Ben-Gvir himself reportedly captioned the footage, “That’s how we welcome terror supporters. Welcome to Israel,” while another clip showed him taunting handcuffed detainees. The outrage became so intense that even Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu publicly distanced himself from the spectacle, calling the conduct “not in line with Israel’s values and norms.”
There is something here that feels ripped straight from the darkest chapters of our fascist past — not hidden away in secret archives decades later, but broadcast openly, proudly, in real time. Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir shared footage of police violently dragging members of the flotilla team while mocking their suffering with the chilling phrase: “Don’t be bothered by their screams.”
And if this is what they are willing to show the public — if this is the sanitized version uploaded for propaganda and applause — then imagine the unspeakable torture, humiliation, and violence taking place in the shadows, far from cameras and headlines. History indeed has a way of repeating itself, especially when cruelty becomes spectacle and those in power begin celebrating the pain of the powerless.
Ben-Gvir himself has repeatedly demanded harsher measures, more repression, more brutality, always insisting there is not enough force, not enough punishment, not enough fear inflicted on Palestinians and dissenters alike. The language is no longer even disguised. It echoes the rhetoric of authoritarian regimes that taught generations what happens when a society stops seeing human beings as human.
What makes this moment especially horrifying is not merely the violence itself, but the pride. The celebration. The transformation of state cruelty into political theater for a cheering audience. Fascism does not arrive all at once. It grows through normalization — through laughter at suffering, through public spectacles of domination, through officials who learn there is political capital in dehumanization.
And history has shown us, again and again, where that road leads.
A diplomatic firestorm has erupted and what began as another act of humiliation proudly broadcast by Itamar Ben-Gvir quickly spiraled into a rare global diplomatic backlash, with governments across Europe, North America, and beyond publicly condemning Israel’s treatment of Gaza flotilla activists. Britain’s Yvette Cooper said she was “truly appalled,” while Italy’s Giorgia Meloni called the footage “inadmissible.”
Spain announced plans to ban Ben-Gvir from entering the country and push for wider European sanctions. France, Canada, Australia, Belgium, the Netherlands, Poland, Ireland, Denmark, Sweden, Luxembourg, Cyprus, Qatar, Turkey, South Korea, and top European Union officials all denounced the scenes as degrading, humiliating, illegal, or incompatible with democratic values. Several countries summoned Israeli ambassadors demanding explanations or apologies after footage showed activists zip-tied, dragged, and forced to kneel while Ben-Gvir mocked them online. Even figures inside Israel and allied diplomats distanced themselves from the spectacle, exposing just how politically toxic the images became on the world stage. But for many observers, the outrage also raised a darker question: if world leaders are only now reacting because Western citizens were humiliated on camera, what horrors have Palestinians endured for years outside the spotlight?
With Al Jazeera reporting that many analysts are now calling the collapse of the “Hasbara” which “for decades, Israel has relied on “Hasbara” – a Hebrew term translating to “explanation” – a propaganda campaign to justify its policies and military actions against Palestinians to the international community”
The fracturing of this illusion helps explain the frantic damage control coming from Israeli officials after the flotilla footage went global.
Critics argue the outrage inside the Israeli government was never truly about the abuse itself, but about the devastating public relations fallout after images of activists being zip-tied, dragged, and forced to kneel spread across the world.
The strategy has long depended on controlling the narrative and framing Israel as acting out of necessity while dismissing criticism as misunderstanding or bias.
But according to Palestinian policy analyst Fathi Nimer, the sheer brazenness of Ben-Gvir’s video shattered that carefully managed image in real time. As Israel pours hundreds of millions into global messaging campaigns amid growing international isolation over Gaza, the footage instead exposed to millions what critics say Palestinians have experienced for years behind prison walls, checkpoints, and military occupation — only this time the humiliation was proudly broadcast by the officials themselves.
One can only hope that this shatters the illusion forever. That no amount of polished public relations campaigns, carefully managed talking points, or billion-dollar propaganda operations can put this genie back in the bottle. Because the world did not witness a “misunderstanding” or an isolated incident — it witnessed state humiliation proudly performed for applause. It witnessed officials mocking bound detainees while the machinery of occupation operated in plain sight. And for millions watching across the globe, the question is no longer whether these abuses happen, but how long they have been happening beyond the reach of cameras.
Perhaps the most damning part of all this is that the mask did not slip accidentally — it was ripped off willingly by those who no longer feel the need to hide their contempt. History teaches that systems built on dehumanization eventually reveal themselves completely. The only question is whether the world finally chooses to see what Palestinians have been trying to show it for generations.
In a sign that the US is preparing for yet another evil war, Marco Rubio is now claiming that Cuba poses a “national security threat” to the United States, saying the likelihood of a peaceful agreement is “not high”.
“Cuba not only has weapons that they’ve acquired from Russia and China over the years, but they also host Russian and Chinese intelligence presence in their country — not far from where we’re standing right now,” Rubio told the press on Thursday. “So Cuba has always posed a national security threat to the United States. They, by the way, have been one of the leading sponsors of terrorism in the entire region.”
Rubio’s comments come as a US intelligence report laundered through Axios claims that Cuba may be preparing to launch a drone strike against US military forces. Havana said the Axios report misrepresents Cuba’s defensive measures as a preparation to attack, accusing the US of “fabricating pretexts, creating and spreading falsehoods, and distorting as extraordinary the logical preparation required to face a potential aggression.”
The US has also unsealed an indictment for Raul Castro, the 94 year-old brother of Fidel Castro, in a move that resembles the playbook used for the kidnapping of Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro.
And everyone knows it’s all based on lies. You know it. I know it. Marco Rubio knows it. The war propagandists know it. The gusanos brigading social media begging for war know it. We all know it’s a sham.
Not one person sincerely believes Cuba poses a threat to the United States.
No one sincerely believes Cuba just coincidentally became an urgent menace to US national security all of a sudden right when the US began scrambling to consolidate geostrategic control in the middle east and the western hemisphere.
Nobody actually thinks that a tiny, impoverished island nation is preparing to launch a war of aggression against the United States.
This is a performance put on by warmongers and bootlickers. It insults our intelligence and robs us of dignity.
If things cool down with Iran, then it’s a safe bet they’re going in for the kill shot on Cuba. The US empire never makes peace, it just moves the crosshairs of its war machinery from nation to nation.
We see this over and over again.
Yay! The troops are leaving Afghanistan — oh, now they’re waging a proxy war in Ukraine.
Excellent, they’re deescalating against Yemen — whoa, now they’re kidnapping the president of Venezuela.
Oh hey, it looks like the mass slaughter in Gaza has slowed down — oh, now they’re going to war with Iran.
Look, they’re pulling thousands of troops out of Germany — oh, it’s so they can move them to Poland.
Hey these Iran negotiations are finally getting somewhere — ah man, now they’re invading Cuba.
Over and over and over and over again. As soon as the human butchery slows down in one place, it picks up somewhere else.
The US empire exists in a constant state of war. War is the glue that holds the empire together. If the wars stop, the empire stops.
That’s why the denizens of the empire are never allowed to vote for an end to wars. You can vote for candidates who will end abortions or trans rights or corporate regulations, but you can’t vote for a candidate who will actually end the wars. Peace is never on the ballot, because war is too critical for the functioning of the empire.
Which is why it’s so important for us all to stand against the war machine. If we can end the wars, we can end the empire. Not until then will we have a shot at building a healthy world.
While tightening sanctions, the U.S, State Department has boosted funding for regime change programs.
A darling of the Cuban American right, Secretary of State Marco Rubio is leading the latest drive to destabilize the island.
Ultimately, the blockade isolates Cuba precisely because its revolutionary idealism mocks U.S. imperial ambitions. The sanctions are the culmination of seven decades of coercion and obscene hypocrisy. An empire that spreads war is strangling a country that exports doctors. Indeed, a rich government that claims vaccines are dangerous is persecuting a poor society that not only invents vaccines, but shares them with the world. And while celebrating genocide and deportations, U.S. leaders throttle a nation for its defiant tradition of solidarity: Its refusal to tolerate the suffering of the exploited. Decades after the Cold War, Cuba remains an obsessive target of a U.S.-backed counterrevolution, as well as the storm-lashed epicenter of the struggle against U.S. imperialism
At night, the U.S. Naval Base in Guantánamo, Cuba appears like a tangled string of Christmas lights along the coastline, casting colored silhouettes across the waves that lap ashore. Sailors and Marines pack the local sports bar blaring pop music. Others frequent the bowling alley or play video games under intense strobe lights. Yet in contrast to the brightly illuminated base, nighttime blots out the nearby town of Caimanera, as a result of the energy blockade on Cuba that President Donald Trump tightened this January.
Trump claims that the embargo is necessary to promote a democratic transition in Cuba. Similarly, U.S.-backed opposition leaders in Miami such as Rosa María Payá argue that “the Cuban people [are] grateful” for the sanctions, which will help “make Cuba great again.”
But the truth is far more bitter. Trump’s sanctions are accelerating a social crisis that has immobilized Cuban industry, gutted public services, and forced over 10 percent of the population to leave the island in recent years. Hospitals lack electricity, and grocery store shelves are empty amid rolling blackouts. Ratcheting up pressure, U.S. authorities issued a new raft of sanctions against senior Cuban officials this May, while conducting military reconnaissance flights off the coastline.
Trump’s economic powerplay and preparations for a potential invasion are only the latest moves in an ongoing saga of aggression toward Cuba. Rather than prioritizing democracy, Washington has long deployed economic pressure to challenge the island’s fiercely independent social and foreign policies — above all, its commitment to wealth redistribution, solidarity with liberation struggles, and opposition to U.S. imperial hubris.
Forming the Noose
Washington’s professed support for democracy in Cuba rings hollow when placed against the historical backdrop. In the 1950s, U.S. officials assisted the island’s dictator Fulgencio Batista, as he attempted to extinguish a popular revolution spearheaded by Fidel Castro. His regime tortured over 700 dissidents to death, dangling mutilated bodies from telegraph poles and tossing them into gutters. While training Batista’s forces, the CIA confided that they were “too enthusiastic” about torture. Nonetheless, Washington organized “to prevent a Castro victory,” fearing that his leftist agenda would undermine its vice-like grip over Cuban politics and commerce.
After taking power in January 1959, revolutionary leaders nationalized strategic industries, outlawed formal racial segregation, and pursued a breathtaking array of anti-poverty reforms. In response, the State Department promoted “economic warfare” by plotting to reduce access to oil and the U.S. sugar market. Officials emphasized that they should “disguise these actions” as peaceful. But their objective was clear: “to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of [the Castro] government.”
In 1961, President John F. Kennedy escalated pressure by bankrolling terrorist operations and a failed invasion at the Bay of Pigs. He also armed counterrevolutionaries that targeted the revolution’s literacy campaign, butchering teachers for teaching peasants to read.
To defend Cuba, Castro stationed Soviet missiles on the island. At the brink of nuclear war, Kennedy vehemently opposed a “no-invasion guarantee” in negotiations with Soviet leaders, while refusing to even talk to Cuban officials. Privately, he was blunt: “our objective is to preserve our right to invade” in an emergency. After the Soviets withdrew the missiles, U.S. officials insisted that their “ultimate objective” remained “the overthrow of… Castro,” sponsoring attacks against industrial sites and “tighten[ing] the noose around the Cuban economy.”
Yet their most cynical ploy targeted Cuba’s youth. As relations deteriorated, the U.S. government organized Operation Peter Pan, which sowed chaos and fractured families by convincing Cubans to ship their children to the United States. To spark a mass exodus, the CIA published false propaganda announcing that authorities planned to abolish parental authority. Radio advertisements warned that socialists would seize and “indoctrinate” every minor. “Don’t let your child be taken!” broadcasts warned.
Meanwhile, the State Department colluded with Father Bryan Walsh and the Catholic Welfare Bureau in Miami, which oversaw the transfer of over 14,000 Cuban children to the United States. Many never reunited with their families. Walsh packed Cuban children into orphanages, foster homes, and makeshift facilities. One Peter Pan survivor, Alex López, recalled living for one year in a snake-infested camp in the Everglades. Residents slept in canvas tents and washed in the swamp. But the worst part was the priests. López described the sadistic cruelty of one of the camp rectors and “being raped by that horrible man.” Many others also experienced sexual abuse, violence, and neglect. Walsh himself forced campers to strip before beating them with paddles. In 2006, one survivor claimed that the priest raped him.
Today, Cuban American leaders cite Operation Peter Pan as an example of principled resistance against communist tyranny. In reality, the operation was a cruel microcosm of U.S. policy toward Cuba, revealing both the cynicism of the counterrevolution and rapacity of Washington. Although under siege, the island became the only Latin American country without malnutrition or illiteracy, prompting UNICEF to call it a “paradise for children” in the region in 2010. Yet it was precisely these reforms that infuriated the U.S. and Cuban elite, turning Cuba into an intolerable symbol of dignity and defiance.
The Reverse Passage
The United States has not only targeted Cuba because of its socialist system but also due to the country’s commitment to radical solidarity. Throughout the Cold War, Cuban leaders repeatedly challenged U.S. aggression abroad and efforts to assert Western supremacy in the Global South.
In particular, Cuba offered a model for decolonization, while actively supporting national liberation movements. In 1959, the Cuban-Argentine revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara led a solidarity trip to Gaza. Afterward, Cuba became a leading champion of Palestinian rights, offering substantial economic and military aid to the Palestine Liberation Organization. It also was a major ally to Vietnamese nationalists during the Vietnam War, sending equipment to build the Ho Chi Minh Trail. And Cuba became a safe haven for political refugees as U.S.-backed dictatorships ravaged Latin America through the 1980s.
Most notably, half a million Cubans fought for decolonization in Africa. Their sacrifices helped Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, Namibia, and other countries gain independence. Recognizing their contribution, the Algerian leader and herald of Pan-Africanism, Ahmed Ben Bella, declared that without the Cuban Revolution, “no place for justice, for dignity [would exist] in this world.”
Above all, Cuban support for Angola proved decisive. In 1975, U.S. officials encouraged apartheid South Africa to topple President Agostinho Neto and the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), which had recently wrested independence from Portugal. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger hoped that ousting Neto’s leftist government would enhance U.S. prestige. But as South African armor approached Luanda, Castro initiated Operation Carlota — airlifting thousands of Cuban troops to repel the invasion.
The historian Piero Gleijeses concludes that the operation embodied a genuine commitment to racial justice. It entailed a sort of reverse passage, as the Cuban descendants of African slaves crossed the Atlantic to vanquish white supremacy and the last vestiges of colonialism. Within months, Black Cuban and Angolan troops repelled the offensive. A South African military analyst lamented that “over 300 years of colonialism” was disappearing. “White elitism has suffered an irreversible blow.”
Within months, Black Cuban and Angolan troops repelled the offensive. A South African military analyst lamented that “over 300 years of colonialism” was disappearing. “White elitism has suffered an irreversible blow.”
In 1987, the United States again conspired with South Africa, as apartheid forces streamed across the border and cornered Angolan units at the town of Cuito Cuanavale. Cuba responded with a massive troop surge. “[W]e placed ourselves in the lion’s jaws,” Castro recalled, claiming that his soldiers maneuvered “like a boxer who with his left hand blocks the blow and with his right – strikes.” Against the odds, Cuban reinforcements secured a smashing victory. The counteroffensive not only preserved Angola’s sovereignty, but forced South Africa to grant Namibia independence and fatally weakened the apartheid regime. Nelson Mandela concluded that Cuba’s victory was “the turning point for the liberation of our continent, and of my people, from the scourge of apartheid.”
In short, the island’s pugnacious opposition to imperialism made it a permanent target of U.S. aggression. Historically, Cuba has spent a greater proportion of its GDP on foreign aid than virtually any other country. And unlike the United States, it is famous for fighting colonialism and directing medical missions, treating millions of poor patients across the world. Demonstrating their anticolonial convictions, 32 Cuban security personnel died defending Venezuelan territory from Trump’s illegal invasion this January. For these reasons, Washington has regarded Cuba as a threat to U.S. imperial leadership and the geographical hierarchies — in Venezuela, Palestine, Africa, and elsewhere — that it aims to preserve.
Unrestrained Extremism
After the Soviet Union dissolved, Cuba lost an essential lifeline, and its economy slid into a prolonged crisis. Smelling blood, Cuban American conservatives lobbied to tighten the blockade in order to instigate regime change. Miami remained the strategic base of the counterrevolution, as right-wing residents flexed their political connections to block the normalization of relations, strengthen the embargo, and trigger an uprising.
Despite their pro-democracy rhetoric, conservative Cuban American activists had an embarrassing record. For decades, they had used Florida as a launching pad for violent operations against Cuba, while viciously attacking moderate voices — at one point, perpetrating 45 percent of all terrorist bombings in the world. Far-right community leaders such as Jorge Mas Canosa, Luis Posada Carriles, and Orlando Bosch strafed beaches with machine guns, planted explosives, and even bombed a Cuban airplane killing 73 civilians. “All of Castro’s planes are warplanes,” Bosch explained in a chilling deadpan.
Under Mas Canosa’s guidance, the Cuban American National Foundation (CANF) became the main powerbroker shaping policy. Although posing as an independent grassroots actor, the foundation maintained deep ties to the U.S. government. CANF co-founder Raul Masvidal explained that “the National Security Council wanted to start an organization that would help popularize” its campaign of economic pressure and diplomatic isolation against Cuba.
And the foundation was its answer. Over the 1990s and 2000s, CANF laundered federal funds for activists bombing the island and the electoral campaigns of hardline politicians. The godfather of the Cuban American exile community, CANF president Mas Canosa aimed to turn Cuba into an anarcho-capitalist paradise, promoting “a very aggressive privatization campaign” that “has to be radical and… immediate. Privatize everything.” In 1992, he revamped sanctions with the Cuban Democracy Act, which Sen. Robert Torricelli (D-New Jersey), a leading recipient of foundation funds, designed to “wreak havoc on that island.”
Meanwhile, CANF financed Brothers to the Rescue, a self-identified humanitarian group of airplane pilots helping Cuban rafters reach the U.S. shoreline. Yet Fernando Morais’s book The Last Soldiers of the Cold War demonstrates that the Brothers were intensely political. Flying U.S. government aircraft, they frequently penetrated Cuban airspace to jam transmissions at Havana’s international airport, putting thousands of lives in danger. Director José Basulto boasted that pilots dumped a “tremendous amount” of propaganda exhorting citizens to “overthrow” the socialist state. The Brothers even passed reconnaissance information from flights to Cuban Americans planting bombs on beaches.
In 1996, Cuba shot down two of their aircraft, after persistently warning U.S. authorities against future incursions. Exploiting the incident, CANF pressed President Bill Clinton to sign the Helms-Burton Act, which drastically tightened the blockade. Facing an election year, Clinton signed the bill to win Cuban American votes, while privately recognizing that it violated international law. Beside themselves with victory, CANF then ramped up bombing attacks in Havana to undermine the tourist industry. Posada, who directed the strikes, admitted that Mas Canosa “controlled everything,” slipping him cash “[w]henver I needed money.”
Despite relentless harassment, Cubans successfully rebuilt their economy. Between 1999 and 2014, the election of left-leaning “Pink Tide” governments in Latin America allowed Cuba to escape its isolation, while securing new allies and trade partners. In 2015, President Barack Obama opened talks with Havana, taking the first step toward the normalization of relations. The diplomatic thaw eased restrictions on travel and remittances, relaxed controls on investment, and promoted bilateral cooperation in medical research and other areas.
More than anything, it signaled the failure of U.S. aggression. Since the 1990s, the Cuban American right had led a campaign to strangle the island, attempting everything from economic subterfuge to terrorism. Instead, its efforts revealed the revolution’s resilience, as well as the unrestrained extremism of its leading adversaries.
The Price of Dignity
The thaw did not last long. In 2017, the State Department claimed that Cuba launched “acoustic attacks” against its Havana embassy, harassing U.S. diplomats with a weapon that emitted a high-pitched noise powerful enough to inflict brain injuries. FBI investigators and medical specialists found no evidence that Cuba deployed such technology, or that the sci-fi device even existed. The most likely culprit for the sound was crickets chirping.
While tightening sanctions, the State Department has boosted funding for regime change programs. Leaked documents reveal that officials have plotted in recent decades to build a militant opposition movement. They hope to respond “rapidly, discreetly, and opportunistically” to crises, “hastening a peaceful transition to a… market-oriented society.” The department has funneled illegal funding to government critics, sponsored dissident rappers, and attempted to create a social media platform to spark an uprising. To block access to foreign currency, it is even bullying poor countries into expelling Cuban doctors, depriving some communities of healthcare altogether.
A darling of the Cuban American right, Secretary of State Marco Rubio is leading the latest drive to destabilize the island. Rubio grew up amid the rabid politics and violence of counterrevolutionary Miami. In his memoir, he fondly recalls buying baseball tickets with cocaine money from his brother-in-law, who smuggled drugs with a Bay of Pigs veteran. Since January, he has overseen the energy embargo that frequently plunges the island into darkness.
Claiming Rubio as “one of our own,” CANF debuted a “roadmap” for the island this May, promoting the privatization of healthcare and education, dismantling of welfare programs, and end to “restrictions on profit repatriation.” Authors portray the United States as “the salvation of Cuba,” while asking Cubans to accept Cuban American leadership since, they say, “We know how a capitalist system works.” As the humanitarian disaster worsens, CANF continues to champion hardline tactics, including the indictment against Raúl Castro announced by the U.S. on Tuesday for his role in the 1996 defensive operation against Brothers to the Rescue. Appealing to Cuban American extremists, Trump now speculates about “taking Cuba.”
Nevertheless, Cubans continue to challenge oppression worldwide. The Palestinian doctor Murid Abukhater, who recently studied medicine in Cuba, emphasizes that they educate Palestinians for free to “save the lives of our people” from genocide. This solidarity is breathtakingly poignant since the island’s population has itself lived “under a long siege, just like us in Gaza,” Abukhater explained.
Ultimately, the blockade isolates Cuba precisely because its revolutionary idealism mocks U.S. imperial ambitions. The sanctions are the culmination of seven decades of coercion and obscene hypocrisy. An empire that spreads war is strangling a country that exports doctors. Indeed, a rich government that claims vaccines are dangerous is persecuting a poor society that not only invents vaccines, but shares them with the world. And while celebrating genocide and deportations, U.S. leaders throttle a nation for its defiant tradition of solidarity: Its refusal to tolerate the suffering of the exploited. Decades after the Cold War, Cuba remains an obsessive target of a U.S.-backed counterrevolution, as well as the storm-lashed epicenter of the struggle against U.S. imperialism.
The author would like to thank Sarah Priscilla Lee of the Learning Sciences program at Northwestern University for reviewing this article.
The most revealing line is not the threat. It’s “I am not a submissive Jew.” As if international law, human rights, or accountability are somehow acts of submission. No. What’s really being rejected here is the idea that powerful states and powerful men should ever face consequences.
Israel’s far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich appears to have found the perfect way to answer a reported ICC arrest warrant request for war crimes: announce more war crimes.
According to Common Dreams, Smotrich said the ICC prosecutor had secretly sought a warrant tied to the forced expulsion of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank. His response was not denial, restraint, or even the usual public-relations fog. It was escalation. Smotrich vowed to “respond with war” and immediately announced an order to evacuate Khan al-Ahmar, a Palestinian Bedouin village that has long stood in the path of Israel’s settlement expansion project.
That is the whole sickness laid bare. A minister accused of helping drive illegal displacement answers the accusation by promising another displacement. The alleged crime becomes the policy. The warrant becomes a campaign slogan. The occupation no longer even bothers to disguise itself as security — it declares land theft openly, wraps it in state power, and dares the world to do something about it.
Smotrich reportedly bragged about helping create more than 100 new settlements and 160 farming outposts, while the U.N. has reported tens of thousands of Palestinians forcibly displaced in the West Bank over the past year. Khan al-Ahmar is not just one village. It is part of the larger E1 project, designed to sever Palestinian territory and bury any viable future Palestinian state.
He also goes further the Bibi with Smotrich calling “for the permanent conquest of Gaza and re-establishment of Jewish settlements there that Israel abandoned in 2005, notions that Netanyahu has rejected. He has also worked to expand Jewish settlements in the West Bank, calling it part of Jews’ “biblical and eternal homeland”.”
So when Smotrich says the ICC’s move is a “declaration of war,” he is telling the truth in reverse. The war has been underway for decades — against Palestinian land, homes, movement, memory and existence. The difference now is that Israeli leaders are saying the quiet part into a microphone.
Saying “As a sovereign and independent state, we will not accept hypocritical dictates from biased bodies that consistently stand against the state of Israel, against our biblical, historical, and legal rights in our homeland, and against our right and duty to self-defence and security.”
Of course, a truly sovereign state would not require endless military, diplomatic, and financial protection from the far larger United States — its current partner in war crimes, occupation, and settler-colonial expansion. Israel speaks the language of “independence” while relying on billions in U.S. weapons, vetoes at the United Nations, and political cover from Washington to continue policies the rest of the world increasingly recognizes as violations of international law.
Smotrich added this on X.com “Issuing arrest warrants against the Prime Minister is a declaration of war. Issuing arrest warrants against the Defense Minister and against the Finance Minister is a declaration of war. And in the face of a declaration of war, we will respond with war. I am not a submissive Jew. No. The Palestinian Authority started a war, and it will receive war. From today, every economic or other target within my authority to strike — whether as Finance Minister or as a minister in the Defense Ministry — will be attacked. Not with words or gimmicks, but with actions. And I announce here and now the first target that will be attacked: immediately after my remarks, we will sign an order for the evacuation of Khan al-Ahmar. I promise all of you — this is only the beginning.”
So let’s get this straight
The International Criminal Court reportedly investigates you for the forced expulsion of Palestinians and your response is to publicly threaten more expulsions, more punishment, and more collective retaliation against an occupied population.
That is not “self-defense.” That is an open confession of how power works under occupation.
Smotrich calls arrest warrants a “declaration of war,” but for Palestinians in the West Bank the war has never stopped. Homes demolished. Villages erased. Land seized. Settlers armed and protected while entire communities are pushed off their land in full view of the world.
And now Khan al-Ahmar becomes a political trophy — a village of human beings treated like a revenge target because international law dared to speak your name.
The most revealing line is not the threat. It’s “I am not a submissive Jew.” As if international law, human rights, or accountability are somehow acts of submission. No. What’s really being rejected here is the idea that powerful states and powerful men should ever face consequences.
Imagine any other government official on Earth responding to a possible war crimes warrant by announcing another forced evacuation at a podium. The headlines would never end. The sanctions would already be in place. But when it comes to Israel’s far-right leadership, the world’s political class still treats open extremism as diplomacy.
This isn’t strength. It’s the language of impunity — the language of a government so certain it will never be stopped that it now broadcasts its intentions openly.
The ICC should make the warrants public. Governments should sanction the officials, funders and institutions enabling this machinery. Because when a state official responds to a war-crimes allegation by announcing another forced eviction, the issue is no longer whether international law is being violated. The issue is whether international law still means anything at all.
risks surrounding the project “could easily turn Sizewell C into a financial disaster” while the funding model meant its investors were “the only ones who can’t lose”.
National Audit Office says potential benefits are ‘considerable but uncertain’ while risks are ‘immediate and substantial’
The cost of the government’s £38bn nuclear plant in Suffolk is subject to “significant uncertainty” and may outweigh the benefits for UK households until at least 2064, according to the government’s spending watchdog.
The National Audit Office (NAO) has warned that although the potential benefits of the Sizewell C nuclear plant are considerable, they remain uncertain. The risks, however, are “immediate, substantial and borne by the public”.
The government claims the nuclear reactor, expected to generate the equivalent of enough low-carbon electricity to power 6m homes when it begins operations in the late 2030s, could save £2bn a year from the electricity system compared with using other low-carbon technologies.
However, for households the overall savings could be outstripped by the cost of supporting its construction until almost halfway through its 60-year operational life. The project could take even longer to “break even” if there are cost overruns or delays, the NAO warned.
“Sizewell C is a project of exceptional scale, complexity and significance for taxpayers,” said Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, the chair of the public accounts committee, which oversees the work of the NAO. “Experience from comparable nuclear projects in the UK and overseas highlights their vulnerability to delays and cost overruns.”
Sizewell C is being developed by French state nuclear company EDF as a successor project to the Hinkley Point C reactor in Somerset, the first nuclear plant to be built in the UK in a decade. It has invested £1.1bn to take a 12.5% stake in the project alongside the UK government, which has invested £14.2bn as the majority stakeholder.
British Gas’s parent company, Centrica, owns 15% of Sizewell C while the Canadian pension fund La Caisse and the investment fund Amber Infrastructure own 20% and 7.6%, respectively……………………………………………….
Households began paying for the Sizewell C project via home energy bills at the start of the year to help fund construction. This financial framework, known as a regulated asset base model, is a marked change from the Hinkley Point deal, which will begin to earn a guaranteed stream of revenues from home energy bills only once it begins generating in the early 2030s.
Critics of the regulated asset base model, including the campaign group Stop Sizewell C, have warned that any construction delays could mean that bill payers support Sizewell without receiving power for longer than expected, while the government would be on the hook for the project’s financial risk.
Stop Sizewell C said the risks surrounding the project “could easily turn Sizewell C into a financial disaster” while the funding model meant its investors were “the only ones who can’t lose”.
What began as a lawsuit over leaked tax returns is now morphing into something far bigger — and far more dangerous. In this chilling breakdown, the so-called $1.776 billion “1776 Fund” is exposed not as a normal legal settlement, but as a potentially unprecedented expansion of executive power dressed up in patriotic branding and constitutional smoke screens. Using a lawsuit that many legal experts considered weak from the start, the Trump administration has created a massive compensation fund administered by political appointees and aimed at people claiming they were victims of “government weaponization” — including figures tied to January 6.
But beneath the red-white-and-blue symbolism lies a far deeper question: can a president effectively sue his own government, settle with himself, and then redirect billions in public funds toward a political constituency without Congress? This analysis tears apart the legal architecture behind the arrangement, exposing how the lines between settlement, appropriation, and political patronage may be collapsing in real time. Whether courts intervene or not, one thing is already clear: another constitutional guardrail may have just been smashed in plain sight.
Transcript. The $1.776 Billion Question
Something happened this week that deserves a closer look — because the legal and constitutional structure behind it is unlike anything we’ve really seen before.
On Monday, the Department of Justice announced the creation of a $1.776 billion fund. The fund was created through the settlement of a lawsuit filed by Donald Trump against the Internal Revenue Service over the leak of his tax returns in 2019. Trump originally sought $10 billion in damages. Under the settlement, Trump receives no money directly. Instead, the money goes into a fund administered by a five-member commission appointed by the Attorney General — who, of course, serves under Trump.
The stated purpose of the fund is to compensate people who claim they were victims of what the administration calls “government weaponization.”
Now pause there for a second.
Because once you start looking at the structure of this arrangement the way a constitutional lawyer would, the questions become impossible to ignore.
The President of the United States sued an agency that reports to the President of the United States.
The IRS operates under the Treasury Department. The Treasury Secretary serves at the pleasure of the president. The Department of Justice defended the IRS in court. The Attorney General also serves at the pleasure of the president.
So Trump was effectively suing his own executive branch.
The judge overseeing the case noticed the problem immediately. She openly questioned how a legitimate adversarial settlement could exist when both sides ultimately answered to the same authority. In her words, the president appeared to be “negotiating with himself.”
That matters because settlements in American law are supposed to emerge from opposing interests. That adversarial structure is the entire foundation of how courts evaluate fairness and legitimacy.
But here, that structure barely existed.
And then there’s the lawsuit itself.
The leak of Trump’s tax returns happened between 2018 and 2020. The leaker, IRS contractor Charles Littlejohn, was prosecuted, pleaded guilty, and sentenced to prison. Legal experts widely questioned whether the federal government could even be held liable for damages caused by a contractor acting criminally outside his authority.
There were also major statute of limitations issues.
In other words: the case itself appeared weak.
Yet somehow it produced a $1.776 billion settlement…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Part 2 The 1776 Immunity Scheme
What began as a supposedly simple $1.776 billion “anti-weaponization” settlement is now revealing itself as something far more dangerous — an unprecedented attempt to shield Donald Trump, his family, and his sprawling business empire from future federal scrutiny. Newly released settlement documents suggest the deal goes far beyond symbolic politics or compensation funds. Buried inside the legal language is what critics are calling a procedural blueprint for “practical immunity” — an effort to use administrative settlement powers to create protections that resemble a pardon without actually invoking the constitutional pardon process.
The implications stretch well beyond Trump himself. According to the analysis, the settlement attempts to extend protections across multiple federal agencies, family members, trusts, subsidiaries, and affiliated companies — creating what amounts to a new legal pathway for politically connected networks to escape accountability through executive power and settlement mechanics. Whether courts ultimately uphold or narrow these protections remains uncertain. But the precedent may already be set: a sitting administration testing how far executive authority can stretch before the constitutional guardrails finally snap.
The $1.776 Billion Question, Part Two: What the Settlement Document Actually Says
The founders did not intend a Christian nation. The First Amendment is clear: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” The 1797 Treaty of Tripoli, negotiated under John Adams and ratified unanimously by the Senate, explicitly stated that “the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion.”
The “Rededicate 250” rally is not reclaiming a Christian past. It is inventing one – and in the process, erasing Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Indigenous traditions, and the growing number of Americans who hold no religious belief at all.
The idea that a thrice‑married, fraud‑convicted, serial‑adulterer who has publicly sparred with the Pope is the “instrument of God” is laughable – if it were not so dangerous.
“When you spread out your hands in prayer, I hide my eyes from you; even when you offer many prayers, I am not listening. Your hands are full of blood.” – Isaiah 1:15
On 17 May 2026, thousands gathered on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., for a day‑long prayer rally called “Rededicate 250.” Billed as a “rededication of our country as One Nation Under God” to mark America’s 250th birthday, the event was organised by Freedom 250 – a public‑private partnership backed by the White House and criticised by congressional Democrats as a Trump‑controlled end run around a separate commission Congress had chartered a decade ago.
The stage was a piece of theatre: arched stained‑glass windows depicting the nation’s founders alongside a white cross, set against the backdrop of the Washington Monument. Worship music blared. Prominent Republican officials appeared – in person or via video – including Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, House Speaker Mike Johnson, and Vice President JD Vance. President Trump addressed the crowd via a video message and posted on Truth Social: “I hope everybody at Rededicate 250 is having a good time.”
It was, by any measure, a spectacle. But it was not a revival. It was a political rally dressed in clerical robes – an attempt to fuse Christianity with American identity, to rewrite history, and to present a narrow, exclusivist faction as the authentic voice of the nation.
The Messiah has landed – not.
I. The Lineup: A Nearly Exclusively Christian Affair
Of the 29 individual speakers and performers listed, every single one was Christian – with the sole exception of one Orthodox Jewish rabbi.
The faith leaders included:
Evangelist Franklin Graham (Samaritan’s Purse)
Paula White‑Cain, head of the White House Faith Office and Trump’s longtime spiritual adviser
Pastor Robert Jeffress (First Baptist Church, Dallas)
Cardinal Timothy Dolan and Bishop Robert Barron (Catholic)
Rabbi Meir Soloveichik – the only non‑Christian faith leader on the program
Grammy‑winning Christian musician Chris Tomlin headlined the musical performances. Actor Jonathan Roumie, who plays Jesus in The Chosen, was also a speaker.
The message was unmistakable: this was not an interfaith gathering. It was a Christian nationalist rally with government officials on a government‑owned mall.
II. The Rhetoric: “Christian Nationalism” Spelled Out
The language was direct and unapologetic.
Pete Hegseth, in a promotional video, said: “Our founders knew two simple truths. Our rights don’t come from government; they come from God. And a nation is only as strong as its faith.”
Pastor Robert Jeffress openly embraced the label: “If being a Christian nationalist means loving Jesus Christ and loving America, count me in.”
Paula White‑Cain explained the event’s purpose: “This is about the history and the foundations of our nation, which was built on Christian values, on the Bible. This is really truly rededicating the country to God.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson, who attended in person, told Fox News: “This is an appropriate thing for us to do on the 250th anniversary, and the people who are upset about it… want to erase the history of America and pretend as if we’re not a nation that was dedicated originally to God.”
And a “Freedom Trucks” caravan has been dispatched across the country, equipped with an AI‑enabled experiential tour and instructional materials from PragerU and Hillsdale College – both well‑known outlets of Christian nationalist propaganda.
This is not a revival. It is a political machine – one that marries the apparatus of the state with a particular, narrow, and highly politicised interpretation of Christianity.
III. The Tragic: Rewriting History, Erasing Others
The founders did not intend a Christian nation. The First Amendment is clear: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” The 1797 Treaty of Tripoli, negotiated under John Adams and ratified unanimously by the Senate, explicitly stated that “the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion.”
The men who wrote those words were not atheists. Many were Deists, Christians, or something in between. But they were united in their fear of state‑imposed religion. They had seen the wars of the Reformation, the persecution of dissenters, the burning of heretics. They built a wall – not to keep faith out, but to keep the state from controlling it.
The “Rededicate 250” rally is not reclaiming a Christian past. It is inventing one – and in the process, erasing Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Indigenous traditions, and the growing number of Americans who hold no religious belief at all.
The Constitution does not belong to the evangelicals. The National Mall is not a cathedral. And the United States is not, and has never been, a Christian nation.
IV. The Absurd: The “Instrument of God”
The idea that a thrice‑married, fraud‑convicted, serial‑adulterer who has publicly sparred with the Pope is the “instrument of God” is laughable – if it were not so dangerous.
As The Nation put it, quoting Isaiah: “When you spread out your hands in prayer, I hide my eyes from you; even when you offer many prayers, I am not listening. Your hands are full of blood.”
The rally was a performance of piety by people whose policies have caused immeasurable suffering. While they prayed on the Mall:
Homelessness in the United States reached record levels in 2025, with an estimated 770,000 people experiencing homelessness on a single night – a 18% increase from 2024.
Healthcare remains unaffordable for millions. Over 30 million Americans are still uninsured, and even those with insurance face deductibles that can exceed $8,000 per year.
Education is under assault. Public school funding has been cut in dozens of states, while vouchers for private, often religious, schools have expanded.
War continues. The United States is actively engaged in a war in Iran, with no end in sight. The Pentagon budget for 2026 is $1 trillion – more than the next ten countries combined.
They prayed for the nation while the nation bled. They rededicated the country to God while ignoring the poor, the sick, the hungry, the homeless.
This is not Christianity. This is idolatry – of a flag, of a man, of a polit
This is not Christianity. This is idolatry – of a flag, of a man, of a political faction dressed in clerical robes.
V. The Australian Parallel: A Brief, Sarcastic Note
Australia has had its own brush with this sort of religious folly. Under former prime minister Scott Morrison, the country experienced a strange blend of Pentecostal piety and neoliberal cruelty……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
VII. What Americans Actually Think
The spectacle is not popular. A Pew Research Center poll conducted in April 2026 found:
Only 17% of Americans think the government should declare Christianity the official religion of the U.S. (up slightly from 13% in 2024).
31% view Christian nationalism unfavorably; only 10% view it favorably..
52% of U.S. adults think “conservative Christians have gone too far in trying to push their religious values in the government and public schools.”
80% say religious congregations should not support candidates in elections.
Two‑thirds say churches should keep out of political matters.
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. VIII. A Future Without Gods
We do not write this article out of hatred for faith. Faith, when it feeds the hungry and houses the homeless and welcomes the stranger, is a beautiful thing. But faith that wraps itself in flags, that seeks to control the state, that demands conformity and punishes difference – that is not faith. That is idolatry.
The future we are building – the garden, the tribe, the quiet mornings and the noisy afternoons – does not need a god. It does not need a prayer rally. It needs kindness. It needs presence. It needs the willingness to listen, to help, to hold each other.
The Messiah has not landed. The Messiah is not coming. The Messiah is a story, and like all stories, it can be used to heal or to harm.
We choose to heal. We choose to tend the garden. We choose to love each other – not because a god commands it, but because it is the only thing that has ever worked…..https://theaimn.net/the-messiah-has-landed-not/
Even today’s accelerated pace strains decades-old launch facilities.
Thomas Novelly, Defense One, May 7, 2026
CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida—The guardians manning screens in the mission-ops center here oversaw the launch of five types of rockets in April, a new record that involved NASA’s Artemis II, the first reused New Glenn booster, and a Falcon 9 lofting the final GPS III satellite. But tomorrow’s Space Force may have no time to mark even epochal missions. Within a decade, service leaders say, Cape Canaveral Space Force Station will be launching hundreds of rockets a year.
To facilitate the Pentagon’s fast-growing demand for orbital capability, the Space Force is looking for more launch sites, more money, more troops, and more AI.
“In 2025, the Space Force saw a drastic increase in mission requirements across space access, global mission operations, and space control. This trend shows no signs of slowing,” Gen. Chance Saltzman, the Space Force’s top uniformed leader, told House lawmakers last week. “The Space Force we have today is not the Space Force we will need in the future.”
Nestled on a thin stretch of land just miles from nature preserves and cruise-ship ports, the historic Cape Canaveral facility launched 36 rockets in 2021, its first year as a Space Force facility. Last year, it sent 110 into the heavens, while its California counterpart, Vandenberg Space Force Base, launched another 65.
This year, Space Force leaders intend to launch more than 200 rockets from their two main launch sites. And by 2036, they project, the pair will launch as many as 3,000 annually, according to a service document released last month.
That’s going to take more launchpads……………………..
even as the Space Force looks to spread its launches around, Lauderdale said, it also needs to expand and improve its two main bases and “pivot to invest in ways we never did before.”
Pushing policy
The Space Force’s top brass has been making that pitch as well.
Last month at the Space Symposium in Colorado, Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman unveiled “Objective Force 2040,” an ambitious vision with a section on expanding the service’s launch capabilities.
“As the space domain becomes increasingly linked both to national security and to economic
prosperity, the importance of space access grows commensurately,” the document said. “This is a significant challenge because the Space Force has supported exponential growth in launch cadence over the past few years using the same physical infrastructure first built decades ago. The future operating environment will only exacerbate this strain, with booming government and commercial demand as well as new mission requirements for responsive and scalable space access.”
The document noted that the service will “expand and certify state, commercial, and private launch sites to address routine launches, increase surge capacity, and provide geographic diversity,” but also noted some spaceports won’t be fully suitable for some missions.
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. People problems
Increasing the number of launches will require more than money. Top Space Force officers have recently called for doubling the service’s end-strength over the next decade.
But even that won’t be enough, they say. Guardians will need to lean on AI to help.
Any aliens who have been monitoring radio and television transmissions streaming outwards into space from Planet Earth over the past few decades will likely be intrigued, bemused or simply horrified at humanity’s headlong drive towards climate catastrophe. No matter the urgent warnings from climate scientists, the power of billionaires, financial speculators and corporations maintains a death-like grip on governments around the world. Amid the occasional flurry of big business greenwashing and government rhetoric about ‘climate protection’ and ‘eco-friendly’ initiatives, billions of people are being held hostage by the forces that are dragging everyone to the edge of the climate abyss.
New warnings about climate change do, of course, occasionally appear in the press. But rarely, if ever, are there prominent and sustained front-page headlines and news-leading television coverage. Rarer still are impassioned editorials, high-profile presenters and commentators demanding the substantive, radical changes that are needed to avoid the most damaging predicted impacts of business as usual.
Earlier this month, the Royal Albert Hall hosted a 100th birthday party for naturalist David Attenborough, Britain’s most beloved broadcaster. Celebrities showered him with love and praise: Leonardo DiCaprio, Judi Dench, Olivia Colman, Emily Eavis, Chris Martin, Ben Fogle, Raye, Kate Winslet. And Paddington Bear. Attenborough sat in the royal box, alongside Prince William. King Charles delivered a handwritten message from Balmoral Castle via a ‘cavalcade of creature couriers’, including eagles, a red squirrel, a hedgehog, otters, ducks, a fox and deer, thanks to the wonders of CGI. All very nice; all very Disneyfied.
For many years now, Attenborough has been warning about the dangers of mass consumption, pollution, worldwide species loss and global warming. These subjects are clearly of great concern to him, although he started ringing the alarm bell very late.
But the evening gave a wide berth to such uncomfortable topics. ‘Life on Earth’? The climate crisis must be happening on a different planet entirely.
As Jonathan Liew, a Guardian sports journalist and columnist, pointed out:
‘This is, of course, the Attenborough with which our public discourse is most comfortable: depoliticised, universally adored, a man-sized Paddington Bear fit only for our veneration. Who teaches us about tree frogs and seal cubs and stick insects and asks for nothing in return.’
Of course, what Liew called ‘public discourse’ is the tightly constrained media space permitted by state and corporate power.
Liew continued:
‘And perhaps there are more difficult questions to negotiate here: the extent to which he has been a force for the meaningful and revolutionary change he seeks, and the extent to which his broad, inoffensive appeal has been more hindrance than help, allowing the powerful to feign concern for the planet while shirking the tough and bloody compromises required to secure it.’
To his credit, Attenborough has been eloquent and impassioned in recent years about the climate crisis. He addressed the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow in 2021, saying that:
‘We are already in trouble. The stability we all depend on is breaking. This story is one of inequality, as well as instability. Today, those who’ve done the least to cause this problem, are being the hardest hit. Ultimately, all of us will feel the impact, some of which are now unavoidable.’
But, even five years on, as the climate crisis worsens, the topic was deemed unmentionable by the organisers of Attenborough’s 100th birthday party.
‘Hothouse Earth’ And Collapsing Currents
In February, a new scientific report warned that runaway global warming is closer than had previously been thought. We are heading for the ‘point of no return’ after which we would be locked into a hellish ‘hothouse Earth’. Climate ‘tipping points’ would be triggered, producing rapid heating, which would lead to a domino effect of yet more tipping points and feedback loops. These include the melting of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, drastic dieback of the Amazon rainforest and the weakening, and possible shutdown, of the Atlantic ocean conveyor belt known as the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC).The scientists stated that:
‘Earth’s climate is now departing from the stable conditions that supported human civilization for millennia.’
The world has already experienced a global average temperature rise of over 1.3C since pre-industrial times and is likely to surpass the Paris Agreement ‘limit’ of long-term average heating of 1.5C in the next few years. Current government and business policies are pushing us towards 2-3C of global warming, if not more, by 2100.
But, if trigger points are breached and runaway global warming occurs, we are talking about much higher temperature rises, perhaps 10C or more. This would mean almost unimaginable catastrophic effects on the climate system, global agriculture and societal infrastructure; not to mention the extinction of humans. Scientists have warned that even a rise of 3-4C means that ‘the economy and society will cease to function as we know it’.
Bill McGuire, Professor Emeritus of Geophysical and Climate Hazards at University College London, put things in grim perspective via X:
‘We are already locked-in to a return to Pliocene [around 2.6 to 5.3 million years ago] conditions (3C hotter and (eventually) ~ 20m sea-level rise)
‘Keep going as we are, and hotter Miocene [5.3 to 23 million years ago] conditions will result
‘Beyond this a return to early Eocene [around 48 to 56 million years ago] hothouse beckons – and potential oblivion’
During the Eocene, the global average temperature was well over 10C higher than present. Oblivion would hit humanity long before such a temperature rise occurred.
Earlier this month, yet another deeply disturbing scientific studyrevealed that the risk of AMOC reaching a tipping point by 2100, after which its shutdown would be inevitable, is as high as 50 per cent. Previously, this was considered ‘a low likelihood event’ of around five per cent. But even this should be held in perspective. How many of us would board a plane knowing that there was a five per cent chance that it would crash?
AMOC, of which the Gulf Stream is the best-known component, is a vital carrier of warm water from the tropics to high latitudes in the North Atlantic, returning cold water southwards. It is a primary source of heat for western and northern Europe, leading to the temperate climate here. AMOC connects with other ocean current systems in a global network that transports heat, water, nutrients and carbon around the planet. Any disturbance to AMOC, far less its collapse, would have devastating global consequences for climate, agriculture, infrastructure and even for the habitability of Earth.
Professor Stefan Rahmstorf of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, who has studied AMOC for 35 years, said:
‘This is an important and very concerning result. It shows that the “pessimistic” models, which show a strong weakening of the AMOC by 2100, are, unfortunately, the realistic ones, in that they agree better with observational data.’
He added:
‘I now am increasingly worried that we may well pass that AMOC shutdown tipping point, where it becomes inevitable, in the middle of this century, which is quite close.’
To emphasise: the tipping point may be much earlier than 2100; it could happen by 2050, or even sooner. The vital point here is that scientists increasingly agree that the ‘safe window’ to stabilise the current by halting emissions is closing far faster than previously thought. And the public likely does not even realise it.
Rahmstorf had previously said that a collapse must be avoided ‘at all costs’. Now he added:
‘I argued this when we thought the chance of an AMOC shutdown was maybe 5%, and even then we were saying that risk is too high, given the massive impacts. Now it looks like it’s more than 50%. The most dramatic and drastic climate changes we see in the last 100,000 years of Earth history have been when the AMOC switched to a different state.’
In an English-language video for the German DW news channel, Rahmstorf explained the importance of AMOC for European and global climate, and the significance of the latest alarming results. He warned that we should expect more climate extremes in heat, cold, drought, floods and storms.
If and when the AMOC collapses, the impact on agriculture in the northern hemisphere will be devastating. The drop in harvest yields for key crops could be as high as 50 per cent. Mass starvation is a very real possibility.
Climate Shocks
……………………………………………………………………………………………………. The fact that deeply disturbing findings about a likely collapse of a vital component of the climate system were not given wider, extensive and sustained coverage is a devastating indictment of ‘mainstream’ journalism.
……………………….Scientists are warning, as loudly as they possibly can, that the present economic system of rampant capitalism is destroying the very life-support systems that made Planet Earth a habitable environment for humans to evolve and flourish.
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. Look at the daily, hour-by-hour obsessing over the endless maneuvering within the Labour government; every single statement from ministers and their allies scrutinised by the Westminster bubble of political correspondents.
Imagine that, instead of focusing on short-term melodramas, leading news organisations rigorously probed politicians, day in and day out, about the climate crisis.
Imagine that news editors and journalists relentlessly challenged the government about current policies that are bringing us closer to the brink of climate chaos.
Imagine that reporters investigated and exposed the deep reluctance and state-corporate obstacles, including the establishment media, that are blocking alternatives to climate Armageddon.
New research finds correlation between disease and living close to a facility
HARVARD GRIFFIN GSAS NEWS, By Kaitlyn Hung, May 19, 2026
uclear power accounts for 18 to 20 percent of electricity generated in the United States. In some places, the share is much greater—over half the energy generated in Illinois, for instance, the country’s sixth-largest state. As demand rises sharply, particularly from AI data centers, the federal government has increased funding, loans, and tax incentives in an effort to increase nuclear capacity, extend operations of existing reactors, and restart retired ones.
Although public support for nuclear energy has surged in recent years, opposition remains strong. The most common reason? Safety concerns. And they may be valid, according to population health scientist Yazan Alwadi, who received his PhD from the Harvard Kenneth C. Griffin Graduate School of Arts and Sciences in February 2026, months after receiving a master’s degree in biostatistics in November 2025. Now a post-doctoral researcher at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Alwadi’s work uncovers a link between cancer and proximity to nuclear power plants.
Too Close for Comfort?
In the lab of Petros Koutrakis, Akira Yamaguchi Professor of Environmental Health and Human Habitation at the T.H. Chan School, Alwadi investigated whether living close to nuclear facilities impacts a population’s incidence of developing or dying from cancer. The work was motivated by a call from the Department of Public Health in Plymouth County, Massachusetts. Community members were concerned about rising cancer cases, and some wondered whether Plymouth’s Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station, decommissioned in 2019, might have contributed to the uptick.
“We get emails from families, saying that big percentages of people they know get cancer. But of course, these are anecdotal, so it needs hard science and statistical evidence to see if that actually happens or not,” Alwadi says.
As an environmental epidemiologist, Alwadi decided to investigate. “We wanted to know, are we going to find an association between the proximity to plants and cancer or not?” Alwadi says. Regardless of the outcome, he would share his findings.
Alwadi conducted a longitudinal ecological study, comparing Massachusetts zip codes’ proximity to the seven nuclear facilities in the vicinity of the state with that zip codes’ cancer incidence over time (provided by the state’s cancer registry). He used proximity as a proxy for exposure because it encompasses multiple routes of dispersal, like air and water. “We know that distance is a proxy for most [exposure routes]. It’s not perfect for any one of them, but a proxy for most,” Alwadi says.
Alwadi discovered a strong association between cancer incidence and proximity to plants for populations over 55 years old living within 5 km of a nuclear power plant. For example, women ages 65-74 living two km away from a nuclear power plant had 2-times higher relative risk of cancer, and men in this age group had 1.75-times higher risk.
To determine whether these results were more broadly generalizable to the United States, Alwadi conducted a similar study comparing nuclear power plant proximity to county-level data on cancer mortality from the US Centers for Disease Control. “We felt that doing [the analysis] nationally would give us enough statistical power to depict effects if they truly exist,” says Alwadi. He discovered that the association he observed in Massachusetts held at the national level, too. “We observe the same association, similar values, same decline of risks with distance across different aggregations, zip codes versus counties . . . for cancers of interest.”
Koutrakis says that his advisee’s research is notable because it is the first series of studies to systematically demonstrate associations between residential proximity to nuclear power plants and cancer outcomes across multiple settings using large, population-based datasets. “This work fills a critical gap in the literature by providing large-scale, systematic evidence on a question that has remained unresolved for decades.” …………………………………………….
Importantly, while the study shows a robust association between nuclear plant proximity and cancer, the study’s design cannot determine whether that relationship is causal. “Although these are ecological designs that do not establish causality and are very hard to infer causality from their evidence, the systematic results and the consistency of the findings are exactly what you’d expect to find if a true underlying causal effect existed,” says Alwadi. By systematically demonstrating an association, Alwadi’s discovery provides the impetus for more detailed research to understand the nature of the link between nuclear power plants and cancer. ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
………………………………………………… Digging Deeper
Since graduation, Alwadi has continued his work in the Koutrakis lab as a postdoctoral fellow. Today, he tracks the relationship between nuclear facility proximity and cancer within individuals, rather than populations. He says this cohort analysis will provide stronger evidence for the nature of the association by reducing bias and clarifying the temporality of nuclear facility exposure to cancer development.
Ultimately, Alwadi hopes to lead a lab of his own in environmental epidemiology and public health. He’s got a plethora of questions he wants to tackle, so to him, it’s just a matter of time and resources to get the work done. “We see a signal, we keep digging,” he says. https://gsas.harvard.edu/news/does-proximity-nuclear-power-plants-increase-cancer-risk
The financing of Sizewell C has been scrutinised by the National Audit Office (NAO), which found it “places more risks on taxpayers and consumers than other electricity projects” and that benefits to consumers will only outweigh costs after 2060.
In July 2022, the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) announced it had secured the final investment decision (FID) for the project on the Suffolk coast, which is expected to produce 3.2GW of electricity.
Achieving the FID meant that investors and the government had agreed the terms on which investment would be put into the project, how returns on investment would work, and what this meant for consumers.
The government confirmed that the project would cost “around £38bn”, nearly double the original £20bn estimate stated by EDF in 2020.
Today’s [20 May] NAO report, simply titled Sizewell C, assessed “the implications of the deal for taxpayers, electricity consumers, and investors, and provides a baseline against which progress can be measured.”
A statement from the NAO, announcing the report, said DESNZ’s “delivery model for Sizewell C places more risks on taxpayers and consumers than other electricity projects, but the Department believes this model has reduced finance costs and will allow the project to be delivered on time and to budget.”
It added that the “novel approach has costs and relies on big assumptions
Once construction at the plant has been completed, the government’s modelling “predicts that the net benefits for consumers could be up to £18bn, primarily delivered through energy bill savings and reduced electricity costs compared to other ways of reaching net zero,” the NAO said.
“However, as a large infrastructure project, DESNZ’s modelling of these benefits shows they will not outweigh the costs to consumers until after 2060.”
The report also assessed the claims by Sizewell C that it will be easier to build because it is largely copying the designs of Hinkley Point C.
The NAO pointed out that Hinkley Point C “is currently expected to cost double its initial projected cost, with a seven-year delay”, and that this “has sparked concerns that these problems may be mirrored in Sizewell C”.
The spending watchdog said DESNZ hoped to avoid repetition of mistakes by “applying the lessons and final designs from Hinkley Point C”, and, as such, “Sizewell C’s plans are already at a much more advanced stage than Hinkley’s were at the equivalent point”.
NAO head Gareth Davies said: “Sizewell C forms a significant part of the government’s plan for a secure and affordable clean energy supply. There has been a concerted attempt to learn from the problems of previous nuclear power construction projects and other large infrastructure schemes.
“This has resulted in a novel financing structure and DESNZ will need to monitor the risks to taxpayers and billpayers closely.”
Public Accounts Committee chair Geoffrey Clifton-Brown commented on the report, raising concerns about the “substantial” risks of Sizewell C, which are being borne by the public.
“Sizewell C is a project of exceptional scale, complexity and significance for taxpayers. Costs are estimated to be £38.2bn, largely financed by government”, he said.
“While the potential benefits are considerable, they remain uncertain; by contrast, the risks are immediate, substantial and borne by the public. Consumers are already contributing through their electricity bills, and the government has assumed most of the project’s financial risk.”
He added: “Experience from comparable nuclear projects in the UK and overseas highlights their vulnerability to delays and cost overruns.
“Although the government has introduced a new delivery and financing model to mitigate these risks, it must now ensure it works in practice through close monitoring, greater transparency to Parliament, and by securing value for money from the significant public and private investment.”
Reaction to the report..…………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
University of Greenwich emeritus professor of energy policy Steve Thomas gave NCE his reaction to the NAO report, asking, “Is this the best NAO can do after a year of effort?”
He pointed to a line from the NAO press release about the report, which said: “Sharing risk between the investors and taxpayers and consumers appears to have reduced the cost of financing Sizewell C, but the rewards for investors still appear high.”
He said the statement that financing costs had been reduced was “rubbish on two grounds”.
“First, the finance costs are being paid by consumers in the construction period under the RAB (Regulated Asset Base) surcharge. Getting someone else to pay does not reduce them, it just shifts them.
“Second, the finance is being provided by the government National Wealth Fund and the interest rate will be whatever the government tells it to charge, so if finance charges are lower because the interest rate is reduced, that is because the government has imposed the interest rate.”
The press release also said: “Investor financial returns will cost consumers over £4bn but will be justified if they help the project to cut construction costs and speed up delivery times.” Thomas described this as “unclear”.
He said: “If it refers to the 4.8% of the 10.8% real rate of return investors will be given, that will be a gift from consumers to investors, it is an underestimate. Centrica says that of its £3bn equity contribution, only £1.3bn will come from itself, the rest will come from this 4.8% which investors are required to use as equity contribution.
“Centrica euphemistically describes this as ‘RAB Growth’.”
The NAO statement adds that DESNZ assumes “the involvement of private investors is justified, as their expertise will reduce construction costs and speed up delivery.”
In response, University of Greenwich academic Thomas asks: “What expertise does La Caisse, Centrica, NLF have on building nuclear projects? EDF has expertise but that didn’t stop Hinkley, Flamanville, and even Taishan going horribly wrong.”
He also questions the government’s use of £38.2bn as a baseline cost for Sizewell C, describing it as “wrong”, because the lower regulatory threshold cost is £40.5bn, which the government is using as its central estimate.
“£38.2bn is clearly the lower end of the range. A very basic element of project appraisal is to use central estimates, not bottom of the range ones,” he added.
A Stop Sizewell C spokesperson told NCE that the campaign group shares a lot of the NAO’s concerns, and asked for the government to commit to a public, “realistic” completion date for the project.
“The NAO’s report confirms what we already suspected – that ‘big assumptions’ and the ‘significant uncertainty’ of factors underpinning DESNZ’s claimed benefits could easily turn Sizewell C into a financial disaster, with its investors – thanks to RAB – being the only ones who can’t lose,” the spokesperson said.
“As the NAO confirms, households are relying on those investors to produce significant savings and reduce Sizewell C’s construction time to justify the nuclear tax on our energy bills, but we share the NAO’s questions about whether investors can or have the incentives to do this.”
They added: “We had asked the NAO to look at Sizewell C before it reached Final Investment Decision and are dismayed it did not do so, but at least some critical information withheld by the government is now in the public domain.
“We agree with the NAO that DESNZ must provide transparency of forecast cost and schedule for Sizewell C. We call for the government’s promised Sizewell C Strategy and Delivery plan, containing a public, realistic completion date, to be laid before parliament immediately.”
TASC spokesperson Chris Wilson told NCE: “The NAO report regarding the Sizewell C project confirms that this government’s ideological pursuit of nuclear power is based on hope and belief rather than objective judgement.
“Ignoring all the warnings and project risks, the usual optimism bias regularly expounded by the nuclear industry is there in spades, at the same time negative assumptions are made about the cost of renewables
“That DESNZ went ahead with the Sizewell C investment decision on the basis that consumers would not benefit until 2064 beggars belief.
“The NAO report highlights a stark imbalance in DESNZ’s Sizewell C funding model: the investors are shielded from risk while reaping massive profits, leaving the public purse and electricity consumers to shoulder an unfair and excessive financial burden.”
Wilson added: “A major concern highlighted by the NAO is the lack of incentive for EDF to complete Sizewell C on time and budget – they will get paid to develop and supply major components while receiving a guaranteed return on their investment.
“EDF have been involved in every previous EPR reactor project and all of them have gone woefully over time and budget – they now have the added distraction and priority of building the new EPR2 reactor programme in France. What could possibly go wrong?”
Attack marks first time military action has forced a fully operating nuclear power plant to rely on backup generators
Dan Sabbagh Defence and security editor, Guardian 20 May 26
A drone strike that cut off external power to a nuclear reactor in the United Arab Emirates this week has revived concerns over the safety of nuclear plants during wartime.
Reactor no 3 at the Barakah nuclear plant lost vital off-site power for about 24 hours after the attack on Sunday, forcing it to rely on emergency diesel generators.
The UAE’s defence ministry said on Tuesday that three drones targeting the plant had originated from Iraqi territory, suggesting a pro-Iranian proxy group was most likely to have been behind the strike.
Two were intercepted, but one got through, causing a fire near a four-reactor plant that supplies the UAE with a quarter of its electricity.
The UAE said the strike hit an electrical generator “outside the inner perimeter”, raising fears it could have hit the switch yard which lies just beyond a wall around the site’s reactors.
It is the first time a fully operating nuclear power plant has had to rely on backup generators as a result of a military attack, at a time when reactors in Ukraine and Iran are also threatened by war.
The UAE’s nuclear safety regulator said the attack did not cause any radioactive material to be released, though it was notable that it had not proved possible to completely defend a critical site from drones.
Experts told the Guardian there should have been sufficient power available from the other three reactors on-site, but this does not seem to have immediately been the case, possibly because of damage to the switch yard, which routes electricity in and out.
On Monday, the International Atomic Energy Agency said it had been told by the UAE that off-site power to unit No 3 had been restored “earlier today”, meaning that “the reactor no longer needs emergency diesel generators for power”.
Rafael Grossi, the head of the IAEA nuclear watchdog, said nuclear sites and other installations important for nuclear safety must never be targeted by military activity……………………………………..
Though the Geneva conventions, which set out laws of warfare, insist that civilian objects, including nuclear plants, “are protected against attack”, they accept they can be attacked “for such time as they are military objectives” – a loophole that aggressor states have interpreted widely……………………………
The police force tasked with stopping terrorist attacks at UK nuclear sites dealt with dozens of internal security breaches last year – including a classified laptop going missing, contractors working without proper background checks, and armed officers losing ID cards.
Three breaches involved classified material being lost or stolen outside the Civil Nuclear Constabulary’s (CNC) premises – including two police warrant cards, used to identify officers, which were supposed to arrive via courier.
A further nine cases involved the loss of identity passes, including those belonging to armed officers, and two contractors were found to be working without “appropriate” vetting.
Other breaches included confidential material being left inside body armour sent for destruction, a staff member accessing information they were no longer authorised to see, and compromised personal data. There were 35 breaches in total, the CNC reported.
The CNC is the armed police force that protects civilian nuclear facilities across the UK, including Torness and Dounreay in Scotland. The force also escorts nuclear material when it is being transported and guards other “critical national infrastructure” such as gas terminals.
Our findings come after we submitted a freedom of information request to the force. You can read full details of the breaches here.
Opponents of nuclear energy said the UK “cannot afford to be sloppy when it comes to nuclear security” and claimed “very little appears to have been done” to tackle breaches in recent years.
The CNC described the security incidents last year as “minor” and a spokesperson told The Ferret the force “takes action on all incidents and seeks to learn lessons” from them.
National Audit Office report says consumers will pay higher amount for energy from Suffolk project compared to its Somerset counterpart. Electricity from the Sizewell C nuclear project is set to be more expensive than power from Hinkley Point, even though the Suffolk plant is cheaper to build, Britain’s public spending watchdog has said.
Sizewell C is on course to cost about 22 per cent less than Hinkley Point C, which is being built in Somerset. But the latter has agreed to sell its electricity at a fixed price, limiting the cost to end users because developer EDF has to absorb any cost overruns.
A National Audit Office report published on Wednesday estimates that if construction costs are in line with forecasts of £38bn-£48bn, electricity from Sizewell C will cost between £131-£155 per megawatt hour in 2024-2025 prices. This compares to £129 per MWh for electricity from Hinkley Point C.
The government and a consortium of developers had regularly highlighted that Sizewell C would be cheaper to build than Hinkley amid concerns about the cost of the project. But the NAO report says: “Although Sizewell C should cost less to build than Hinkley Point C, it is likely that consumers will pay more for energy . . . because the price of Hinkley’s electricity was set before its cost over-ran (which has been borne by EDF), and the cost of borrowing has also increased since then.”
While comedians laughed at his rallies, millions of Americans saw something entirely different. They saw somebody attacking a political establishment they already despised.
Trump discovered scandal itself could become a weapon. Every controversy kept him at the centre of public attention
In 2015 and 2016, much of the world treated Donald Trump like a political novelty act.
He was loud, theatrical, unpredictable, and impossible to ignore. Commentators laughed at the rallies. Late-night comedians built entire careers around his speeches. Political experts dismissed his presidential campaign as a publicity stunt that would eventually collapse under the weight of its own absurdity.
The assumption shared by many journalists, academics, and political professionals was simple: America would never elect him.
Then America did.
What followed was one of the most extraordinary political transformations in modern democratic history. A man once regarded as a sideshow became the central figure in American politics. More remarkably, he reshaped the Republican Party, dominated the global news cycle for nearly a decade, survived scandals that would have destroyed conventional politicians, lost an election, refused to accept the result, returned to power, and began a second presidency stronger and more experienced than the first.
The joke had become reality.
And now, nobody is laughing.
That shift reveals something deeper than the story of one man. It exposes how badly political institutions, media organisations, and intellectual elites misunderstood both Trump and the conditions that made him possible.
In the beginning, ridicule was seen as sufficient. Trump was mocked endlessly for his speaking style, his exaggerations, his vanity, his midnight meltdowns on Twitter and his disregard for political norms. Satire became the preferred language of opposition because satire is easy when a figure appears ridiculous.
But ridicule can become dangerous when it replaces analysis.
Large sections of the media spent years treating Trump as entertainment rather than understanding him as a symptom of growing political anger, institutional distrust, economic frustration, and cultural division inside the United States. While comedians laughed at his rallies, millions of Americans saw something entirely different. They saw somebody attacking a political establishment they already despised.
Trump understood something many professional politicians did not: people who feel ignored do not necessarily want polished leadership. Sometimes they want disruption. Sometimes they want revenge against systems they believe abandoned them.
His critics often focused on his behaviour while his supporters focused on what his behaviour represented.
That distinction changed American politics.
By the time Trump entered his second presidency, the atmosphere surrounding him had fundamentally altered. The humour remained, but the comfort had disappeared. Even opponents who once treated him as a temporary political accident now understood that Trumpism was not a passing phase. It had become a movement with enormous influence over American institutions, courts, media ecosystems, and foreign policy.
There is also a psychological shift that occurs when a political figure survives everything thrown at them.
Every investigation, scandal, indictment, controversy, and prediction of political death that failed to remove Trump strengthened the perception among supporters that he was being targeted by a hostile establishment. At the same time, every failed prediction weakened public trust in the experts making those predictions.
Eventually, mockery stopped looking powerful.
It started looking ineffective.
History contains many examples of societies underestimating disruptive political figures because they appeared too strange, too vulgar, or too unconventional to succeed. Democracies often assume their institutions are strong enough to absorb any personality. Sometimes they are. Sometimes they are not.
The danger is rarely the joke itself.
The danger is failing to notice when the audience stops laughing.
Trump’s rise also revealed the growing collapse of shared reality in modern democracies. Americans no longer consume the same information, trust the same institutions, or even agree on basic facts. In that environment, outrage becomes fuel, controversy becomes visibility, and constant attention becomes political power.
Trump mastered that environment better than any modern politician.
Traditional politicians speak carefully because they fear scandal. Trump discovered scandal itself could become a weapon. Every controversy kept him at the centre of public attention. Every attack reinforced his image as a political outsider fighting entrenched power.
His opponents often helped build the mythology they hoped to destroy.
That does not mean Trump is invincible, nor does it mean his critics were entirely wrong. It means modern politics no longer behaves according to old assumptions. The rules changed while much of the political class kept pretending they had not.
And perhaps that is the real lesson.
The story of Donald Trump is not merely the story of one man rising to power. It is the story of institutional complacency, media failure, public anger, and a society increasingly unable to distinguish politics from spectacle.
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