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Don’t fuel Riyadh’s nuclear weapons cravings

By: Henry Sokolski, October 31, 2025, https://npolicy.org/dont-fuel-riyadhs-nuclear-weapons-cravings-breaking-defense/

Since 2017, US diplomats have tried unsuccessfully to devise ways to help Saudi Arabia enrich uranium — a dangerous nuclear activity that can bring a state to the very brink of making bombs. Next month, they get another chance: Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is coming to the White House on Nov. 18 to sign a formal US-Saudi nuclear cooperative agreement. Will this agreement finally help the Kingdom make nuclear fuel? Let’s hope not.

Tehran making nuclear fuel is scary enough. Encouraging others to do the same is scarier still.

That’s why the Pentagon bombed Iran this June. Certainly, the White House understood that nuclear fuel-making was too close to nuclear bomb-making: By the time inspectors might detect a military diversion at such plants, it would be too late to intervene to prevent a weapon from being built.

This insight prompted Trump’s termination of Obama’s 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, which allowed Iran to enrich uranium. It’s also why Trump’s nuclear emissary, Steve Witkoff, backed off trying to negotiate a new inspections regime for Iranian nuclear fuel-making, conceding that “enrichment enables weaponization.” Energy Secretary Chris Wright went further: At the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) September general conference, he insisted that Iran’s uranium enrichment program be “completely dismantled.”

But what of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) “right” to make nuclear fuel? Iran maintains this entitlement is inalienable. As I’ve explained elsewhere, nuclear fuel-making is not mentioned anywhere in the treaty. Some NPT negotiators proposed language to assure a right to “the entire fuel cycle,” but the NPT conference rejected it. Even the Biden administration, which wanted to revive the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, only implicitly recognized such a “right” — never explicitly.

Iran, unfortunately, never bought this view. Nor has Saudi Arabia. In 2017, Prince Turki Al-Faisal, former Saudi ambassador to Washington, noted that “the NPT tells us all we can enrich.” He, bin Salman, and his lieutenants have consistently demanded that America help it exercise this “right.”

Fortunately, Congress refused. Back in 2018, Senators from the left, like Ed Markey, and the right, like Lindsey Graham, understood helping Iran enrich uranium was too dangerous. They all cited bin Salman’s warning that if Saudi Arabia thought Iran was getting a bomb, it would too, despite any NPT pledge the Saudis may have made. The Hill’s recommended fix: Get the Saudis to forswear making nuclear fuel, just as their neighbor, the UAE, had in their US nuclear agreement in 2009.

Now, it should be easier to get the Saudis to forswear as well. Why? In September, the Saudis struck a mutual defense pact with Pakistan. Pakistani Defense Minister Khawaja Mohammad Asif said that as part of this pact Pakistan would make its nuclear weapons available to Saudi Arabia if needed. So, Riyadh no longer needs its own bomb.

Meanwhile, the White House is said to be negotiating binding, NATO-like security assurances for the Saudis similar to those recently granted to Qatar. Then there is the Trump administration’s “obliteration” of Iran’s nuclear fuel-making capacity and the president’s commitment to bomb it again, if necessary.

All of this should be dispositive against Riyadh’s will to enrich and American inclinations to bend to it. But it’s not. In April, Secretary of Energy Chris Wright visited Riyadh. When asked if a deal would include “sensitive” nuclear technologies, he replied, “It certainly looks like there is a pathway to do that. … Are there solutions to that that involve enrichment here in Saudi Arabia? Yes.”

He should have said no. Keeping timely, accurate track of the powders, liquids, and gases involved in making nuclear fuel is not yet good enough to safeguard against military diversions. Nor is American ownership or operation of Saudi nuclear fuel making a fix. As America’s experience in Iran demonstrates, the United States can operate bases and own companies in foreign nations and still be thrown out. This has happened before and can happen again in Saudi Arabia.

Another headache if America helps Riyadh make nuclear fuel is the example it sets. Saudi Arabia’s neighbors, who also have US nuclear cooperative will demand the same.

They’ll all race to develop bomb options. Saying no to Riyadh’s fuel-making demands is our best chance to skirt this.

November 3, 2025 Posted by | Saudi Arabia, Uranium | Leave a comment

Nuclear waste removal under way at silo.

COMMENT. Doesn’t that tell you everything about the stupidity of the men who design the nuclear industry?

Jonny Manning, Local Democracy Reporting Service, 1 Nov 25, https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvgvq930vwpo

Seventy tonnes of radioactive waste have been removed from a nuclear site’s most hazardous building.

Teams at Sellafield in Cumbria have removed the waste from the Magnox Swarf Storage Silos with the company saying it has placed it into safe storage.

The work began in 2022 after two decades of preparation, because when the building was constructed in the 1960s no-one had considered how the waste would be removed.

Sellafield’s head of legacy silos Phil Reeve said so much waste had been removed that a 7m (23ft) crater had been dug in the middle of the pile.

However, the crater presents a risk of the waste around the edges collapsing inwards.

To fix the issue, Sellafield has created its own version of a garden rake – a 1.4 tonne machine which uses its stainless steel arms to pull the nuclear waste into the centre.

“It’s a big moment to see it successfully deployed in an active environment for the first time,” said Mr Reeve.

“It allows us to crack on with confidence.”

This involved assembling huge retrieval machines on top of the building’s 22 waste compartments.

One machine is currently up and running with another two set to start soon.

But while work is well under way, the Sellafield team still has about 10,000 tonnes of waste to remove.

November 3, 2025 Posted by | UK, wastes | Leave a comment

Remediation work through £4.6bn Sellafield framework

US engineering and technology firm Amentum and a joint venture of Altrad
Support Services and Atkins Réalis will deliver remediation work at the
Sellafield nuclear power station over the next 15 years. The two bidders
were named for Lot 1 of a £4.6bn Decommissioning and Nuclear Waste
Partnership (DNWP) framework, which covers four lots. Procured by
Sellafield Ltd, the agreement will see chosen contractors support
high-hazard risk reduction programmes at the Cumbrian plant.

 Ground Engineering 3rd Nov 2025. https://www.geplus.co.uk/news/pair-bag-remediation-work-through-4-6bn-sellafield-framework-03-11-2025/

November 3, 2025 Posted by | safety, UK | Leave a comment

Trump Is Moving Relentlessly Toward Illegal War in Venezuela

The lawful procedure would have been to arrest people if there was probable cause they were involved in drug trafficking and bring them to justice in accordance with due process.

Venezuela isn’t even mentioned in the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s National Drug Threat Assessment 2024.

The Trump administration’s murderous strikes on small boats at sea constitute unlawful extrajudicial killings.

BMarjorie Cohn , Truthout, October 30, 2025

s the Trump administration continues to murder people in small boats on the high seas and mounts the largest U.S. military buildup in decades in the Caribbean, it is moving inexorably toward an all-out, illegal attack and forcible regime change in Venezuela.

Despite Team Trump’s feeble attempts to legally justify its ocean strikes, which have now killed 57 people since early September, those extrajudicial killings are also unlawful.

Donald Trump’s murderous campaign came into focus on February 20, when the State Department designated eight drug trafficking organizations, including Tren de Aragua, as foreign terrorist organizations. Although the administration has attempted — so far unsuccessfully — to use that designation to justify sending immigrants to a notorious prison in El Salvador, Trump is now invoking it in an effort to validate his illegal strikes at sea.

Moreover, on March 15, Trump issued “A Proclamation,” alleging that Tren de Aragua has been engaged, in association with Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, in “irregular warfare” in the United States, with no explanation of what is meant by irregular warfare. But on February 26, most U.S. intelligence agencies had made a finding that Tren de Aragua was neither controlled by the Venezuelan government, nor was it committing crimes in the United States on its orders.

On September 2, Trump announced that the U.S. had conducted a “kinetic strike” against an alleged drug smuggling vessel in the Caribbean, even though Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the U.S. military could have interdicted the vessel rather than killing all of those on board. Trump wanted to “send a message,” hardly an excuse for premeditated murder.

The lawful procedure would have been to arrest people if there was probable cause they were involved in drug trafficking and bring them to justice in accordance with due process. Both U.S. and international law provide for the arrest of alleged drug traffickers or individuals suspected of acts of terrorism, both on the high seas and in U.S. territorial waters.

In a post on social media accompanied by a video clip of the strike, Trump declared that the attack was “against positively identified Tren de Aragua Narcoterrorists” and referred to the February 20 foreign terrorist organization designation. This did not provide a lawful basis for murdering alleged drug dealers.

Although Trump’s stated rationale is preventing drugs from Venezuela entering the United States, Venezuela isn’t even mentioned in the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s National Drug Threat Assessment 2024.

No State of Armed Conflict, No Unlawful Combatants, No Self-Defense

It was reported in early October that Trump had notified several congressional committees that the U.S. is engaged in a formal “armed conflict” with drug cartels that his administration has branded terrorist organizations, and that suspected drug smugglers are “unlawful combatants” in order to justify the strikes as self-defense………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

There is no current state of armed conflict, there is no evidence that the people on the boats were combatants, and it is illegal to deliberately attack civilians. “This is not stretching the envelope,” Geoffrey Corn, a retired judge advocate general lawyer who was formerly the Army’s senior adviser for law-of-war issues, told The New York Times. “This is shredding it. This is tearing it apart.”

The strikes on boats also violate the right to life enshrined in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which the U.S. has ratified, making it part of U.S. law under the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution. The covenant says that “no one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his life.” It outlaws extrajudicial killing outside the context of armed conflict or by law enforcement when necessary to protect against an imminent threat to life.

An Attack on Venezuela Would Be an Unlawful Act of Aggression

In addition to its increasing numbers of murders of alleged drug smugglers at sea, the Trump administration is positioning tremendous military firepower for what appears to be an imminent attack on Venezuela.

Hegseth ordered the USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft-carrier strike group with five destroyers to deploy to the region to “bolster U.S. capacity to detect, monitor, and disrupt illicit actors and activities that compromise the safety and prosperity of the United States,” according to a Pentagon spokesperson.

“The only thing you could use the carrier for is attacking targets ashore, because they are not going to be as effective at targeting small boats at sea,”……………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

Forcible Regime Change Violates Venezuela’s Right to Self-Determination

During his first term, Trump repeatedly voiced his desire to invade Venezuela and change its regime. He was preoccupied with the idea of an invasion, the AP reported.

In 2019, the Trump administration orchestrated an unsuccessful strategy led by Rubio to carry out a coup d’état, seize power from Maduro, and install Juan Guaidó as “interim president” of Venezuela…………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

National courts around the world should investigate and charge U.S. officials, including Trump, Rubio, and Hegseth, with murder under well-established principles of universal jurisdiction.

And we must mobilize a powerful antiwar movement to demand that the U.S. government stop the illegal boat murders and stay out of Venezuela. https://truthout.org/articles/trump-is-gunning-to-illegally-attack-venezuela-and-change-its-regime/?utm_source=Truthout&utm_campaign=33e1b56faa-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2025_10_30_09_26&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_bbb541a1db-33e1b56faa-650192793

November 1, 2025 Posted by | SOUTH AMERICA, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

If the US resumes nuclear weapons testing, this would be extremely dangerous for humanity

Tilman Ruff, Honorary Principal Fellow, School of Population and Global Health, The University of Melbourne, October 30, 2025, https://theconversation.com/if-the-us-resumes-nuclear-weapons-testing-this-would-be-extremely-dangerous-for-humanity-268661?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Latest%20from%20The%20Conversation%20for%20October%2031%202025%20-%203566936381&utm_content=Latest%20from%20The%20Conversation%20for%20October%2031%202025%20-%203566936381+CID_7ad11048cc6a12b2fcdd641252fbcae9&utm_source=campaign_monitor&utm_term=If%20the%20US%20resumes%20nuclear%20weapons%20testing%20this%20would%20be%20extremely%20dangerous%20for%20humanity

US President Donald Trump has instructed the Pentagon to resume nuclear weapons testing immediately, “on an equal basis” with other countries’ testing programs.

If Trump is referring to the resumption of explosive nuclear testing, this would be an extremely unfortunate, regrettable step by the United States.

It would almost inevitably be followed by tit-for-tat reciprocal announcements by other nuclear-armed states, particularly Russia and China, and cement an accelerating arms race that puts us all in great jeopardy.

It would also create profound risks of radioactive fallout globally. Even if such nuclear tests are conducted underground, this poses a risk in terms of the possible release and venting of radioactive materials, as well as the potential leakage into groundwater.

The Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty has been signed by 187 states – it’s one of the most widely supported disarmament treaties in the world.

The US signed the treaty decades ago, but has yet to ratify it. Nonetheless, it is actually legally bound not to violate the spirit and purpose of the treaty while it’s a signatory.

What testing is used for, and why it stopped

In earlier years, the purpose of testing was to understand the effects of nuclear weapons – for example, the blast damage at different distances, which provides confidence around destroying a given military target.

Understanding the consequences of nuclear weapons helps militaries plan their use, and to some extent, protect their own military equipment and people from the possible use of nuclear weapons by adversaries.

But since the end of the second world war, states have mostly used testing as part of the development of new weapons designs. There have been a very large number of tests, more than 2,000, mostly seeking to understand how these new weapons work.

The huge environmental and health problems caused by nuclear testing prompted nations to agree a moratorium on atmospheric testing for a couple of years in the early 1960s. In 1963, the Partial Test Ban Treaty banned nuclear tests in all environments except underground.

Since then, nuclear-armed states have stopped explosively testing at different times. The US stopped in 1992, while France stopped in 1996. China and Russia also aren’t known to have conducted any tests since the 1990s. North Korea is the only state to have openly tested a nuclear weapon this century, most recently in 2017.

These stoppages came in the 1990s for a reason: by that time, it became possible to test new nuclear weapon designs reliably through technical and computer developments, without having to actually explode them.

So, essentially, the nuclear states, particularly the more advanced ones, stopped when they no longer needed to explosively test new weapon designs to keep modernising their stocks, as they’re still doing.

Worrying levels of nuclear proliferation

There is some good news on the nuclear weapons front. The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons has now been signed by half the world’s nations. This is a historic treaty that, for the first time, bans nuclear weapons and provides the only internationally agreed framework for their eventual elimination.

With the exception of this significant development, however, everything else has been going badly.

All nine nuclear-armed states (the US, China, Russia, France, the United Kingdom, India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel) are investing unprecedented sums in developing more accurate, stealthier, longer-range, faster, more concealable nuclear weapons.

This potentially lowers the threshold for their use. And it certainly gives no indication these powers are serious about fulfilling their legally binding obligations to disarm under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Moreover, multiple nuclear-armed states have been involved in recent conflicts in which nuclear threats have been made, most notably Russia and Israel.

Worryingly, we have also seen the numbers of nuclear weapons “available for use” actually start to climb again.

This includes those in military stockpiles, those that have been deployed (linked to delivery systems such as missiles), and those on high alert, which are the ones most prone to accidental use because they can be launched within minutes of a decision to do so. All of these categories are on the increase.

Russia, in particular, has weapons we haven’t seen before, such as a nuclear-powered, nuclear-armed cruise missile that President Vladimir Putin said on Sunday his country has successfully tested. China, too, is embarking on a rapid build-up of nuclear weapons.

And the US has just completed assembling a new nuclear gravity bomb.

A new START treaty also not moving forward

Nearly all of the hard-won treaties that constrained nuclear weapons since the end of the Cold War have been abrogated.

There’s now just one remaining treaty constraining 90% of the world’s nuclear weapons, which are in the hands of the US and Russia. This is the New START Treaty, which is set to expire in February next year.

Putin offered to extend that treaty informally for another year, and Trump has said this is a good idea. But its official end is just four months away, and no actual negotiations on a successor treaty have begun.

The US has also said China needs to be involved in the successor treaty, which would make it enormously more complicated. China has not expressed a willingness to be part of the process.

Whether anything will be negotiated to maintain these restraints beyond February is unclear. None of the nuclear-armed states are negotiating any other new treaties, either.

All of this means the Doomsday Clock – one of the most authoritative and best-known assessments of the existential threats facing the world – has moved forward this year further than it has ever done before.

It’s really an extraordinarily dangerous time in history.

November 1, 2025 Posted by | USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Trump Is Very Confused About Nuclear Weapons.

The president says he wants to resume nuclear testing but doesn’t seem to know why.

By Tom Nichols, https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/10/trump-nuclear/684758/

Just before heading to his meetings with the leader of China, the president of the United States issued some comments about nuclear weapons, or “nuclear,” as he tends to call them. He wants to resume nuclear-bomb tests, something no nuclear state except North Korea has done since the last century. But his reasoning is a bit confused: In the space of one short announcement, he managed to get a lot wrong, which is worrisome, because he’s the only person in America who has the authority to order the use of nuclear arms.

On Wednesday evening, the president placed this post on his Truth Social site:

The United States has more Nuclear Weapons than any other country. This was accomplished, including a complete update and renovation of existing weapons, during my First Term in office. Because of the tremendous destructive power, I HATED to do it, but had no choice! Russia is second, and China is a distant third, but will be even within 5 years. Because of other countries testing programs, I have instructed the Department of War to start testing our Nuclear Weapons on an equal basis. That process will begin immediately. On Wednesday evening, the president placed this post on his Truth Social site:

The United States has more Nuclear Weapons than any other country. This was accomplished, including a complete update and renovation of existing weapons, during my First Term in office. Because of the tremendous destructive power, I HATED to do it, but had no choice! Russia is second, and China is a distant third, but will be even within 5 years. Because of other countries testing programs, I have instructed the Department of War to start testing our Nuclear Weapons on an equal basis. That process will begin immediately. On Wednesday evening, the president placed this post on his Truth Social site:

The United States has more Nuclear Weapons than any other country. This was accomplished, including a complete update and renovation of existing weapons, during my First Term in office. Because of the tremendous destructive power, I HATED to do it, but had no choice! Russia is second, and China is a distant third, but will be even within 5 years. Because of other countries testing programs, I have instructed the Department of War to start testing our Nuclear Weapons on an equal basis. That process will begin immediately. Thank you for your attention to this matter! PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP

Almost none of this is right. Russia has the world’s largest stockpile of nuclear bombs, largely because the Russians are still holding on to a lot of smaller tactical weapons designed for use on a battlefield. Trump is correct that China is much further back; the People’s Republic probably has something like 600 warheads, meaning that it would have to produce almost 1,000 bombs a year to reach parity with the U.S. or Russia by the end of the decade. (Possible? Maybe, but Beijing has only added about 100 warheads in the past two years.) Also, the United States did not create some shiny new arsenal during Trump’s first term. It is true that America is about to spend a gigantic amount of money—roughly $1 trillion—to modernize its strategic nuclear arsenal, but that plan has been in the works since the Obama administration.

So what, exactly, is Trump talking about? Parsing the president’s posts is never easy, but Trump is probably nettled about Russia’s claim to have tested a long-range, nuclear-powered cruise missile, the Burevestnik.

Trump shouldn’t worry too much: The Burevestnik is a truly stupid idea. Cruise missiles are stealthy and difficult to counter, because they can fly low and hug terrain—but they are basically just unpiloted small aircraft using regular fuel, and so they have a far more limited range than ballistic missiles. The Russians, however, now claim that they have a cruise missile powered by a nuclear reactor that can fly halfway around the world. Russian President Vladimir Putin first announced this project back in 2018, and the Burevestnik has all the hallmarks of Soviet-era boasting about a great technical achievement that doesn’t provide a lot of strategic advantage. (In the old days, the Soviets had a compulsion to claim that the Soviet Union had the biggest and best of everything, leading to the Cold War–era joke that the Kremlin bragged about making the world’s biggest microchips.)

In any case, resuming nuclear testing is a terrible idea, not only because it would undermine America’s long-standing commitment to restraining a global arms race, but because detonating warheads to see if they actually work hasn’t been necessary in a very long time. Nuclear tests don’t make much sense for U.S. national security, but they’re a great way to raise international tensions. During the Cold War, the superpowers sometimes engaged in nuclear tests as a way of signaling nerve and resolve. Unfortunately, these tests served mostly to put both East and West on edge, pollute parts of the United States and the former Soviet Union, and make a lot of people sick.

Trump may be stuck in this sort of Cold War mentality, trying to show his toughness by resuming testing, especially because he seems to take it personally when Russia engages in occasional nuclear swaggering. But Trump is not alone on this issue. Some nuclear hawks will claim that the U.S. deterrent lacks credibility because none of its bombs have been detonated in decades, as if other nations are emboldened by the possibility that America is fielding weapons that won’t work. In fact, America and other nuclear states have ways of testing every component of their arsenal—and every nuclear-armed nation knows it. Nuclear stability rests on many policies, but no one is contemplating an attack on the United States based on some mad assumption that the response will be a rain of duds.

Of course, another possibility is that Trump’s announcement means nothing. Before Trump, statements by the president were policy. But Trump says a lot of things, and he reverses course regularly; often, what look like important pronouncements turn out to be random thoughts that have escaped the weak gravity of Trump’s attention span. In any case, resuming nuclear testing isn’t easy: Such tests require a lot of preparation and infrastructure, unless Trump’s goal is merely to explode some weapons and call it a “test.”

For now, this announcement about nuclear testing seems to be yet another example of Trump reflexively taking Russian bait. Resuming nuclear testing looks weak and petulant, not strong and confident. No American president should ever let the Kremlin get under his skin—especially not where nuclear weapons are concerned.

November 1, 2025 Posted by | politics, USA | Leave a comment

Donald Trump’s nuclear testing order sparks pushback from Russia, China and the UN.

SBS World News, 31 Oct 25

Trump said the Pentagon will immediately resume testing the US nuclear arsenal on an “equal basis” with other nuclear powers.

United States President Donald Trump has landed back in the US after a surprise directive to begin nuclear weapons testing that has raised the spectre of renewed superpower tensions.

Trump announced the order on social media, just as he was entering a summit with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in South Korea on Thursday.

It came days after Russia declared it had tested nuclear-capable, nuclear-powered cruise missiles and sea drones.

The blunt statement from Trump, who boasts frequently about being a “peace” president, left much unanswered.

Chiefly, it was unclear whether he meant testing weapons systems or actually conducting test explosions — something the US has not done since 1992.

“Because of other countries’ testing programs, I have instructed the Department of War to start testing our Nuclear Weapons on an equal basis,” Trump said in a post on his Truth Social platform.

Trump also said that the US has more nuclear weapons than any other country and that he had achieved this in his first term as president.

The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute said in its latest annual report that Russia possesses 5,489 nuclear warheads, compared to 5,177 for the United States and 600 for China.

In his post, Trump said — minutes ahead of his meeting with Xi — that China was expected to “be even within 5 years”, without substantiating the claim.

China, Russia express concerns

In response to Trump’s announcement, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun urged the US to “earnestly abide” by a global nuclear testing ban.

Russia questioned whether Trump was well-informed about its activities.

“President Trump mentioned in his statement that other countries are engaged in testing nuclear weapons. Until now, we didn’t know that anyone was testing,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.

Russia’s recent weapons drills “cannot in any way be interpreted as a nuclear test”, Peskov said. “We hope that the information was conveyed correctly to President Trump.”

Peskov then implied that Russia would conduct its own live warhead tests if Trump did it first.

“If someone departs from the moratorium, Russia will act accordingly,” Peskov said.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly said that if any country tests a nuclear weapon, then Russia will do so too.

Both countries observe a de facto moratorium on testing nuclear warheads, though Russia and the United States do regularly run military drills involving nuclear-capable systems.

The US has been a signatory since 1996 to the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, which bans all atomic test explosions, whether for military or civilian purposes.

United Nations secretary-general António Guterres said through his deputy spokesman that “nuclear testing can never be permitted under any circumstances”………………………………………… https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/trump-nuclear-testing-order-pushback/a21zghnl1

November 1, 2025 Posted by | China, politics international, Russia, USA | Leave a comment

Trump cuts Westinghouse reactors deal

one thing should be clear, significant financial risks are still there. Only four Westinghouse AP1000 units were ever financed in the US and remain a testament to nuclear power high risk, recurring and gross failure to financially control runaway cost-of-completion and time-to-completion estimates.  

October 30, 2025, https://beyondnuclear.org/trump-cuts-westinghouse-reactors-deal/

On October 28, 2025, the Trump White House announced its commitment to stake at least $80 billion of US federal dollars to initiate yet another very risky run at new construction of Westinghouse Electric Company’s  AP1000 nuclear stations. This is the follow-up to his May 23, 2025 executive orders to “unleash” more atomic power in the nation. Only this time, the Trump deal entitles the federal government, the designated buyer of the new reactors, to a 20% equity stake thereafter in Westinghouse’s returns in excess of $17.5 billion. Trump’s financing deal was cut with Westinghouse’s newest parent companies Brookfield Asset Management and Cameco, after the March 29, 2021 Westinghouse bankruptcy as of “the largest historic builder of nuclear power plants in the world.” At the time of the bankruptcy, Westinghouse was a wholly owned subsidiary of Japan’s Toshiba Corporation. Toshiba itself only narrowly escaped the financial meltdown.

On his latest visit to Asia, President Trump signed a nuclear deal with Japan newest, most hawkish and first woman Prime Minister, Saneae Takaichi, also announced on October 28th with an agreement to invest  hundreds of billions of dollars in US critical infrastructure including in Trump’s pledge to domestically build new Westinghouse AP1000 reactor units and small modular reactors in the United States conditional on the involvement of Japanese contractors.

The Trump deal doesn’t specify just how much US taxpayer money will be spent on the new Westinghouse units Trump wants to build.

But one thing should be clear, significant financial risks are still there. Only four Westinghouse AP1000 units were ever financed in the US and remain a testament to nuclear power high risk, recurring and gross failure to financially control runaway cost-of-completion and time-to-completion estimates.  Those new AP-1000 project orders were the only four units that managed to muster financing in South Carolina (V.C. Summer Units 2 & 3) and Georgia (Vogtle Units 3 & 4) of 34 US units announced in the 2007 launch with much ballyhoo of a so-called “nuclear renaissance.”  The two projects’ financing was only made possible by the two state regulators indenturing their electricity ratepayers to Construction Work In Progress (CWIP) charges through their respective Public Utility Commissions levying a series of customer rate hikes in advance of electricity usage to guarantee construction financing.  Otherwise, without public ratepayer on the hook for the advanced financing, a total of 30 other proposed new “advanced” reactor units (including 8 additional AP1000 units) were cancelled and withdrawn nationwide without a shovel in the ground.

South Carolina’s V.C. Summer AP1000 construction project was abandoned in 2017 with $10 billion in sunk costs and shrouded in FBI arrests, federal criminal convictions and guilty pleas by two high ranking SCANA utility executives, CEO Kevin Marsh, and Vice President Stephen Byrne, pleaded guilty to defraud South Carolina state regulators and its ratepayers after being charged with the crime by the U.S. Attorney’s office. Additionally, two Westinghouse Electric executives, Carl Churchman, a Vice President, pled guilty to making related false statements to the FBI investigators and sentenced to serve house detention and Jeffrey A. Benjamin, Senior Vice President for new plants and major products, who plead guilty to conspiracy to commit wire and securities fraud and serving one year and a day in federal prison.

Georgia’s Vogtle AP1000 two-unit project was eventually completed seven years behind the schedule to start operations in 2023 and 2024 with their original estimated combined cost of construction ballooning from $14 billion to an estimated $36.8 billion.  Due to the expansion, massive rate hikes and prolonged delay, the Vogtle nuclear power station is now the largest and most expensive generator of electricity by atomic power in the United States.

In other related news, on Friday, October 24, 2025, South Carolina’s Santee Cooper Board of Directors unanimously voted to authorized the state-owned utility to sign a letter of intent to ask Brookfield Assets Management, previously mentioned as one of Westinghouse’s parent companies, to sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to take over the completion of the previously abandoned and only partially built nuclear reactors.

Santee Cooper’s CEO Jimmy Stanton was quoted by The State news service to pledge that, “There are no additional financial risks for our customers at all”. The Letter of Intent is meant to be the first step in a new permitting for the completion of construction project and then obtaining a federal license for full power operations.  The original Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) combined construction and operating license that Santee Cooper and SCE&G held is no longer valid following their 2017 abandonment of construction. The new licensee, assuming that to be Brookfield Assets or its qualified proxy, will need to go back to the US NRC and the state to reacquire the necessary  permits to restart what is now called “the greatest construction failure in state history.” Santee Cooper has said it does not plan to hold the federal construction permit. Customers of Dominion Energy, the VC Summer Unit 1 new operator, are already on the hook to pay roughly 5% of their monthly bills for the original expansion project.

November 1, 2025 Posted by | business and costs, politics, USA | Leave a comment

How Russia is risking nuclear catastrophe with attempts to syphon power from Ukraine’s biggest plant

The exiled mayor of Enerhodar, close to Zaporizhzhia, reveals his fear of an ecological catastrophe

Sam Kiley, In Zaporizhzhia, Wednesday 29 October 2025, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/zaporizhzhia-nuclear-plant-ukraine-russia-war-b2855001.html

Europe’s biggest nuclear reactor has become a battlefield in Ukraine’s defence against Russian invaders as they risk a catastrophic meltdown in its efforts to connect it to Moscow’s national grid.

The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant (ZNPP), which has six reactors, was captured by Russian troops early in the invasion of Ukraine in 2022. It has remained a dangerous potential flashpoint for a nuclear disaster ever since.

Fighting and bombardments by both sides of the complex and the power station itself, which has been entirely occupied by Russian forces who base troops in its buildings, have forced the “cold shutdown” of the reactors.

This means that its nuclear material is not used to generate power but needs to be constantly cooled.

The fighting cut electricity from Ukraine, meaning that the cooling system had to rely entirely on diesel generators and a skeleton staff for a month.

Regular power was only restored in the last week, after the longest period the ZNPP had been disconnected from electricity to drive its cooling systems.

Russia needs to cut the Ukrainian power link in order to install its connection into the Russian network – a long-stated ambition.

“The Russian Federation is putting in its power line, but elements of it have been successfully damaged by Ukraine,” explained Mykhailo Shuster, nuclear expert and former director of procurement at Energoatom – Ukraine’s nuclear power agency.

“Russia is now at a high level of readiness, and to connect it, the power supply from Ukraine must be interrupted.”

It is unclear whether Russia has been able to connect the Ukrainian plant to its own network during the 30-day outage. If it did so, it would then have to install converter stations to synchronise the two grids.

But the power cuts to the cooling systems, combined with the near collapse of the water supplies there after Russia blew up the Kakhova Dam – the main water source for the ZNPP – is causing jitters among local leaders.

The exiled mayor of the now-occupied Enerhodar, the town next to Zaporizhzhia, told The Independent he fears nuclear fallout could melt into the groundwater around the plant, contaminate the Dnipro River and eventually the Black Sea.

“Kakhovka Dam is destroyed; there is nothing to cool it with – even if they miraculously restore the equipment in the future,” he said.

“Worst case scenario: the water will eventually evaporate from the cooling pond, and there will be nothing to cool nuclear fuel.”

“It can melt the concrete and go into the groundwater,” Dmytro Orlov added from his office in Zaporizhzhia. Mayor Orlov runs humanitarian programmes for the thousands of people, mostly nuclear power workers, who fled the advancing Russians from his town to safety here.

The mayor recalled the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, which remains the worst nuclear disaster in history.

“The estimated amount of nuclear fuel there is about 10 times more than in Chernobyl,” he warned.

A small team of inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Authority regularly inspects the power station and has reported military training and explosions in and around the facility.

Russian artillery and mortars have been seen shelling and bombing Ukrainian towns and villages on the opposite bank of the Dnipro.

After power was restored, IAEA director general Mario Grossi said: “What was once virtually unimaginable – a nuclear power plant regularly losing off-site power – has unfortunately become a common occurrence during this devastating war. However, this was the most challenging loss of power event we have experienced so far.

“There is still much work to do to further reduce the risks of a nuclear accident.”

November 1, 2025 Posted by | Russia, safety, Ukraine | Leave a comment

‘Groundhog Day’: Israel Breaks Ceasefire to Attack Gaza, Killing 104 People, Including 46 Children.

 Democracy Now, October 30, 2025 

Israel launched major airstrikes on Gaza, killing at least 104 people, including 46 children, in the deadliest attacks since the U.S.-brokered ceasefire was announced. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered “powerful strikes” on Gaza Tuesday after Israeli officials accused Hamas of killing an Israeli soldier in Rafah — which Hamas has denied. Netanyahu is trying “everything possible to resume the genocide in Gaza,” says Muhammad Shehada, a writer and analyst from Gaza. “The only condition is that he needs to maintain the facade of the ceasefire.”

Transcript

AMY GOODMAN: Israel launched major airstrikes on Gaza beginning Tuesday night, killing at least 104 people, including at least 35 children — about a third of the dead — in the most lethal attacks since a U.S.-brokered ceasefire began on October 10th.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered what he called “powerful strikes,” unquote, on Gaza after Israeli officials accused Hamas of killing an Israeli soldier in Rafah. Hamas denied involvement in the soldier’s death.

President Trump defended Israel’s attacks while also saying nothing is going to jeopardize the ceasefire……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. https://www.democracynow.org/2025/10/29/gaza_israel_strikes_muhammad_shehada

November 1, 2025 Posted by | Atrocities, Israel | Leave a comment

It’s Just Wall-To-Wall News Stories About The US And Its Allies Abusing The World.

Caitlin Johnstone, Oct 29, 2025, https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/its-just-wall-to-wall-news-stories?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=177462655&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

It’s just news story after news story about the US and its allies terrorizing the world today.

The Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have been filming themselves committing horrific massacres in Sudan over the last couple of days, reportedly murdering some two thousand civilians. You can see the bloodstains on the ground in satellite images. As we discussed the other day, the RSF and its atrocities are backed by the UAE, a close partner of the United States.

Meanwhile Israel has committed another wave of massacres of its own throughout the Gaza Strip, reportedly killing 104 people in a single day, including 46 children. This is as many Palestinians as would typically be killed on any given day in Gaza prior to the so-called “ceasefire”.

CBS News’ 60 Minutes has released a cartoonishly blatant war propaganda piece on “Nicolas Maduro, Venezuela’s dictator” about how poor and unhappy the people of Venezuela are under their current government. The piece featured an interview with Republican Senator Rick Scott, who said that “If I was Maduro I’d head to Russia or China right now; his days are numbered.”

The US can make threats, impose sanctions and amass war machinery, but you don’t truly know they’re serious about attacking a country until they start churning out Pentagon propaganda in the mainstream press.

In the same interview, Scott also said that if Maduro is successfully ousted, “it’ll be the end of Cuba.”

“America is gonna take care of the southern hemisphere and make sure there’s freedom and democracy,” he added.

The senator’s statements suggest that the US is preparing a push in Latin America similar to what it has been executing with Israel in the middle east, eliminating any powers which refuse to bend the knee. South of the US border the top two disobedient governments are the socialist states of Venezuela and Cuba. In the middle east the US and Israel have spent the last two years bombing Iran and Yemen, securing a regime change in Syria, and doing everything they can to eliminate Hamas and Hezbollah in order to rule the region uncontested.

And of course we’ve still got the horrifying US proxy war in Ukraine, where men continue to be dragged off against their will to fight in a nightmarish conflict that most Ukrainians now oppose, but which Zelensky is saying he intends to keep fighting for years against the will of the public. This whole miserable ordeal could have been avoided with a little diplomacy and a few low-cost concessions, but the western power alliance avoided off-ramp after off-ramp in order to ensure that Russia would get sucked into another costly military quagmire.

All over the world the US and its allies are murdering and abusing people in order to dominate the planet and ensure the survival of the capitalist system with which its power is intertwined. It is a giant murder machine feeding on human blood and the life force of our biosphere while providing nothing but obstacles to a healthy world.

The US-centralized empire is a disease that affects our entire species. We had better find a cure, and fast.

November 1, 2025 Posted by | Atrocities, civil liberties, USA | Leave a comment

No signs of suspicious work at bombed Iranian sites, IAEA chief says

Iran International, Oct 29, 2025,

International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Rafael Grossi said on Wednesday there were no signs of suspicious activity at Iranian nuclear sites bombed by the United States in June, adding that inspectors had gradually resumed some work in Iran.

“We do not see anything that would give rise to hypotheses of any substantive work going on there,” IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi said in New York.

“These are big industrial sites where there is movement, there is activity going on and we are very quick to indicate that this does not imply that there is activity on enrichment,” he added.

Iran suspended cooperation with IAEA inspectors after a 12-day war in June against Israel and the United States, codified via a new law passed by parliament.

Grossi told reporters that inspectors had no access to the to sites stricken in June, but confirmed that some inspection was under way.

“We are trying to build it back, and we are inspecting in Iran,” he said, “not at every site where we should be doing it – but we are gradually coming back.”

Respecting NPT

In September, Iran and the agency agreed in Cairo to restart inspections. However, after Germany, France and the United Kingdom triggered the reimposition of UN sanctions, it remained unclear whether Iran would comply.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei said on Tuesday that Iran’s commitments under the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) safeguards agreement with the agency remain in place…………………………………. https://www.iranintl.com/en/202510291624

November 1, 2025 Posted by | Iran, politics international | Leave a comment

Donald Trump says South Korea can build nuclear-powered submarines in US

 Donald Trump has said he has given South Korea permission to build
nuclear-powered submarines in Philadelphia, in an announcement that could rattle China as the US president prepares to meet Xi Jinping. “South
Korea will be building its Nuclear Powered Submarine in the Philadelphia
Shipyards, right here in the good ol’ U.S.A.,” Trump wrote on the Truth
Social platform on Thursday during his visit to the US ally and ahead of a
summit with President Xi. Trump said the US-South Korea military alliance
was “stronger than ever” so he had “given them approval to build a
Nuclear Powered Submarine”.

 FT 30th Oct 2025,
https://www.ft.com/content/a6ee6741-5a66-41b1-80b6-5e01e4a823a5

November 1, 2025 Posted by | South Korea, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Furloughing Workers for Armageddon: Trump, Nuclear Weapons and the NNSA

To maintain and reproduce an arsenal of mass death and thanatotic desire, you need people of suspended moral principles. “Oversight matters,” Plonski remarks. “Reducing the federal workforce means increased risk in ensuring the reliability and safety of our nuclear stockpile.”

30 October 2025 Dr Binoy Kampmark, https://theaimn.net/furloughing-workers-for-armageddon-trump-nuclear-weapons-and-the-nnsa/

Instead of satirising nuclear war – a possible if difficult thing to do – the time has come to satirise the laying off and furlough of those who solemnly monitor and maintain such machinery fit, not for preserving life so much as ending it at a fiery, radiated terminus. If it’s not possible to totally disarm a nuclear inventory, it might be possible to reduce the forces behind them or render some idle. It turns out that this is happening in Freedom’s Land itself, the United States of America. 

Those responsible for maintaining the US nuclear weapons arsenal have not been having the best of years. In February, President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing the heads of agencies to “promptly undertake preparations to initiate large-scale reductions in force, consistent with applicable law.” This was part of the now infamous Department of Government Efficiency Workforce Optimization Initiative. Within a few days, 300 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), located within the Department of Energy, were fired. Prior to that, it had 2,000 staff and 55,000 contractors at its disposal.

The NNSA describes, as one of its “core missions” ensuring that the US “maintains a safe, secure, and reliable nuclear stockpile through the application of unparalleled science, technology, engineering, and manufacturing.” Easy to forget, on reading this, that we are not talking about agricultural supplies or lifesaving medicines, but over 3,000 nuclear warheads and ongoing production specific to that agency. “The Office of Defense programs,” the description goes on to say, “carries out NNSA’s mission to maintain and modernize the nuclear stockpile through the Stockpile Stewardship and Management System.”

NNSA deputy division director, Rob Plonski, was understandably upset that his citadel was being thinned. Ego, reputation and prowess in the nuclear field was at stake. “We cannot expect to project strength, deterrence and world dominance while simultaneously stripping away the federal workforce,” he moaned in a post on LinkedIn. He would have taken heart by the subsequent rescinding of the termination decision for all but 28 of the staff by NNSA acting director Teresa Robbins.

Trump, on the other hand, was having one of his more lucid moments, telling reporters on February 13 that nuclear forces should not be exempt from budgetary trimming. “There’s no reason for us to be building brand-new nuclear weapons. We already have so many, you could destroy the world 50 times over, 100 times over.” Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, was having none of that. DOGE employees, he charged, were storming “in with absolutely no knowledge of what these departments are responsible for.” They barely realised that the purge was less to do with the Department of Energy than “the department of nuclear weapons.”

In October, the NNSA was again revisited by crisis, with the decision to furlough 1,400 employees due to that event distinct to US politics, the government shutdown. Till that point, the shutdown had lasted almost three weeks, with the Senate failing to pass a continuing resolution bill since October 1. Only 400 essential employees are being retained, labouring in patriotic sweat without pay. A spokesperson for the DOE explained that they would be working “to support the protection of property and safety of human life.”  

Since its creation in 2000, the agency has had few such hiccups. “This has never happened before,” noted Energy Secretary Chris Wright during a news conference at the Nevada National Security Site on October 20. “This should not happen.” Wright, however, spoke of pursuing “creative ways” in paying the vast number of contractors, at least till the end of October.

Particular concern centres on the Pantex plant in Texas, the assembly and disassembling site for nuclear weapons, and the Y-12 National Security Complex in Tennessee, responsible for, according to the DOE, the retrieval and storage of nuclear materials, fuelling of naval reactors, and the performance of “complementary work for other government and private-sector entities.”

The NNSA had tried to argue that money be made available from previously passed spending bills to prevent the furlough. A DOE spokesperson proved icy in remarking that, “While the administration was able to identify funds to keep NNSA weapons laboratories, plants, and sites operating with our contractors, legal and budgetary limitations required the administration to begin furloughing NNSA federal employees.”

Therein lies the problem. To maintain and reproduce an arsenal of mass death and thanatotic desire, you need people of suspended moral principles. “Oversight matters,” Plonski remarks. “Reducing the federal workforce means increased risk in ensuring the reliability and safety of our nuclear stockpile.” With the support of 26 lawmakers, Rep. Dina Titus (D-Nev.) in her October 23 letter to Wright and NNSA administrator Brandon Williams similarly argued that the federal employees in question “play a critical oversight role in ensuring that the work required to maintain nuclear security is carried out in accordance with long-standing policy and the law.” Trump has also been fuzzy on the matter of nuclear weapons, acknowledging the nonsense of increasing the pile, yet simultaneously wanting tighter deadlines to deliver ever more modern weapons to the Pentagon. 

This fantastically confused state of affairs throws up an interesting question: Why not turn the attention to reducing the stockpile itself and pause the euphemistically named modernisation process? A slimmer, sharper workforce for a more diminished, manageable arsenal of death that should never be used in any case. The National Security State remains, however, a tough, insatiable customer.

November 1, 2025 Posted by | employment, USA | Leave a comment

Patrick Lawrence: The Voices of Many Jews

 “Our solidarity with Palestinians is not a betrayal of Judaism, then, but a fulfillment of it.”

these people speak not for the destruction of Israel but for its restoration to sanity — and, so, its salvation.

October 28, 2025, By Patrick Lawrence, Consortium News, https://consortiumnews.com/2025/10/25/patrick-lawrence-the-voices-of-many-jews/

This very welcome letter marks out the significantly worsening alienation between world Jewry and the Zionists’ defacement of the Judaic tradition.

At last, at last, Jews with powerful voices have gathered en masse — a critical mass, I would say — to condemn Israel and the savage spree of murder, starvation and terror it inflicts as we speak upon the Palestinians of Gaza and the Occupied Territories of the West Bank. 

You may by now be aware of the open letter signed by 450–plus American, European and Israeli Jews and made public this week. In it, this sprawling group of distinguished personages denounces the criminality of the Zionist regime and asserts “the universality of justice and the fair and equal application of international law.” The signatories also call for the international community to impose immediate sanctions on apartheid Israel.   

This is very big, in my read. I say this not because of what is in this document — calls for justice of this kind are by now many — but, straight to my point, for whose names are on it.   

You may know of this letter and you may not, I ought to add: The Guardian reported it in its Oct. 22 editions. Anadolu Ajansi, the Turkish wire service, also had the story right away. Arab News had it, too. So did Middle East MonitorThe New Indian Express, and, stateside, Common Dreams. In Britain, Jewish Voice for Liberation, J.V.L., picked it up. 

But the British daily is at writing alone among major Western media to report on this momentous call for worldwide action against the Zionist state. We read nothing of it in major Western media and hear nothing from the mainstream broadcasters. I will return to this important point shortly. 

“Join the Worldwide Jewish Call,” as the letter is titled, was organized and put out by an apparently ad hoc “coalition” called Jews Demand Action. The document and various appendages explaining it are here. As the Jews Demand Action website makes clear, the intent is to announce a continually engaged movement in the cause of justice — justice for Palestinians, justice for the Zionist fanatics guilty of perpetrating a genocide, a term the group uses with obvious conviction and also with obvious anger. Among much else, the letter features a form by way of which Jews can sign the petition and receive updates on actions to come.  

“At last, a serious global Jewish call for sanctions on Israel,” J.V.L., the British version of Jewish Voice for Peace in the United States, proclaimed in the above-noted report.

Yes, at last. 

Lots of other Jews have stood publicly against the apartheid state, many for a long time. There is Rabbi Yaakov Shapiro, the wonderfully outspoken rabbi and author of The Empty Wagon: Zionism’s Journey from Identity Crisis to Identity Theft (Bais Medrash and Primedia eLaunch, 2020), there is the aforementioned Jewish Voice for Peace, and the Jewish organizations and students active on university campuses and in the streets of major cities. Unqualified praise to them and the many like them I cannot list in full.  

I have no certain idea why it took these hundreds of influential people with self-evident consciences so long to join these others against the entity that insists on calling itself “the Jewish state.” To hazard a surmise, the past two years of Israel’s unspeakable barbarism have surely been a torment for the signatories of this letter, as for countless Jews the world over, as they have sought to distinguish their faith and their traditions from the conduct of the ultra-nationalist regime that is supposed to merit their allegiance but has emphatically lost it.  

If I had to choose one sentence in this letter above all others for its significance and power — I would rather not but I will — it would be this: “Our solidarity with Palestinians is not a betrayal of Judaism, then, but a fulfillment of it.”

After this truth comes these:

“When our sages taught that to destroy one life is to destroy an entire world, they did not carve exceptions for Palestinians. We shall not rest until this ceasefire carries forward into an end of occupation and apartheid.”

This is the conceptual frame within which the signatories address António Guterres, the U.N. secretary-general, as well as “presidents, prime ministers, heads of state, [and] permanent representatives to the United Nations.” While approving of the ceasefire, or what remains of it at this point, the letter states, 

“And yet there should be no doubt that this ceasefire is fragile: Israeli forces remain in Gaza, the agreement makes no reference to the West Bank, the underlying conditions of occupation, apartheid, and the denial of Palestinian rights remain unaddressed.”

“As Jews and as human beings, we declare: Not in our name,” the letter states. It then lists the four key demands the signatories advance in their names: Respect for the authority of the International Court of Justice (Yes!), a rejection of the complicity Western governments have forced upon their citizens, a full military withdrawal, the supply of aid and everything else needed to reconstruct Gaza, and, finally, “to refute false accusations of antisemitism that abusively deploy our collective history to tarnish those with whom we stand together in the pursuit of peace and justice” (Yes again times 10!).

You find some big names among the signatories (and the open letter does not give the full list): Daniel Levy, previously a “peace” negotiator for Israel and now a prominent critic; Gabor Maté, the physician-psychotherapist; Wallace Shawn, the playwright, actor, and reliable old leftie; Amy Eilberg, an American rabbi and activist; Peter Beinart (one of the organizers of Jews Demand Action), Naomi Klein, the “progressive” Canadian writer; Yuval Abraham, who co-directed No Other Land, the documentary that took an Oscar last year. 

If I do not put the point too simply, these people speak not for the destruction of Israel but for its restoration to sanity — and, so, its salvation. They do not mention the two-state solution in their letter, but one gains the impression it is this for which they hope. One may differ strenuously with them on these points (as I do, emphatically), but what I will shorthand as their moderation is part of what makes their open letter so important: These are (shorthand again) mainstream Jews. 

Who can say how carefully or how many presidents, prime ministers, U.N. reps, etc. will consider this letter? But this is not the salient point. This letter marks out the significantly worsening alienation between world Jewry and the state that is supposed to represent its home. And in so doing it widens and deepens the already evident isolation of the Jewish state. This latter effect may not be the intent of the open letter’s signatories, but it will prove unmistakably to be among the document’s consequences. 

A Growing Consensus 

We represent the growing consensus of world Jews, not the Israeli government,” the letter declares in one of its subheads. Exactly so. And as The Guardian piece cited above points out, the open letter should be read alongside some stunning numbers coming out of the most recent opinion polls. In a recent Washington Post survey, 61 percent of American Jews asked think Israel has committed war crimes in Gaza; just under 40 percent stand with the open letter’s signatories: We witness a genocide. 

In a poll that does not distinguish between Jews and non–Jews, The Brookings Institution finds that 45 percent of those surveyed think Israel is committing genocide. A recent poll conducted by Quinnipiac University indicates 50 percent of register voters agree; among Democratic voters the number is 77 percent. On Thursday Reuters published a survey indicating that 59 percent of the Jews and non–Jews polled think the United States should recognize Palestine as a sovereign state. 

I see a highly significant conflict growing ever sharper between the increasing number of outspoken Jews of conscience and those many — and they remain very many — who continue to defend the righteousness of the Israeli terror machine. Things are getting especially awkward for mainstream media such as the Zionist-supervised New York Times, wherein we find no mention of Jews Demand Action and its forthright open letter. This cannot end well for the Times and all the pilot fish that follow it. 

However long the Times stays silent, however many media billionaire Zionists take over and corrupt, however many Bari Weisses they put in high places, this will do nothing other than discredit these media. They are effectively complicit in the Zionists’ defacement of the Judaic tradition. This is another way the open letter is important. 

The world has long and urgently needed to hear from the “we” whose names are on this letter. Non–Jews need to learn of and make the distinction between Judaism and the frenzied Zionism that now rules Israel so they can think clearly of these questions. And as they are well aware, those Jews who reject Israel’s ultra-nationalist Zionism must make themselves heard for the sake of Judaism, too. 

I do not accept that any great wave of anti–Semitism is breaking upon us — there is no “ferocious surge,” in Joe Biden’s preposterous phrase. But the potential for such a turn, given the extent of Israel’s inhumanity in combination with its claim to be “the Jewish home,” is obvious.

The Zionist hoards love the threat of anti–Semitism: How well it serves their pernicious purpose. At last this insidious ruse is countered by those whose voices count for most — the voices of Jews. 

Patrick Lawrence, a correspondent abroad for many years, chiefly for the International Herald Tribune, is a columnist, essayist, lecturer and author, most recently of Journalists and Their Shadows, available from Clarity Press or via Amazon.  Other books include Time No Longer: Americans After the American Century. His Twitter account, @thefloutist, has been restored after years of being permanently censored. 

October 31, 2025 Posted by | Israel, Religion and ethics | Leave a comment