that could collapse the global economy in weeks. He dismantles the nuclear‑weapons narrative, exposes the bipartisan addiction to sanctions and covert warfare, and warns that the U.S. is now trapped in a crisis of its own making.
This is one of Sachs’ clearest, most unflinching interviews to date — a map of how we got here, and a warning about what comes next if the “grown‑ups” don’t seize the wheel.
Jeffrey Sachs Warns: The U.S.–Israel War Path Toward Iran Is Leading the World Into Economic and Political Collapse
Jeffrey Sachs has spent decades advising governments, studying development, and watching empires rise and fall. In his latest interview, he delivers a stark message: the United States and Israel are steering the world toward a catastrophic confrontation with Iran — and the window for avoiding disaster is closing fast.
A Global Crisis Triggered by a Manufactured One
Sachs argues that the current crisis is not an accident but the predictable outcome of decades of U.S. interference in Iran, beginning with the 1953 CIA‑MI6 coup that toppled Iran’s elected prime minister. That single act — the theft of Iran’s sovereignty and its oil — set the stage for 70 years of hostility, sanctions, proxy wars, and regime‑change fantasies.
According to Sachs, the present escalation is driven less by Iranian behavior than by Washington’s refusal to accept that Iran slipped out of U.S. control in 1979. The “Iran menace,” he says, is a propaganda construct — a way to justify endless pressure on a country that has not invaded another nation in more than a century.
The Strait of Hormuz: A Choke Point for the World Economy
Sachs warns that the closure of the Strait of Hormuz — a direct consequence of the spiraling conflict — has already triggered a global economic emergency. Oil, gas, fertilizers, petrochemicals, and metals flow through this narrow waterway. With it blocked, the world economy is “reeling,” and the clock is ticking.
The off‑ramp exists, Sachs insists: de‑escalation, diplomacy, and reopening the strait. But it requires political maturity — something he argues is in short supply in both Washington and Jerusalem.
Israel’s Parallel Agenda: Regional Dominance at Any Cost
Sachs draws a sharp distinction between U.S. and Israeli motives. For Washington, Iran represents a rebellion against American empire. For Israel, Iran is the last major obstacle to full military dominance across the Middle East and North Africa.
He argues that Israel’s political leadership — backed by a powerful U.S. lobby — has long sought to neutralize Iran not because of nuclear fears, but because Iran resists Israeli hegemony. This, Sachs says, is the real engine behind the push for confrontation.
The Nuclear Lie
One of Sachs’ most forceful points is his dismantling of the nuclear narrative. U.S. intelligence agencies have repeatedly stated that Iran is not pursuing a nuclear weapon. Iran has sought international monitoring and compliance frameworks — including the JCPOA — only to see the U.S. sabotage its own agreements under pressure from domestic political forces aligned with Israel.
Calling the nuclear rhetoric “Orwellian,” Sachs argues that the real goal is regime change, not nonproliferation.
A War That Would Reshape the World in Weeks
Sachs warns that a U.S.–Israel attack on Iran would not be a limited strike. It would trigger a regional war, destroy infrastructure across the Gulf, and plunge the global economy into chaos. Within weeks, he says, the world would look “profoundly damaged,” with the risk of escalation into a global conflict.
This is not hyperbole, Sachs insists — it is the logical outcome of the current trajectory.
The Real Question: Who Is Steering U.S. Policy?
Throughout the interview, Sachs returns to a central theme: the absence of democratic control over U.S. foreign policy. Decisions of war and peace are being shaped by lobbies, political vanity, and imperial reflexes — not by the interests of the American public.
The result is a government that no longer serves its citizens, a political class insulated from consequences, and a foreign policy apparatus that treats global stability as collateral damage.
A Final Warning
Sachs’ message is clear: the U.S. and Israel are playing with forces they cannot control. The world is at a fork in the road — diplomacy or disaster — and the people making the decisions are the least equipped to choose wisely.
For Americans, the stakes are not abstract. Sachs argues that the economic, political, and moral costs of this conflict will fall squarely on the public, not on the leaders who helped create it.
UK nuclear industry in lobbying blitz ahead of Scottish election
THE UK nuclear industry ramped up its lobbying of MSPs ahead of the Holyrood
election, the Sunday National can reveal. An investigation based on the
Scottish Parliament’s lobbying register has revealed that activity has
reached an all-time high, with industry groups, business organisations and
unions increasingly looking to reverse the Scottish Government’s
opposition to the building of new nuclear power stations.
In 2025, 32 MSPs
were lobbied across 14 separate meetings – the highest levels recorded to
date. Compared to the previous year, this was more than three times the
number of MSPs lobbied and almost double the number of distinct meetings.
So far in 2026, 12 MSPs have already been lobbied across seven separate
meetings in the run-up to polling day on May 7. The majority of recent
lobbying has been carried out by the Nuclear Industry Association, which
held a series of meetings with MSPs in Holyrood in 2026.
On March 24, 2026,
representatives from the association met several Labour and Tory MSPs. The
discussions focused on the role of nuclear energy and calls to reverse the
Scottish Government’s opposition to new nuclear development.
At another
meeting on February 20, 2026, the association spoke to Tory MSP Douglas
Ross, raising the “importance” of nuclear power to Scotland’s energy
future. The register also showed involvement from other organisations. On
February 25, 2026, for example, the trade union Prospect met with Net Zero
Secretary Gillian Martin to raise concerns from its members about the
future of the energy sector, including nuclear.
The French state-owned
energy company EDF Energy, which owns and operates Torness nuclear power
station, also lobbied 20 MSPs in 2025. Patrick Harvie from the Scottish
Greens said: “The nuclear industry may be a cash cow for lobbyists, but we
don’t need or want it in Scotland. “We cannot afford to waste time or money
on a costly and unsustainable energy source that will take years to go
online while leaving a toxic legacy for future generations. “If we are to
have a cleaner and greener future, it needs to be based on the vast
renewable resources that we already have in abundance rather than a dated
and dangerous false solution like nuclear.”
The National 26th April 2026, https://www.thenational.scot/news/26052414.uk-nuclear-industry-lobbying-blitz-ahead-scottish-election/
Norway says “nuclear renaissance” too expensive
April 23, 2026, https://beyondnuclear.org/norway-says-nuclear-renaissance-too-expensive/
Report illuminates new reactors can’t compete with the accelerating growth of renewable energy
The “Survey and assessment of the status of available nuclear reactor technologies and designs” published on March 16, 2026 as the final report on Norway’s energy policy was made public on April 8, 2026. It was prepared by the international team of energy consulting and architectural firms, the US-based Amentum and the Oslo, Norway-based Multiconsult Group, on government contract by the Norwegian Nuclear Commission. The Commission was established in June 2024 to evaluate the inclusion of nuclear power in the Scandianavian country’s energy policy. The consultants were tasked to review the current global status and trends of nuclear reactor technologies, including their readiness, flexibility, supply chains, and costs.
Norway has never sited, constructed or operated a commercial atomic power plant. But back in 2022, the M Vest Group Norway (M Vest Energy AS), a Norwegian oil and gas corporation, through its specialized subsidiary Norsk Kjernekraft, established partnerships with the nuclear divisions of the UK’s Rolls-Royce and the French startup Hexana and lobbied the Norwegian government to promote and advance the development of atomic power in Norway. Following the Commission’s examination of the consultants’ report, Reuters news service announced the Commission’s decision, “Norway should not work towards nuclear power generation now, commission finds.”
Interestingly enough, Norway currently gets 89.9% of the nation’s electrical power from thousands of hydroelectric facilities sited across the country with wind power running a meager and distant second (8.6%). Still, Norway is well on the way to generating 100% of its electrical power from renewable energy. Even though Norway is currently producing an electricity surplus, the nuclear industry found its way into pressuring the Norwegian government to get with a Scandinavian “nuclear renaissance” to accommodate the projected AI/data center revolution with its own fleet of light water Small Modular Reactors (SMR) and Advanced Modular Reactors (AMR). While the report’s commissioned focus is on Norway, it shines a bright light on the much ballyhooed but still not-ready-for-prime-time nuclear power technologies now pushed worldwide.
Norway’s report confirms that the new promises of nuclear power provide little more than a “spike in promotional materials and many bold claims around technology, cost and schedule over the past 3-4 years, combined with hype associated with the energy demands created by Artificial Intelligence.”
The Norway survey astutely finds, “Given the nuclear sector’s claims that modularisation will deliver factory-build quality and increase the speed of construction, thereby reducing finance costs, it is not surprising that these technology families are attractive, but the arguments are not yet proven.”
Despite the absence of any final construction cost figures given a handful of western SMR or AMR construction projects have only just started, the Norwegian analyses expect first-of-a-kind SMR designs to be significantly more expensive than the few completed large gigawatt nuclear reactor on a per-kilowatt basis. That said, the first-of-a-kind Vogtle units 3 and 4 finished in Georgia were first estimated at a cost of completion for $14 billion were finally finished and commissioned at an estimated $35 billion.
The Norway-commissioned analyses also predict higher fixed operation and maintenance costs on a per-kilowatt basis for SMRs compared to large Generation 3 reactors at Georgia’s Vogtle 3 and 4 units. Additionally, the Commission report predicts that yearly nuclear fuel costs for SMRs could be as much as 82% higher than those for large gigawatt reactors due to “lower plant density and shorter burnup cycles.”
Other predicted first-of-a-kind SMRs costs that will be “Probably Higher” than the large gigawatt reactors will include: Nuclear Waste (post ten years operation); Long Term Nuclear Waste Disposal; Spent Fuel (post ten years operation), and; Decommissioning.
The report’s combined findings on all these uncontrolled costs appear to be the most impactful analyses that dissuaded Norway from opening Pandora’s nuclear energy box at this time.
We all should all be dissuaded, given the demonstration that renewable energy is significantly more affordable, faster and more reliable to deploy from a broad range of resources (photovoltaic solar cells, on and offshore wind, hydro and tidal power, etc). We can now couple that with economically deliverable utility-grade energy storage over a widening range of systems. Why are we being given the bums’ rush into a nuclear future with its unpredictably high financial risks, unreliable and increasing significant construction cost overruns, recurring project cancellations and abandonment with sunk costs, uninsurable severe nuclear accident risks, and ultimately the unresolved biological isolation of nuclear waste that offers only environmental liability without a watt of benefit to future generations?
LEST WE FORGET – REMEMBERING THE HUMAN IMPACT OF THECHORNOBYL DISASTER
Scottish Campaign to Resist the Atomic Menace (SCRAM), 24th April 2026, https://www.no2nuclearpower.org.uk/wp/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/SCRAM-Chornobyl-press-release-.pdf
The Scottish Campaign to Resist the Atomic Menace has issued a reminder of the huge
human cost of the Chornobyl disaster in Ukraine to mark its 40th anniversary this Sunday,
26th April. Studies indicate a result of the disaster of between 16000 and 40000 fatal cancers.
Others claim these estimates are very conservative.(1,2)
Pete Roche of SCRAM said: “The contrast between what happened 40 years ago in Ukraine
at the Chornobyl nuclear plant – and the proclamations of today’s nuclear industry that it is
not dangerous or dirty – could not be greater. Chornobyl contamination was widespread
across Europe and is estimated to result in anything between 16,000 and 40,000 fatal cancers,
possibly many more.
“Whilst we haven’t experienced a full meltdown at a UK nuclear plant to date, the industry’s
record in the UK is not a clean one. These include the serious 3-day reactor core fire at
Windscale in Cumbria in 1957 and other accidental releases of highly radioactive material
into the sea and the local environment, and in Scotland the waste shaft explosion at Dounreay
in 1977.
“Both Torness and Hunterston power stations in Scotland suffered significant cracking in
their graphite reactor cores over time, and there have been numerous shut downs over their
years of operation but thankfully did not result in the type of full scale regional emergency at
Chornobyl or in Japan at the Fukushima plant in 2011. The inherent danger is there despite
nuclear public relations efforts, and the legacy of toxic waste will be with future generations
for hundreds of years. 40 years after the disaster, it is still highly vulnerable from the conflict
in the region. Wind turbines, hydro plants and solar panels don’t carry these risks.
“After the reprocessing at Sellafield was abandoned, highly radioactive reactor fuel elements
will now be stored on UK nuclear sites well into the 2100s. No safe solution has been found
other than looking for eventual deep burial at a location yet to be determined, that will need
guarded for hundreds if not thousands of years.
“On the positive side of the debate over energy, with Scotland’s huge renewable resources,
nuclear is not needed. Scotland can power itself, and export clean, green power to other
countries – and combine that with energy storage, flexible green power and an upgraded grid
system. The revolution in renewable energy is already well underway and is globally
unstoppable. New nuclear power has no place in a clean, green energy system, and certainly
not in Scotland.”
A recent Survation poll of 2000 people, indicated that a majority of Scots preferred renewable
energy over nuclear to tackle the climate crisis and be most effective at reducing energy bills.
It also found that the nuclear industry was the least trusted to ‘tell the truth aboutits products, costs, pollutants and safety record.’ (3)
The campaign group says nuclear is not needed and is an expensive distraction that will do
nothing to tackle the climate crisis, calling instead for a 100% renewable energy system to be
committed to by the next Scottish Government after the May election.
Poll Finds Just 4 Percent of Democrats Support Increasing Military Aid to Israel
By Sharon Zhang, April 25, 2026 , https://scheerpost.com/2026/04/25/poll-finds-just-4-percent-of-democrats-support-increasing-military-aid-to-israel/
Separate polling found this week that Congress’s disapproval ratings have tied their all-time high of 86 percent.
New polling has found that just 4 percent of Democratic voters support increasing military aid to Israel, marking a massive rift with congressional Democrats at a time when other polling has found that disapproval of Congress has tied its all-time high.
The Economist/YouGov polling released this week found that only 11 percent of American adults say that the U.S. should increase military aid to Israel, including only 4 percent of people identifying themselves as Democrats — and only 23 percent of Republicans.
Meanwhile, the polling found that 56 percent of Democrats say the U.S. should decrease military aid to Israel, including 35 percent who say the practice should stop altogether. Just 19 percent said the U.S. should maintain current levels, while 20 percent said they were not sure.
This is a huge departure from the stance of Democratic leaders in Congress, who support military funding for Israel or even want to increase it.
Last week, for instance, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York) was one of only seven Democrats to vote against the advancement of a measure to block the sale of bulldozers to Israel introduced by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont). He was joined by figures like Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pennsylvania), one of Israel’s staunchest advocates in Congress.
Even though Sanders’s resolutions didn’t pass, the vote was seen as a major shift among Democrats, with more Democrats voting to block the sales of certain weapons to Israel than ever before — even if the caucus leader disagreed.
Schumer, a longtime supporter of Israel, said in February that supporting aid to Israel is, in fact, a top priority of his.
“I have many jobs as leader … and one is to fight for aid to Israel, all the aid that Israel needs,” he said at a gathering in New York City. He bragged that, under his leadership, U.S. aid to Israel has grown more “than ever, ever before,” and said: “As long as I’m in the Senate, this program will continue to grow.”
The Democratic National Committee (DNC) has also stuck to its positions of backing Israel and its political apparatus in the U.S. Last year, one of its committees rejected a measure for an arms embargo on Israel, while the party also voted down a resolution to limit the influence of dark money on Democratic races, including the spending from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).
Meanwhile, approval of Congress — which has done virtually nothing to stop or stem the flow of weapons to Israel, despite public opinion — has hit record lows.
Gallup polling released this week found that the proportion of Americans who disapprove of Congress’s job performance has hit a record high of 86 percent — tying the record set in 2015. Meanwhile, Congress’s approval sits at a lowly 10 percent, just one point above its record low of 9 percent.
Is President Trump mentally unstable? (Part 2)
25 April 2026 John Lord , https://theaimn.net/is-president-trump-mentally-unstable-part-2/
In 2017, The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump, a book edited by Dr Bandy X. Lee, presented the assessments of 27 psychiatrists, psychologists, and other mental health professionals, argued that Trump’s mental condition constituted a “clear and present danger” to the nation.
However, it is important to acknowledge the ethical debate within the mental health community regarding the public diagnosis of political figures. On one side, proponents of speaking out argue that when a leader’s behaviour appears to threaten public safety or welfare, mental health professionals have a “duty to warn,” even if it means commenting without a direct evaluation.
They believe that their responsibility to the public outweighs traditional restrictions. On the other side, critics invoke the American Psychiatric Association’s (APA) Goldwater Rule, emphasising that publicly diagnosing a public figure without a face-to-face assessment and consent undermines professional ethics, risks personal bias, and can erode trust in the profession. This debate remains unresolved, with experts divided over what best serves ethical standards and public interest.
The APA’s Goldwater Rule cautions professionals against offering a diagnosis without a personal examination and proper authorisation. This ongoing controversy reflects broader concerns about professional ethics, public responsibility, and the challenges of analysing the mental health of high-profile leaders.
In 2021, some members of Trump’s own Cabinet, shocked by the violence at the Capitol on January 6 and his slow response, discussed whether to use the 25th Amendment to remove him from office because of concerns about his mental fitness.
During his 2024 campaign, he attacked Kamala Harris and then launched into a wild and confusing rant:
“She destroyed the city of San Francisco, it’s – and I own a big building there – it’s no – I shouldn’t talk about this, but that’s OK, I don’t give a damn because this is what I’m doing. I should say it’s the finest city in the world – sell and get the hell out of there, right? But I can’t do that. I don’t care, you know? I lost billions of dollars. You know, somebody said, ‘What do you think you lost?’ I said, ‘Probably two, three billion. That’s OK, I don’t care.’ They say, ‘You think you’d do it again?’ And that’s the least of it. Nobody. They always say, I don’t know if you know. Lincoln was horribly treated. Uh, Jefferson was pretty horrible. Andrew Jackson, they say, was the worst of all, and he was treated worse than any other president. I said, ‘Do that study again, because I think there’s nobody close to Trump.’ I even got shot! And who the hell knows where that came from, right?”
These persistent displays of paranoia, his continuing ICE raids, his use of the Justice Department to target his enemies, his shameless corruption rage, volatility, delusions, vengefulness, foul-mouthed posturing, his bottomless vengeance toward Iran and the Pope and increasing detachment from reality directly undermine the expectations of mental stability and sound judgment outlined in the thesis.
As such, they provide substantial evidence that calls into question the President’s capacity to fulfil the responsibilities and demands of the office.
Why did Trump and Vance pick a fight with Pope Leo? His exchange with the Pope was unsightly, unnecessary and regrettable.
Despite all these warning signs, his Cabinet members and aides keep their heads down. Republican members of Congress pretend not to notice, and his billionaire supporters dare not speak of his rapid decline. Media coverage of the President’s conduct remains contested.
Some critics argue that significant portions of the media engage in “sanewashing,” thereby downplaying or rationalising the President’s erratic behaviour. Others point out that both partisan and mainstream outlets have at times foregrounded his controversial statements and actions, which suggests a level of critical scrutiny.
This divergence highlights the unevenness of media responses: while certain outlets may frame the President’s behaviour as authentic or a populist connection, others interpret it as evidence of instability and potential danger.
These framing choices shape both public opinion and elite responses by influencing how the general population perceives these actions and how policymakers justify their stances. Ultimately, this complexity in media coverage reflects deeper debates over the press’s responsibilities and the challenges of interpreting signs of instability at the highest levels of government.
But some people on the political right, including longtime Trump supporters, have had enough.
Former Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene says Trump’s threat to destroy Iran’s civilisation is “not tough rhetoric, it’s insanity.” Far-right podcaster Candace Owens calls him “a genocidal lunatic.”
Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones says Trump “does babble and sounds like the brain’s not doing too hot.” Ty Cobb, a White House lawyer during Trump’s first term, says Trump is “clearly insane.” Former Trump White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham says, “he’s clearly not well.”
The public is starting to notice. Sixty-one per cent of Americans think he’s become more unpredictable as he gets older, while only 45 per cent say he is “mentally sharp and able to deal with challenges.”
For the good of the country and the world, we need to face the truth. Based on his actions and words, the most powerful man in the world seems unfit for the job because of mental instability.
We are all endangered. What happens if, in a fit of rage, he presses the nuke button and “chucks a wobbly”? Is hewatching the “football” with the atomic codes in his lap? Who’s ready to stop him to save the world?
It is not as though Congress doesn’t have the power to dismiss this ratbag. They could “Impeach” him now.
In conclusion, the 25th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States explicitly provides a constitutional mechanism for removing a President deemed unable to discharge the powers and duties of the office. This provision underscores Congress’s responsibility to act decisively in the face of clear evidence of presidential incapacity.
However, in practice, there are significant political and procedural barriers to invoking the 25th Amendment. The process requires the Vice President and a majority of the Cabinet to agree that the President is unfit, which can be difficult to achieve given political loyalties and fear of reprisals.
Even if this initial hurdle is cleared, the President can contest the decision, and ultimately, it falls to a supermajority in Congress to resolve the dispute. These requirements make the real-world use of the 25th Amendment extremely challenging, especially in a polarised political environment.
As such, while the 25th Amendment serves as a critical safeguard for the stability of American democracy and global security, its practical application remains fraught with obstacles.
The untold race to escape Chernobyl: A nuclear disaster. Families surrounded by deadly radiation. Then one woman risked her life to save 45,000 people.
By IMOGEN GARFINKEL – SENIOR FOREIGN NEWS REPORTER and PERKIN AMALARAJ, FOREIGN NEWS REPORTER, 22 April 2026 , https://www.dailymail.com/news/article-15748163/The-untold-race-escape-Chernobyl-nuclear-disaster-Families-surrounded-deadly-radiation-one-woman-risked-life-save-45-000-people.html
Radiation is an odourless, invisible killer, with the potential to surge through the body and tear it apart on a cellular level, irreversibly damaging DNA.
When reactor number four at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant exploded in April 1986, debris emanated radiation at a level of 10,000 roentgens per hour – enough to cause a fatal dose to anyone who stood nearby for a matter of minutes.
Firefighters made the ultimate sacrifice on April 26, absorbing unprecedented amounts of the poison as they battled to put out the enormous flames of history’s most devastating nuclear accident.
As a gigantic radioactive cloud began spreading over the world – infecting 40 per cent of Europe and even stretching into northern Africa and north America – one woman found herself in the eye of the storm.
Maria Protsenko, garbed in just a blouse, skirt and sandals, was personally responsible for orchestrating the mass evacuation of Pripyat’s 45,000 civilians, emptying the devastated Soviet city of any sign of life.
She was previously the chief architect of the city, having lovingly designed neighbourhoods for young families, but in a split second she became a kind of grim reaper, sweeping away all the civilisation she had helped to create.
Recounting the fateful day to the makers of the TV series ‘Chernobyl: Inside the Meltdown’ on National Geographic, Protsenko transports herself back 40 years ago and tells of the wounds that haven’t left her.
‘For the first time in my life, I was not building a city, I was burying it forever,’ she said, reflecting on the scale of destruction. ‘This is not only a man-made disaster, it is a catastrophe that broke the lives of thousands of people.’
By 11am the day after the explosion, a mass evacuation was announced and scheduled for 2pm, but by that point it was too late.
Some of those living closest to the power plant had already received internal radiation doses in their thyroid glands of up to 3.9Gy – roughly 37,000 times the dose of a chest x-ray – after breathing radioactive material and eating contaminated food
Immediately after the accident, thyroid cancer was particularly rampant in Belarus, Ukraine and Russia, with 5,000 cases diagnosed among those who were children and adolescents at the time of exposure.
Today, Pripyat is an eerie ghost town of cavernous kindergartens, abandoned houses and sports halls left to decay, having been declared too radioactively dangerous for human habitation for at least 24,000 years.
Protsenko wore no protective clothing as she led the vast evacuation operation, standing on a bridge overlooking the city while 1,500 buses picked up families district by district.
She stayed up all night designing intricate maps, allowing her to execute the mammoth task with tactical precision, not leaving anyone behind in the industrial wasteland.
‘At 2pm the first bus arrived… I was standing there in my blouse and my skirt, and I had sandals on my bare feet. I had no protective gear,’ she told the documentary.
Only thick sheets of lead or massive concrete blocks would have prevented her from being contaminated.
‘All that radioactive dust was rising and got on my bare feet and my legs. That’s why they were so itchy. Can you imagine how much radioactive dust was flying from that place, at that time?’
But at that point, no one could understood the scale of the tragedy – not yet.
Girls and boys played together in the street as they waited for their livesaving convoys, not yet grasping the fact that the evacuation wasn’t temporary and they may never see each other again.
Many didn’t have a chance to say goodbye before they vanished from each other’s lives forever, turning from neighbours to refugees in one simple journey.
‘We evacuated nearly 45,000 people. Without panicking and noise, we evacuated the entire city,’ Protsenko said.
She is still haunted by the memory of one woman, who watched her intensely from the bus window as she was torn away from her community.
‘She didn’t just look at me, she turned her head, following me with her stare.
‘There was something in her face, like she was screaming inside: “What is this?! Where am I going?!”‘
While she was helping the city’s inhabitants escape, Protsenko had no idea she was exposing herself to so much lethal radiation.
‘At that moment, I was not only not afraid, I did not even think about it,’ she said.
It was only after the disaster that the architect remembered how she had spent hours absorbing the toxic fallout near the Red Forest, breathing in countless particles of contaminated dust as convoys rolled past.
‘The thing is, radiation does not make noise like exploding bombs. It does not burn like a fire. It has no smell. You do not feel it immediately, it kills quietly, slowly. And there is no awareness at all that you are in danger,’ she said.
Following the evacuation, she developed a persistent cough, headaches, dryness in her mouth and intense itching in her legs – but still did not grasp that she had likely absorbed a significant dose of radiation.
Now aged 80, she’s still living with the long-term impact of the disaster.
‘I am no longer 40… my health is no longer what it used to be… all as a result of the radiation exposure I received long ago.’
She added: ‘No one would envy it.’
While some degree of exposure was inevitable to everybody in the vicinity of the accident, the Soviet authorities didn’t help matters by underplaying the tragedy in its immediate aftermath – ultimately slowing down the evacuation.
Despite the explosion in the early hours of April 26, life in the city initially continued as normal, with children outside playing and parents going about their errands, unaware that they were at the centre of a nuclear catastrophe.
‘The night was clear, warm, and quiet. The residents of the city were peacefully asleep and knew nothing yet about the disaster that had occurred,’ Protsenko said.
‘Information about the radiation situation was kept in strict secrecy.’
When she was tasked with leading the evacuation, even she hadn’t grasped the scale of the calamity, but she knew she had a job to do.
‘By 6pm… we had practically evacuated the entire population of the city,’ she said.
Within a few hours, it was done, and Pripyat would never be the same again.
By that time, she was one of the last people left in the uninhabitable wreckage of a town. ‘The city became empty… no lights were on… it felt a little eerie.’
The Chernobyl disaster isn’t contained to a single day, but went on to redefine the lives of hundreds of thousands of people all over the world.
Investigations ultimately concluded that faulty protocols in the plant’s design and poorly trained personnel were responsible for the explosion, which blew the 1,000-ton steel lid off the reactor – the same weight as three 747 passenger planes.
In the weeks and months that followed the accident, scores of firefighters, engineers, military troops, police, miners, cleaners and medical personnel – collectively known as ‘liquidators’ – were sent to the destroyed power plant in an effort to control the blaze and core meltdown.
In Belarus, 40,049 liquidators were registered to have cancers by 2008 along with a further 2,833 from Russia. In Ukraine, disability among the workers soared, with 68 per cent regarded healthy in 1988, compared to 26 years when only 5.5 per cent were still in good physical condition.
As well as coping with physical sickness, Protsenko is still grappling with the day to day consequences of Russian authoritarianism.
n 2022, she was forced to flee Ukraine in a wheelchair with her daughter and their kitten, following Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion.
And with Putin’s callous disregard for safety, having launched a major offensive to capture the area around Chernobyl just days into his invasion – only to abandon it weeks later – only time will tell how far the long shadow the nuclear plant casts will stretch.
Chernobyl: Inside the Meltdown airs on National Geographic on Sunday 26th April from 4pm
NBC News Drops Bombshell Report on Trump War Battle Damage: ‘Far Worse’ Than Trump Team Said
Tommy Christopher Apr 25th, 2026, https://www.mediaite.com/media/news/nbc-news-drops-bombshell-report-on-trump-war-battle-damage-far-worse-than-trump-team-said/
NBC News dropped a bombshell report on Saturday that multiple government officials say damage to U.S. military bases was much more extensive than President Donald Trump’s officials have publicly disclosed.
The president is preparing to speak at his first White House Correspondents’ Dinner (WHCD) in office on Saturday night, as will frequent press attackers like Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and FCC Chair Brendan Carr.
Pentagon reporting has been in the administration’s crosshairs, but a parade of anonymous government sources nevertheless contributed to the reporting by NBC’s Gordon Lubold, Courtney Kube, Mosheh Gains, and Natasha Lebedeva.
The team attributed six sources for their report, which revealed that repairs from the Iran War damage will cost billions:
American military bases and other equipment in the Persian Gulf region suffered extensive damage from Iranian strikes that is far worse than publicly acknowledged and is expected to cost billions of dollars to repair, according to three U.S. officials, two congressional aides and another person familiar with the damage.
The Iranian regime swiftly retaliated after the Trump administration attacked on Feb. 28, hitting dozens of targets across U.S. military bases in seven Middle East countries. Those attacks struck warehouses, command headquarters, aircraft hangars, satellite communications infrastructure, runways, high-end radar systems and dozens of aircraft, according to the U.S. officials and an assessment by the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank in Washington, D.C.
In the initial days of the war, an Iranian F-5 fighter jet bombed the U.S. base Camp Buehring in Kuwait, despite the base having air defenses, a rare breach that marked the first time an enemy fixed-wing aircraft has struck an American military base in years, according to two of the U.S. officials.
The U.S. bases that came under attack are home to thousands of American troops, and in some cases their families, though they were largely cleared out in the days and hours before the U.S. and Israeli went to war with Iran.
Read the full report here.
Epstein’s evil legacy destroys everything it touches. Everything except Palantir
f Palantir were a person, it would be a much worse person than either Peter Mandelson or the deceased paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein. And yet the Labour government continues to welcome Palantir to manage our NHS, military and financial data, spewing all our personal details into its cauldron of weaponisable knowledge.
.
Mandelson, and by extension Starmer, are tainted by proximity to the abuse scandal. But the paedophile was a close associate of Peter Thiel too. Why don’t we talk about that?
The American tech firm Palantir, which uses its data hoard to provide tech support for ICE’s violent street goons and the bombing of Iranian girls’ schools, has just issued a terse manifesto – “The Technological Republic” – basically outlining its plans to turn the world into a fascist technocracy, bent on neutralising “regressive cultures”, enfranchising right-leaning male voters at the expense of educated liberal female voters, and muttering darkly of the errors made in reining in the power of post-Nazi Germany. I thought we all agreed at the time that this was a good thing, what with the Holocaust and that? We’re all worried about antisemitism aren’t we? Did I miss the memo on this, as they say in American sitcoms?
The Palantir manifesto’s cryptically fascist reappraisal of the “postwar neutering” of Nazi Germany makes the company’s decision to appoint the perma-smirking grandson of the British fascist leader Oswald Mosley, Louis Mosley, as its British head look less like carelessness and more like someone holding your head under the duvet and farting in your face just because they can. Take that!
Oddly, the London listing app Time Out significantly softened a joke about Louis Mosley and Palantir in a piece I wrote for it this week, about a fun walk around Hackney, which included the site where, in 1962, Louis’s Nazi grandad Oswald Mosley and his then-fascist father Max Mosley were knocked to the ground outside Ridley Road market by Jewish and antifascist protesters. It seems Palantir’s intimidating shadow even extends to the realm of recreational historical hiking. Rest assured any Leisure Walking Route I submit to the Nerve will remain resolutely politically independent. If only one of the Hackney Jews had booted Max Mosley really hard in his Nazi nuts too, maybe Palantir wouldn’t currently have a British head of operations.
“It’s the kind of market dominance thing Apple did with making you have to buy their special plugs, but applied to missiles, snatch squads and gulags“
Palantir’s CEO, Alex Karp, has posited, openly and unashamedly, the necessity of a warlike American surveillance state, which Palantir would essentially profit hugely from servicing with its own warlike surveillance technologies. It’s the kind of monopolised market dominance thing Apple did with making you have to buy their own special plugs, but applied to missiles, snatch squads and gulags.
And it makes Nigel Farage’s attempts to profit from the cryptocurrencies he uses his political platform to promote look rather quaint, like a child stealing some Blackjack chews from the newsagent sweet racks while Mr Knuckles arrives in a ski mask, shoots the shopkeeper in the face and makes off with the till, the choicest porn mags and all the worst fags.
If Palantir were a person, it would be a much worse person than either Peter Mandelson or the deceased paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein. And yet the Labour government continues to welcome Palantir to manage our NHS, military and financial data, spewing all our personal details into its cauldron of weaponisable knowledge. There are lonely old ladies scammed by people pretending to be down on their luck, who just need a few hundred thousand to free up their family funds, with better noses for decidedly dodgy dodginess.
And when Nigel Farage gets elected by millions of angry morons and, like Trump, starts coming for immigrants, Muslims, pro-choice campaigners, academics, journalists, teachers, cartoonists, and in the end even people your racist Facebook auntie rather likes, like that nice transgender woman over the road with the cats, Palantir will be only too happy to provide Farage’s snatch squads with all their personal details, as it already does for Farage’s best friend Donald Trump, “the bravest man” he knows.
And when Nigel Farage gets elected by millions of angry morons and, like Trump, starts coming for immigrants, Muslims, pro-choice campaigners, academics, journalists, teachers, cartoonists, and in the end even people your racist Facebook auntie rather likes, l
And when Nigel Farage gets elected by millions of angry morons and, like Trump, starts coming for immigrants, Muslims, pro-choice campaigners, academics, journalists, teachers, cartoonists, and in the end even people your racist Facebook auntie rather likes, like that nice transgender woman over the road with the cats, Palantir will be only too happy to provide Farage’s snatch squads with all their personal details, as it already does for Farage’s best friend Donald Trump, “the bravest man” he knows.
But Palantir is fine, apparently, despite the fact that its founder Peter Thiel met Epstein many times after his child sex trafficking conviction and invested heavily in his venture capital company, in a deal which netted the dead paedophile $130m, none of which was included in the sum divided into restitutive payments to his victims. Perhaps Palantir’s Peter Thiel can top the paedo payments up with some of his personal wealth of $29.3bn.
Thiel’s $29.3bn is a sum which makes you realise managing the NHS for pocket money can’t really be about the cash. Palantir’s fascist vision of the future doesn’t need to be funded by turning the British public health system upside down like a sleeping tramp and shaking the loose change from its threadbare pockets into a top hat. But the data it provides is worth its digital weight in digital gold if you are aiming to TAKE OVER THE FUCKING WORLD!!!
And Farage is fine as well, of course, despite the fact that he and his American mentor Steve Bannon both appear in the Epstein files because Bannon was working with Epstein on how to fund his pan-European fascist aggregator, The Movement. Never mind. Protect our women and girls!!! But only from brown people. Bernard Manning! Bernard Manning!! Bernard Manning!!!
Proximity to Mandelson or Epstein can prove politically toxic, ending careers and ruining reputations. But not for everyone. It seems there’s one law for Epstein-adjacent people and institutions on the left and quite another for everyone else. Double standards anyone? We’ve got loads!
Years ago now, the TV dramatist Graham Duff told me that Mark E Smith, the now late lead singer of enduring Manchester post-punk thing the Fall, had asked him to help him write a play. Its working title? The Death of Standards. How I would love to have seen that play – the name alone makes me laugh out loud – though suddenly it doesn’t seem quite so apposite, and we look back on the early noughties, when Smith proposed this project, as a golden age of determinable ethical values.
Contrary to popular belief, reports of the death of standards (as they were regarding Mark Twain, Rock Family Trees cartographer Pete Frame and one of the fiddle players from Fairport Convention) are greatly exaggerated. Standards aren’t dead. They are just in a perpetual state of flux. To say we live in a world of double standards is an understatement. Post-Trump, post-Epstein and post-Brexit, there are so many different standards in operation simultaneously that trying to judge any action by a commonly understood yardstick of ethical value makes about as much sense as trying to knit fog or make a hat out of soup.
Can we put an end to this? By all means, allow Keir Starmer’s proximity to Epstein, via his cheerleader Peter Mandelson, to bring him down, although let it be noted he kept us relatively clear of an Iranian quagmire Farage and Kemi Badenoch were only too keen to bathe in, like a pair of horrible hippos. But to condemn Starmer by association with Epstein, and yet to allow Palantir to continue to cherry-pick the ripest fruit from the data we are happy for it to traffick into its lair makes no sense. And it is far more damaging for the country than the outgoing PM’s once unanimously praised realpolitik decision to appoint an arsehole ambassador to deal with an even bigger arsehole president.
Stewart Lee vs The Man-Wulf tours everywhere in the UK and Ireland until the end of the year, with a final November and December London run just announced.
Stewart is talking to the director Mark Jenkin at a screening of his new film, Rose of Nevada, at Hackney Picture House on 26 April, and hosting an evening of imaginary horror film soundtracks by Graham Reynolds and Mike Lindsay at Hackney’s Moth Club on 30 April. He is also co-hosting a screening of the rockumentary King Rocker, with director Michael Cumming and star Robert Lloyd, and launching his new podcast, Joking Apart, at the Machynlleth Comedy Festival on 2 May
Britain’s Nuclear Subservience
Norman Dombey, 2 April 2026, https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2026/april/britain-s-nuclear-subservience
In a brief exchange during Prime Minister’s Questions last month, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, Ed Davey, asked Keir Starmer about Trident replacement. ‘We have to make a choice now,’ Davey said: ‘lease new missiles from the United States, accepting whatever terms the president gives us, or build our own here in the United Kingdom.’ The prime minister replied that Davey was ‘advocating a plan without knowing how much it would cost and how it would work’. The discussion moved on.
Both men spoke of Britain’s ‘independent nuclear deterrent’. But the UK’s nuclear weapons capability is dependent on the US. Not only does Britain rent its Trident missiles from America, but the British-built warhead designed to be carried by those missiles, the Holbrook, is closely based on the American W76. The Los Alamos National Laboratory announced last year that a replacement for the W76 is going ahead: the W93 should be ready by 2034.
There is no need for the UK to replace its warheads. A Holbrook’s maximum yield is ninety kilotons of TNT-equivalent, about six times the size of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. But the US Navy wants a new warhead in the mid-2030s and the UK has to follow suit even though there are no good reasons to do so. No one in Britain played any part in choosing the parameters of the W93.
George Robertson, the former Labour minister of defence and Nato secretary-general who now works for the Cohen Group, has said that the UK’s military dependence on the US is ‘no longer tenable’.
Britain’s nuclear subservience to the US dates from the 1958 Mutual Defence Agreement (MDA) between Washington and London:
Each party will exchange with the other party other classified information concerning atomic weapons when, after consultation with the other party, the communicating party determines that the communication of such information is necessary to improve the recipient’s atomic weapon design, development and fabrication capability.
The minutes of the first meeting of nuclear scientists from both sides in 1958, which seem to have been declassified by the US by mistake, show that the US provided ‘details of size, weight, shape, yield, amount of special nuclear material’. Several weapons were described. Britain’s nuclear bombs have been built at Aldermaston to an American design ever since.
President Kennedy and Harold Macmillan met at Nassau in the Bahamas in 1962 and agreed that the UK could use American Polaris missiles in its submarines. Charles de Gaulle was offered the same deal but declined. He said that the US could not be trusted and insisted that France had to take nuclear decisions for itself. British nuclear warheads are all carried by US-dependent submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBM). France builds its own SLBMs and its own warheads
David Manning was Britain’s ambassador to Washington from 2003 to 2007. ‘It is very difficult to imagine,’ he told the International Relations and Defence Committee last year, ‘what we will do to defend ourselves if, for example – this is very hypothetical – the Trump Administration decide that they will end our nuclear co‑operation deal, or Trump moves out of Nato, or even becomes just so equivocal about Nato that the Article 5 guarantee is no longer plausible.’
Trump and his war on Iran have given new urgency to Anglo-French nuclear co-operation, which should replace the ‘special nuclear relationship’ with the US before Britain needlessly commits itself to the US-dependent modernisation of its nuclear weapon system. If Britain were to join France, its first action should be to extract itself from its agreement to buy the W93 from the US. Aldermaston can make its own warheads or make them to a French rather than a US design.
The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) was drafted by the UK and US to forbid weapon-state signatories from helping non-weapon states to develop nuclear weapons. But they are not forbidden from helping one another: the MDA and Polaris Treaties between the UK and US are not affected by the NPT. A similar agreement between the UK and France would also be allowed by the treaty. France delivers its weapons on SLBMs, cruise missiles and aircraft and could share information with Britain in these fields (as it already does in some of them).
In any case the NPT may well be obsolete. India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea all have nuclear weapons. Faced with a hostile Russia, it might be sensible for Germany and Poland to have them too. It certainly makes sense for the UK to decouple its nuclear weapons programme from the US.
UK named worst violator of anti-nuclear weapons treaty
by Tom Pashby, 22 April 2026, https://www.thecanary.co/uk/news/2026/04/22/uk-worst-violator-nuclear-weapons-treaty/
The UK has been named as the worst violator of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) in the Nuclear Weapons Ban Monitor 2026, a report by Norwegian People’s Aid (NPA).
Its ranking as the worst state in terms of “non-compatibility” with the treaty is, in part, due to the UK having its own nuclear weapons, as well as being understood to have started hosting nukes for Trump’s USA.
A damning report
The report explained why it focuses on the TPNW:
It tracks progress towards a world without nuclear weapons and highlights activities that stand between the international community and the fulfilment of the long-standing goal of the elimination of nuclear weapons.
In measuring this progress, the Nuclear Weapons Ban Monitor uses the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) as the primary yardstick, because this treaty codifies norms and actions that are needed to create and maintain a world free of nuclear weapons.
The TPNW is the only legally binding global treaty that outlaws nuclear weapons. It was adopted on 7 July 2017 and entered into force on 22 January 2021. The impact of the TPNW will be built gradually and will depend on how it is welcomed and used by each and every State.
The TPNW is supported by 99 of the world’s 197 states, with 74 joining as parties and 25 as signatories that have not yet ratified the treaty.
Political pressure
No nuclear-armed states have joined the treaty, but the Ban Monitor said:
Every non-nuclear-armed State that joins strengthens political pressure for nuclear disarmament.
Adding:
With ratification processes advancing in several signatory States, further progress in expansion of the treaty membership appears likely in 2026.
The report took aim at the poor record of European states on eliminating nuclear weapons, saying “support for the TPNW is strong across all regions of the world except Europe,” and warned:
The UK was singled out as having the most policies or practices in 2025 that were viewed by the report’s authors as being “non-compatible with, or of concern in relation to, one or more of the TPNW’s prohibitions”.
It was singled out alongside 44 other states found to have non-compatibilities with the TPNW. Most were not compatible with the TPNW’s “Prohibition on assisting, encouraging or inducing prohibited activity”.
The UK, meanwhile, was identified as being non-compatible with a total of six prohibitions:
- on “development, production, manufacture, or other acquisition”;
- on “possession or stockpiling”; on “receiving transfer or control”;
- on “assisting; encouraging or inducing prohibited activity”;
- on “seeking or receiving assistance to engage in prohibited activity”;
- and on “allowing stationing, installation or deployment” of nuclear weapons.
The next least compatible country was the US, which had five prohibitions it was not compatible with.
‘Evidence suggests’ UK received US nukes and is expanding its own stockpile
ICAN head of communications Alistair Burnett told the Canary:
The Nuclear Weapons Ban Monitor reports annually on the size and composition of the arsenals of the world’s nine nuclear-armed countries and it also assesses how compatible each country is with the provisions of the United Nations Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW).
Of the nine nuclear-armed states, Britain violates more articles of the treaty than any other because it not only has its own nuclear weapons, it may have also started hosting US nuclear weapons on its soil again after a break of 18 years.
In 2008, US nuclear weapons that were held at US air bases in Britain were quietly withdrawn, but last year evidence suggests the US may have returned upgraded nuclear bombs (the B61-12) to RAF Lakenheath in Suffolk.
Neither country shares any information publicly on this, but research by the Federation of American Scientists revealed new facilities to store these weapons were being built at Lakenheath and flights by the US planes that ferry nuclear weapons around the world have been monitored arriving there.
The United Kingdom also engages in assistance and encouragement of banned nuclear activities under the TPNW in its nuclear cooperation with France, and the United States.
In 2021, the UK also removed the cap on the number of warheads it has and stopped releasing information on nuclear warhead numbers.
UK faces becoming ‘more and more isolated diplomatically’
Burnett went on to explain how the UK’s failure to support the TPNW is likely to make it increasingly diplomatically isolated, and recommended how the government could work towards a nuclear weapons-free future.
He said:
The TPNW came into force in 2021 and a majority of the world’s states have already either signed or ratified the treaty (74 have ratified and a further 25 have signed it and are working on ratification). As more and more countries join it, Britain and the other nuclear-armed countries become more and more isolated diplomatically
The TPNW provides a fair and verifiable pathway to eliminating nuclear weapons, and Britain – which committed to getting rid of its weapons when it joined the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in 1968 – should engage with the TPNW and work towards joining that treaty as well in order to fulfil the disarmament commitments it has made and also to help reduce the nuclear threat that continues to menace the whole world.
It is impossible to envisage any use of nuclear weapons in conflict that would be consistent with international law, of which the British Government claims to be a champion.
A first step would be for the UK to stop voting against annual UN General Assembly resolutions on the TPNW and the humanitarian impact of nuclear weapons. In 2024, the UK, alone with Russia and France, even voted against setting up an independent scientific panel to update our understanding of the impact of the use of nuclear weapons in 2024.
In addition this year, the UK Government, at a minimum, should also observe the first Review Conference of the TPNW that is being held at the UN in New York in late November and early December.
The Canary approached the Ministry of Defence (MOD) for comment on the government’s shaming in the report. An MOD spokesperson deferred to the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO). The FCDO did not respond to a request for comment.
UK Government urged to end its ‘nuclear hypocrisy’ and engage with TPNW
The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) general secretary Sophie Bolt told the Canary:
It’s little surprise Britain is the worst violator of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons for 2026. It’s ploughing ahead with the multi-billion pound modernisation of its nuclear-armed submarines, update and expansion of its nuclear warhead stockpile, hosting of US nuclear weapons on British soil, and giving the RAF a nuclear role for the first time since the end of the Cold War.
The Canary reported earlier in April that campaigners were demanding that the UK stops hosting Trump’s nuclear weapons, in response to his veiled threat to use nuclear weapons against Iran.
Bolt continued:
As the government is facing increased pressure to enforce more austerity to fund major military spending hikes, a quarter of the MoD’s budget is blown on nuclear weapons.
What’s more, these nuclear projects are facing delays and ballooning costs with diminishing oversight. Nuclear dangers have never been higher but having nuclear weapons doesn’t increase security. Britain needs to end the nuclear hypocrisy and finally engage with the TPNW.
Nuclear deterrence is ‘naïve idealism’ – professor
University of Sussex emeritus professor Andy Stirling reacted to the report by telling the Canary:
Recent events show more than ever, that notions of ‘nuclear deterrence’ are a delusion that only lasts so long. Now more than ever, time is running out.
As with the same claims made in the past for explosives, machine guns and aircraft, nuclear weapons are not – and never can be – technologies to end war. Nuclear deterrence is naïve idealism.
With impacts of global war now more existential than ever, the security of each country must be viewed with reason, not sentimental nationalist blinkers or militaristic ideology.
Even where only a few countries claim exclusive national rights to make nuclear threats against others, the inevitable result will be nuclear war.
The only rational way to reduce the threat of nuclear war is to address security globally. As in the playground … or in gangland … the only realistic way to abolish nuclear threats for all is for each to stop making them against others.
Those who make nuclear threats lower their own security by adding to risks of surprise nuclear attacks against them.
It is too often forgotten that even a small nuclear attack by any one country will (even if it is not retaliated against), cause devastation in that country as well through nuclear winter. In that way too, nuclear threats are a suicide vest.
In a debate on ‘Civil Preparedness for War’ in the House of Lords on 20 April, MOD minister of state Lord Coaker confirmed that the government does still support the NPT and representatives would be attending the NPT review conference in New York later in April.
This could be seen as a thin sliver of hope for the UK eventually working to rid the world of nuclear weapons.
Study for Miliband finds Scotland suitable for new nuclear
Scotland could be “ripe” for new nuclear power, according to a
“discrete study” sitting on Ed Miliband’s desk. Simon Bowen, chair of
GB Energy Nuclear, told MPs that the government-owned company has completed
research for the Energy Secretary on “the suitability of Scotland for new
nuclear development” but that the report has yet to be published.
Bowen said whilst publication of the report is a matter for Ministers it
doesn’t take an awful lot to work out what it will say.
Torness Hunterston and Dounreay are natural sites for development. SNP candidate
for Banffshire and Buchan Coast, Karen Adam, said: “GB Energy has utterly
failed to create the jobs promised by the Labour Party and now we know it
is being used as a vehicle to plot unwanted nuclear developments in
Scotland that would undermine our energy sector.
“Another energy
superpower Norway has just ruled out nuclear power so there are serious
questions to answer as to what on earth is going on here — Anas Sarwar
must come clean on these underhand reports and explain why he supports
these extortionate, toxic, nuclear plants being imposed upon Scotland
Herald 24th April 2026, https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/26048810.study-miliband-finds-scotland-suitable-new-nuclear/
Three dead as California faces invasion of killer snakes.
After an unusually warm and wet start to the year, rattlesnake season has started
early in parts of the Golden State,
Times 22nd April 2026, https://www.thetimes.com/us/american-politics/article/california-invasion-venomous-snakes-three-dead-k78jxt3hv
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