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Israel and US Scorn ICJ Ruling Against Starving Civilians as Method of Warfare

The World Court says Israel has a duty as the occupying power to cooperate with UN relief efforts, not impede them.

By Marjorie Cohn , Truthout. October 24, 2025

World Court) told Israel what seems obvious to any reasonable person — that it cannot starve civilians as a method of warfare. But Israel does not act in accordance with international law, as evidenced by its two-year campaign of genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza, during which it has killed over 68,000 Gazans (more likely 680,000, UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese said on September 15).

In its 71-page advisory opinion, issued on October 22, the ICJ reiterated that Israel is illegally occupying the Gaza Strip. The court unanimously held that as the occupying power, Israel has obligations under international humanitarian law to ensure that the population of the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including Gaza, has essential supplies of everyday life, including water, food, shelter, clothing, bedding, and fuel, as well as medical equipment and services. The court also held that Israel must respect and protect all medical and relief personnel and facilities.

The ICJ ruled 10-1 in its advisory opinion that Israel has an obligation to facilitate humanitarian relief by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) and other international organizations and third states, and must refrain from impeding that relief.

And the court unanimously held that Israel must respect the prohibition on deportation and forcible transfer in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, and the right of the Palestinian prisoners held in Israel to be visited by the International Committee of the Red Cross. The court noted that transfer is forcible not just when it is achieved by physical force, but also when people have no choice but to leave because the occupying power has inflicted conditions of life that are intolerable.

The ICJ rejected Israel’s bogus defense that its national security trumped its obligations under international humanitarian law, saying that the protection of security interests is not a “free-standing exception” allowing a state to violate its international humanitarian law obligations………………………………………………………………………….

Impacts of ICJ Advisory Opinions

Although advisory opinions of the ICJ are nonbinding, they carry great moral, political, and diplomatic weight with third states. On July 19, 2024, the ICJ held that Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory is illegal and all states have an obligation not to recognize as legal the situation arising from the unlawful presence of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, and not to render aid or assistance in maintaining that situation. As a result of that ruling (and domestic pressure), several states have now recognized Palestine as an independent state…………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

The Israeli Foreign Ministry said that it “categorically rejects” the ICJ’s October 22 advisory opinion, stating that the court ignored the “extensive evidence” Israel provided of what it claimed was UNRWA’s “infiltration” by Hamas and UNRWA’s complicity in terrorist activities. “This is yet another political attempt to impose political measures against Israel under the guise of ‘International Law,’” the ministry alleged.

Likewise, the U.S. State Department called the advisory opinion “corrupt,” claiming that it “unfairly bashes Israel and gives UNRWA a free pass for its deep entanglement with and material support for Hamas terrorism.”………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

The Current Situation

Before the October 10 ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas took effect, UN-supported global experts warned that over 640,000 Palestinians were facing catastrophic levels of food insecurity and that there was an “entirely man-made” famine in Gaza City.

Since the ceasefire began, Israel has started allowing some aid into Gaza, but nowhere near enough to meet its legal obligations and assist the starving Gazans. The UN World Food Program is getting about 750 tons of food aid into Gaza daily, still far below its target of 2,000 tons per day. Although the ceasefire agreement requires 600 trucks per day of food and other humanitarian supplies, only 263 trucks entered Gaza on October 20, and 281 trucks entered Gaza on October 22, less than half of the agreed-upon number.

The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation has suspended operations, as it runs out of money and faces leadership problems and logistical obstacles to a resumption of its work.

Meanwhile, the ICJ is considering the merits of South Africa’s case against Israel that alleges Israel breached the Genocide Convention. Arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity — for intentionally and knowingly depriving the civilian population in Gaza of objects indispensable to their survival and intentionally directing an attack against a civilian population — are pending in the International Criminal Court.

During the past two years, millions of people globally have demonstrated in solidarity with the Palestinian people, and the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement has achieved widespread popular support.

The new advisory opinion issued by the ICJ will continue to shame Israel in the eyes of the world. https://truthout.org/articles/israel-and-us-scorn-icj-ruling-against-starving-civilians-as-method-of-warfare/

October 27, 2025 Posted by | Atrocities, Israel, Legal, USA | Leave a comment

Israel’s AI use in Gaza potentially normalizes civilian killings, obscures blame, exposes Big Tech complicity: Expert

Israel is using AI systems with known inaccuracy risks at ‘almost every stage’ of its military operations, says Heidy Khlaaf, chief AI scientist at AI Now Institute

Mevlut Ozkan   07.04.2025, https://www.aa.com.tr/en/artificial-intelligence/israel-s-ai-use-in-gaza-potentially-normalizes-civilian-killings-obscures-blame-exposes-big-tech-complicity-expert/3526518

– The sheer scale and complexity of AI models makes it ‘impossible to trace their decisions that can hold any individual or military accountable,’ warns Khlaaf, a former systems safety engineer at OpenAI

– ‘Amazon, Google and Microsoft are explicitly working with the IDF to develop or allow them to use their technologies … despite being aware of the risks of AI’s low accuracy rates … and how the IDF intends to use their systems for targeting,’ says expert

ISTANBUL

Israel’s use of artificial intelligence (AI) in its ongoing assault on the Gaza Strip – aided by tech giants such as Google, Microsoft, and Amazon – is fueling concerns over the normalization of mass civilian casualties and raising serious questions about the complicity of these firms in potential war crimes, according to a leading AI expert.

Multiple reports have confirmed that Israel has deployed AI models such as Lavender, Gospel, and Where’s Daddy? to conduct mass surveillance, identify targets, and direct strikes against tens of thousands of individuals in Gaza – often in their own homes – all with minimal human oversight.

Rights groups and experts say these systems have played a critical role in Israel’s incessant and apparently indiscriminate attacks, which have laid to waste massive swaths of the besieged enclave and killed more than 50,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children.

“With the explicit use of AI models that we know lack precision accuracy, we are only going to see the normalization of mass civilian casualties, as we have kind of seen with Gaza,” Heidy Khlaaf, a former systems safety engineer at OpenAI, told Anadolu.

Khlaaf, who is currently a chief AI scientist at AI Now Institute, warned that this trend could establish a dangerous precedent in warfare where military forces deflect responsibility for potential war crimes onto AI systems, while benefiting from the lack of a robust international mechanism to intervene or hold actors accountable.

“This is really a dangerous combination that can lead to military entities not being held accountable for potential war crimes, where they can simply point to an AI system and say, ‘Hey, it’s this algorithm that decided this. It wasn’t me,’” she said.

She stressed that Israel is using AI systems at “almost every stage” of its military operations – from intelligence collection and planning to final target selection.

The AI models, she explained, are trained on a variety of data sources, including satellite imagery, intercepted communications, drone surveillance, and the tracking of individuals or groups.

“They develop multiple AI algorithms that use a statistical or probabilistic calculation from this historical data that they’ve been trained on to predict where future targets may be,” she elaborated.

However, she emphasized that these predictions “do not necessarily reflect reality.”

Khlaaf pointed to recent revelations that commercial large language models (LLMs) like Google’s Gemini and OpenAI’s GPT-4 were used by the Israeli military to translate and transcribe intercepted Palestinian communications, automatically adding individuals to target lists “purely based on keywords.”

She noted that various investigations have confirmed that one of the Israeli military’s operational strategies involves generating large numbers of targets through AI without verifying their accuracy.

The expert underlined that AI models are fundamentally unreliable for tasks requiring high precision, such as targeting in military operations, because they rely on statistical probabilities rather than verified intelligence.

“Unfortunately, assessments have shown that AI models used for targeting can have an accuracy rate as low as 25%,” Khlaaf said.

“So, given this track record of AI’s high error rates, with a force like the IDF (Israel Defense Forces), who is willing to accept a large amount of civilian casualties to take one target out … then this sort of inaccurate automation of target selection is really not far from indiscriminate bombing at scale.”

Automation without accountability

Khlaaf further emphasized that the increasing use of AI in war is setting a dangerous precedent, where accountability is obscured.

“AI is setting this precedent that normalizes inaccurate targeting practices, and because of the sheer scale and complexity of these models, it then becomes impossible to trace their decisions that can hold any individual or military accountable,” she asserted.

Even the so-called “human in the loop” safeguard, often promoted as a fail-safe against AI errors, appears insufficient in the case of the IDF, she added.

Investigations revealed that the humans overseeing Israel’s AI-generated targets operated under “very loose guidance,” casting doubt on whether efforts were even made to minimize civilian casualties, according to Khlaaf.

She warned that the current trajectory could enable militaries to shield themselves from war crime allegations by blaming AI for erroneous targeting.

“If it’s hard to trace … why an AI may have contributed to civilian casualties, then you can very well imagine a case where it’s used heavily exactly to avoid accountability for killing a large amount of civilians,” she said.

‘Amazon, Google and Microsoft explicitly working with IDF’

Khlaaf confirmed that major US-based tech firms are directly involved in supplying AI and cloud computing capabilities to the Israeli military.

“This is not a new trend,” she noted, recalling that Google has been providing AI and cloud services to the Israeli military since 2021 through its $1.2 billion Project Nimbus, alongside Amazon.

Microsoft’s involvement also deepened after October 2023, as Israel relied more on its cloud computing services, AI models, and technical support, she said.

Other companies, including Palantir, have also been linked to Israeli military operations, although details of their roles remain sparse, she added.

Crucially, Khlaaf argued that these partnerships went beyond the sale of general-purpose AI tools.

“It’s important to point out that the IDF isn’t just using off-the-shelf cloud or AI services and taking them and just putting them in military applications,” she explained.

“Amazon, Google and Microsoft are explicitly working with the IDF to develop or allow them to use their technologies for intelligence and targeting, despite being aware of the risks of AI’s low accuracy rates, their failure modes, and how the IDF intends to use their systems for targeting.”

The implications suggest that tech companies were “complicit and directly enabling” Israeli actions, including those that “would be categorized or ruled as unlawful or that amount to war crimes,” Khlaaf said.

“If it has been determined that the IDF is committing specific war crimes, and the tech companies have guided them in committing those war crimes, then yes, that makes them very much complicit,” she added.

‘An enormous gap’

Khlaaf warned that the world is witnessing “the full embrace of automated targeting without due process or accountability,” a phenomenon backed by increasing investments from Israel, the US Department of Defense, and the EU.

“Our legal and technical frameworks are not prepared for this type of AI-based warfare,” she said.

Although existing international law, such as Article 36 of the 1949 Geneva Convention, mandates legal reviews for new weapons, there are currently no binding international regulations specific to AI-driven military technologies.

Additionally, while the US maintains export controls on specific AI-enabling technologies such as GPUs and certain datasets, there is no “wholesale ban on AI military technology specifically,” she noted.

“There’s an enormous gap there that hasn’t really been addressed as of yet,” Khlaaf said.

October 27, 2025 Posted by | Israel, weapons and war | Leave a comment

South Carolina’s state utility says private firm set to restart abandoned $9 billion nuclear project.

After eight years in the elements, all the equipment and the structure of the plant, which was less than halfway finished, will need to be carefully inspected before it can be used. The permits to build and the licenses to operate the nuclear plants will need to be renewed, likely starting from scratch.

The permits to build and the licenses to operate the nuclear plants will need to be renewed, likely starting from scratch,

the agreement appears to let Brookfield walk away if it decide it’s not feasible.

By ASSOCIATED PRESS, 25 October 2025, https://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/ap/article-15225007/South-Carolinas-state-utility-says-private-firm-set-restart-abandoned-9-billion-nuclear-project.html

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) – South Carolina’s state-owned utility is looking to a private company to revive a project to build two nuclear power plants that was abandoned eight years ago, losing more than $9 billion without generating a watt of power.

Santee Cooper’s board agreed Friday to start six weeks of negotiations with Brookfield Asset Management that they hope will lead to a deal that lets the private company build the nuclear plants at the V.C. Summer site near Jenkinsville at their own risk to generate power that they could mostly sell to whom they want, such as energy-gobbling data centers.

Santee Cooper said Brookfield preliminarily agreed to provide the utility with some of the power generated. But that and probably thousands of other details will have to be negotiated. In a twist, Brookfield took over the assets of Westinghouse Electric Co., which had to declare bankruptcy because of difficulties building new nuclear reactors.

Utility officials said the agreement gives hope the state can get something out of a debacle that led to four executives going to prison or home confinement for lying to regulators, shareholders, ratepayers and investigators and left millions of people paying for decades for a project that never produced electricity.

“The risk to the ratepayer is nil. The risk to the taxpayer is nil,” Santee Cooper Board Chairman Peter McCoy said.

There are still too many hurdles for the project to get past to consider this a win right now, said Tom Clements, executive director of the nuclear watchdog group Savannah River Site Watch.

After eight years in the elements, all the equipment and the structure of the plant, which was less than halfway finished, will need to be carefully inspected before it can be used. The permits to build and the licenses to operate the nuclear plants will need to be renewed, likely starting from scratch, Clements said.

“I still believe that the cost, technical and regulatory hurdles are too big to lead to completion of the project,” Clements said, adding the agreement appears to let Brookfield walk away if it decide it’s not feasible.

Santee Cooper heard from 70 bidders and received 15 formal proposals to restart construction of the reactors. Interest in the project has grown as power demand in the U.S. surges with the increase in data centers as artificial intelligence technology develops.

Santee Cooper executives credited President Donald Trump’s executive order in May calling for the U.S. to quadruple the amount of power generated by nuclear plants over the next 25 years for opening the door to the potential agreement.

“You have placed South Carolina in the epicenter of the resurgence of nuclear power in the United States,” Santee Cooper CEO Jimmy Staton said.

Santee Cooper was the minority partner with what was then South Carolina Electric and Gas when construction on the two new nuclear plants started in 2013 at the V.C. Summer site – about 25 miles (40 kilometers) northeast of Columbia – where SCE&G was already operating a reactor.

The project needed to be finished in seven years to get tax credits to keep the project’s cost from overwhelming the utilities, but it ended up behind schedule almost immediately.

Executives lied about the problems to keep money coming in. Taxpayers and ratepayers ended up on the hook because of a state law that allowed the utilities to charge for costs before any power was generated.

Two nuclear reactors built in a similar way in Georgia went $17 billion over budget before they were fully operational in 2023.

October 27, 2025 Posted by | business and costs, USA | Leave a comment

Dounreay waste particle ‘most radioactive’ find for three years

Steven McKenzie, Highlands and Islands reporter and Rachel Grant, BBC Scotland. 23 Oct 25

A fragment of waste found near the decommissioned experimental nuclear power facility in Dounreay in April was the most radioactive to be detected in the past three years, the Highland site’s operator has said.

The fragment, categorised as “significant”, was discovered during monitoring work around the nuclear power plant near Thurso. It is the latest in a long line of particle discoveries in the area.

Dounreay was built in the 1950s as the UK’s centre of fast reactor research, but during the 1960s and 1970s sand-sized particles of irradiated nuclear fuel got into the drainage system.

Work to clear the pollution began in the 1980s, after particles were found washed up on the nearby foreshore.

The facility closed in 1994. The multi-billion pound decommissioning process involves hundreds of workers and is expected to last into the 2070s.

The full decontamination of the site is expected to take more than 300 years.

A Dounreay spokesperson said: “Particles are a legacy of industrial practices dating back to the early 1960s and our commitment today to environmental protection includes their monitoring and removal from the marine environment and transparent reporting of our activities.”

A group of independent experts, who advise the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Sepa) and Dounreay, classify particles by the radioactivity of their caesium-137 content.

The categories are minor, relevant and significant.

Significant means a reading greater than one million becquerels of CS-137.

A becquerel is the standard unit of radioactivity.

The particle was found on the western part of Dounreay’s foreshore on 7 April. Eight other finds reported since then have been categorised as “minor” or “relevant”.

A significant-category particle was last discovered in March 2022.

Thousands of particles of different categories have been removed from beaches, foreshore and seabed at Dounreay.

The site’s operator said monitoring on the site on the north Caithness coast continued to be done on a fortnightly basis.

On occasions it said the scheduled work could be interrupted by bad weather or the presence of protected species of ground-nesting birds……………………………………………………..

What risk is there to the public?

According to official reports, risk to people on local beaches is very low.

Guidance issued by the UK government’s Nuclear Restoration Services says the most at-risk area is not accessible to the public.

The particles found along the coast vary in size and radioactivity with smaller and less active particles generally found on beaches used by the public.

Larger particles have only been found only on the foreshore at Dounreay, which is not used by the public.

The particles found on beaches are believed to come from the disintegration of larger fragments in the seabed near Dounreay. The area is continuously monitored for traces of radioactive materials.

Harvesting of seafood is prohibited within a 2km (1.2 mile) radius of a point near Dounreay. This is where the largest and most hazardous fragments have been detected.

Dounreay’s radioactive history

  • 1954 – A remote site on the north coast of Scotland is chosen as the site of a new type of nuclear reactor. Modern homes were built in Caithness to attract workers to the sparsely populated area.
  • 1957 – A chain reaction which provided sustained and controlled nuclear energy is achieved for the first time.
  • 1959 – A new disposal site for radioactive waste called the Shaft opens. It drops 65.4m (214.5ft) below ground.
  • 1962 – The fast reactor inside the dome is the first in the world to provide electricity to a national grid.
  • 1977 – The original “golf ball” reactor is shut down and waste disposal in the Shaft ends after an explosion.
  • 1994 – Dounreay nuclear power generating facility closes.
  • 1998 – Decommissioning programme is announced.
  • 2008 – Operation to scour the seabed for hazardous material begins and the Shaft shaft is encircled in a boot-shaped ring of grout to prevent contamination.
  • 2020 – Clean-up begins of the highly contaminated Shaft – a three decades-long project.
  • 2333 – Decontamination expected to be complete, making the 148-acre site available for other uses. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cz91nx0lv59o

October 27, 2025 Posted by | radiation, Reference, UK | Leave a comment

Bannon Says Trump Will Run for an Illegal 3rd Term Because ‘He’s a Vehicle of Divine Providence’

Journalist Mehdi Hasan said Trump and his allies “plan to overturn the Constitution and democracy. They’re not hiding it. They’re bragging about it.”

Stephen Prager, Oct 24, 2025, https://www.commondreams.org/news/bannon-trump-third-term-plan

In a frightening interview, one of President Donald Trump’s top allies said there is a “plan” for the president to remain in power after 2028, despite constitutional limits.

Speaking to a pair of interviewers at The Economist, Steve Bannon—Trump’s former chief strategist and one of the most influential voices in the MAGA movement—described a third Trump term as a divinely ordained fait accompli that people must simply accept.

“Well, he’s gonna get a third term, so Trump ‘28,” Bannon said. “Trump is gonna be president in 2028, and people ought to just get accommodated with that.”

Asked about the 22nd Amendment of the US Constitution, which plainly forbids a president from serving more than two terms in office, Bannon proclaimed that “there are many different alternatives” to get around it.

“At the appropriate time, we’ll lay out what the plan is,” he said. “But there’s a plan. And President Trump will be president in ’28.”

Bannon continued: “We have to finish what we started… I know this will drive you guys crazy, but [Trump] is a vehicle of divine providence. He’s an instrument. He’s very imperfect. He’s not churchy. But he is an instrument of divine will.”

“We need him for at least one more term,” Bannon reiterated, “and he’ll get that in ‘28.”

In recent days, Trump has increasingly signaled his intent to run for a third term, selling “Trump 2028” merchandise on his website and displaying it in the Oval Office during negotiations with Democrats over the government shutdown.

His recent demolition of the White House’s East Wing to build a luxury ballroom has also raised alarms that Trump increasingly views himself as its permanent resident rather than a temporary steward.

Bannon was adamant that Trump would not only serve a third term, but that his staying in office would be “by the will of the American people.”

This assumption is out of line with what polls would seem to predict: Trump’s support recently hit a new low in his second term, with just 37% of voters approving of his job performance in the latest Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll, compared to 61% who disapprove.

Bannon’s comments came days after the New York Times reported that Trump’s handpicked election officials have called for him to declare a “national emergency” ahead of the 2026 midterm election, which they say would allow him to assert more control over election laws and impose new rules on state and local elections without approval from Congress.

Max Flugrath of the voting rights group Fair Fight Action, who warned earlier this week of Trump’s plans to “hijack” the next elections, said that by pushing for a third term for the president, “Bannon is basically saying, ’Let’s light the Constitution on fire.‘”

Author and activist Jim Stewartson noted that Bannon “uses the same alchemy as [House Speaker] Mike Johnson and [Defense Secretary] Pete Hegseth to rationalize destroying the Constitution: ’spiritual war.‘”

Johnson has argued that the US government “must be biblically sanctioned” and that the Founders’ idea of the separation of church and state was “a misnomer.” Hegseth, meanwhile, has endorsed a video of a far-right pastor discussing the need to repeal the 19th Amendment, which enshrined the right of women to vote.

Some pointed out that Bannon often manages to create a stir in the media by saying provocative things and claiming to have privileged knowledge about the machinations of Trump’s inner circle. It’s not the first time Bannon has raised the possibility of a third Trump term.

“A question that I’ve never seen fully resolved is to what degree Bannon is just trying to get attention as a media figure and to what degree he’s actually clued in to what’s going on in the White House,” said HeatMap News correspondent Matthew Zeitlin.

However, Bannon was in the know about Trump’s plot to overturn the 2020 election well before it happened. Days before the vote, he was recorded telling right-wing allies that “What Trump’s gonna do is just declare victory… He’s gonna declare victory. But that doesn’t mean he’s a winner. He’s just gonna say he’s a winner.”

Others said that Bannon’s prognosis about a third Trump term is gravely serious, especially given Trump’s other actions during his second term.

“I would love to be wrong, but they keep saying this in public,” said writer John DiLillo. “He’s selling Trump 2028 merch. He’s massively remodeling the White House as if it were his personal residence. I don’t really see why the idea shouldn’t be taken seriously just because it’s ’unconstitutional.‘”

Mehdi Hasan, founder of the media outlet Zeteo, meanwhile, said: “They’re literally shouting it out loud! Their plan to overturn the Constitution and democracy. They’re not hiding it. They’re bragging about it. And the media are just ignoring it, or worse, normalizing it; the biggest story perhaps in modern American history.”

October 27, 2025 Posted by | politics, USA | Leave a comment

Germany destroys two nuclear plant cooling towers as part of nuclear phaseout plan.

Euronews,  25/10/2025,https://www.euronews.com/2025/10/25/germany-destroys-two-nuclear-plant-cooling-towers-as-part-of-nuclear-phaseout-plan

The two towers, equivalent to roughly 56,000 tonnes of concrete, collapsed in a controlled demolition on Saturday. It comes as part of Germany’s nuclear phaseout.

Two cooling towers of the former nuclear power plant in Germay’s Bavarian town of Gundremmingen were brought down in a controlled demolition at noon on Saturday.

The plant had served as an important landmark in the town for nearly six decades, bringing numerous new jobs and boosting the local economy.

As part of the country’s nuclear phaseout and under Germany’s energy transition policy, the Gundremmingen, as well as the Brokdorf, and Grohnde nuclear power plants, had already been decommissioned in December 2021.

The municipality, who had prepared for a large crowd of onlookers, set up a restricted zone around the power plant.

According to energy company RWE, the demolition could be observed from various watch points in the region. Some pubs also offered public “demolition viewing parties”

How the towers will be blown up

There were three explosions in total. The first was carried out to chase away nearby animals and wildlife. The second brought down the first tower, and the third caused the second tower to collapse.

Roughly 56,000 tonnes of concrete collapsed in a matter of seconds. Following Saturday’s demolition, the dismantling of the plant will further continue, local media report, with completion expected by 2040.

October 27, 2025 Posted by | decommission reactor, Germany | Leave a comment

Pentagon orders USS Gerald R. Ford into Caribbean, first carrier sent to region

Yahoo News, Nicholas Slayton, Sat, October 25, 2025 

The Pentagon ordered the Gerald R. Ford Carrier Strike Group to sail to the Caribbean, adding one of the Navy’s largest and most potent formations to the major U.S. build-up in the region. The new deployment will add the aircraft carrier’s more than 70 aircraft and multiple destroyers to the array of firepower already sent to the region for a mission the White House insists is aimed at drug traffickers.

Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell confirmed the deployment in a statement, saying the strike group would be “in support of the President’s directive to dismantle Transnational Criminal Organizations (TCOs) and counter narco-terrorism.”

Carrier Strike Group 12 includes the USS Gerald R. Ford, the destroyers USS Bainbridge and USS Mahan and Carrier Air Wing 8. Their arrival makes this fall’s buildup one of the largest deployments of naval power since the start of the Red Sea conflict in late 2023. The strike group’s air contingent includes four squadrons of F/A-18 fighters and one squadron of E/A-18G strike fighters.

Word of the deployment came shortly after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced another airstrike on a civilian vessel in the Caribbean. Hegseth said the strike killed six on board, a tally which would bring the death toll in U.S. strikes on boats in the region to 43 since September, according to White House figures.

Hegseth accused the crew of being members of the gang Tren de Aragua, a group the administration has often linked to the boats with little public evidence. It was the 10th strike in total, and the third one in as many days.

Governments and media in the region have reported that those killed or wounded in U.S. strikes have included citizens from Colombia, Ecuador, and Trinidad and Tobago. At least two sailors have been rescued by U.S. forces after surviving strikes on their boats, including an Ecuadorian man who was released days later when authorities in his country said there was no evidence of a crime to charge him with.

Earlier this year, the Trump administration designated several gangs and drug cartels as “foreign terrorist organizations,” and accused the Venezuelan government of collaborating with them. The White House has advised Congress that the U.S. is in an “armed conflict” with these gangs, but no Congressional authorization for the use of force has been given……………………………………………………. https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/pentagon-orders-uss-gerald-r-183731366.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuc290dC5uZXQv&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAC-xq4OFcery8IiSv68w1zrTr-PmRrn6IBwmoiNxApl6bQszSfDGY6O51M4yAGAU1O90WYXwK-DRaUu0nfau6ncVUnxrYVkwer67gcsHqDulCR8Y2h3pG0HD-S1OJ9NpV1QqBFkaKO0mADBLxw3mgTmEliwGClbGebBO1lPCO-bZ

October 27, 2025 Posted by | USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Trump’s push to uphold Gaza ceasefire is creating a political crisis in Israel.

Israel isn’t a vassal state of the U.S., JD Vance said. But when it comes to the ceasefire in Gaza and annexing the West Bank, Israeli decision-making is deeply intertwined with Washington’s current priorities.

Mondoweiss, By Qassam Muaddi  October 24, 2025 

The succession of U.S. officials arriving in Tel Aviv over the week has fueled consternation in Israeli political circles as Washington ups the pressure on Israel to stick to U.S. President Donald Trump’s Gaza ceasefire plan. Israeli political circles have bristled at having to bend to the American President’s will, as opposition use the opportunity to lambast Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for turning Israel into a “vassal” of the United States.

Virtually all of Trump’s inner circle has made the rounds in Tel Aviv throughout the past week, including U.S. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, Vice President JD Vance, and U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

They were all there, JD Vance said, to monitor the ceasefire, rushing to add: “But not monitoring in the sense of, you know…you monitor a toddler.” But Israeli media referred to the flurry of visits as American “Bibi-sitting.” 

Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz published a caricature on Wednesday portraying Netanyahu as a child playing with toy tanks and airplanes while Witkoff tells him, “Just a little while more, and then off to bed.” Maariv published another cartoon showing Witkoff, Vance, and Kushner closely tailing Netanyahu, who says, “Honestly, I’m just going to the toilet.”

Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid didn’t hold back either. At the opening of the Knesset’s winter session, Lapid slammed Netanyahu for getting Israel into “the most dangerous political crisis in its history,” and for sabotaging past ceasefire deals that could have seen the earlier release of the Israeli captives in Gaza. Lapid also said that Netanyahu had turned Israel into “a vassal state that takes orders concerning its own security.”

Things got even tenser during a press conference with Netanyahu when Vance was asked by a reporter whether Israel was becoming a “protectorate” of the U.S. …………………………………………………

The visits by Vance, Witkoff, Kushner, and Rubio came as the fragile ceasefire in Gaza was about to unravel last Sunday, October 19, following an incident in Rafah in which two Israeli soldiers were killed in an explosion. Israel accused Hamas of breaching the ceasefire and launched a series of strikes across Gaza, killing at least 40 Palestinians. Hamas denied any knowledge of the Rafah incident, with reports that the explosion was caused by an Israeli bulldozer running over an unexploded ordinance, of which the White House was reportedly aware. …………….

Political circles in Israel regarded the halt of Israel’s blitz as a sign that Netanyahu had folded under continuous U.S. pressure to make the ceasefire work. Israel’s hardline National Security Minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, regarded the decision as “shameful” and called on Netanyahu to resume its full-scale onslaught against Gaza.

Now there’s another sticking point that is continuing to fuel U.S.-Israeli tensions: annexation.

West Bank annexation is off the table. Or is it?

In the midst of this wave of criticism, Netanyahu announced his candidacy for the post of Prime Minister in the upcoming November 2026 elections. Netanyahu is currently the longest-serving Prime Minister in Israel’s history, having led a shifting arrangement of right and center-right coalitions for a total of 18 years.

In the middle of JD Vance’s visit, the Israeli Knesset voted in favor of the first reading of a bill that would annex the West Bank. The reaction from the U.S. was unprecedented. 

Before boarding his flight to Tel Aviv earleir this week, Secretary of State Rubio said that the vote was “counterproductive” and “threatening to the peace deal.” Vance went further, calling the vote “weird,” “stupid,” and an “insult,” adding that “the policy of the Trump administration is that the West Bank will not be annexed by Israel.” 

But the hardest U.S. reaction came from Trump himself, who said in an interview with Time magazine that Israel’s annexation of the West Bank “will not happen because I gave my word to the Arab countries,” adding that “Israel would lose all of its support from the United States if that happened.”

The problem is that annexing the West Bank has been Netanyahu’s most important electoral promise since 2019. He has been spearheading a years-long legislative effort to make that annexation a reality, starting with the 2018 Nation-State Law, then with the Knesset resolution to reject a Palestinian state in July 2024, and finally with last July’s Knesset resolution allowing the government to annex the West Bank.

This is particularly inconvenient for Benjamin Netanyahu, as he needs to avoid any major confrontation with Washington at the current moment……………………………………………………..

In his first term, Donald Trump also clashed with a Netanyahu-led government that had pledged to annex parts of the West Bank. Trump halted the annexation process by brokering normalization agreements with several Arab states, most crucially the United Arab Emirates. The importance of the so-called Abraham Accords, for Trump, comes from the fact that the remaining Gulf countries that have yet to normalize relations with Israel — Qatar and Saudi Arabia — are the key to securing regional U.S. economic and political dominance. This is part of the larger U.S. agenda of reasserting American hegemony and confronting the rising influence of China. A part of Trump’s roadmap to get there is by integrating Israel in the Middle East.

After its genocide in Gaza, Israel is facing international isolation, so regional integration should seemingly be an Israeli priority as well. But in this instance, integration would force Israel to at least temporarily pause its plans to assert Jewish sovereignty between the river and the sea, as the Likud’s charter put it. 

Smotrich gave voice to that supremacist dream while speaking at a tech conference on Thursday, saying that Israel would not give up annexation for the sake of normalization: “If Saudi Arabia tells us ‘normalization in exchange for a Palestinian state,’ friends — no thank you. Keep riding camels in the desert in Saudi Arabia, and we will continue to develop.”……………………………………………………….

The ongoing frenzy of political recriminations in Israeli circles is a sign that they’re gearing up for elections and trying to score points against their rivals. What this tells us is that the Israeli political establishment has, at least implicitly, accepted that the war is over for the moment. But the fact that this political theater unfolds in the shadow of unprecedented U.S. pressure suggests how deeply Israeli decision-making is intertwined with Washington’s priorities. https://mondoweiss.net/2025/10/trumps-push-to-uphold-gaza-ceasefire-is-creating-a-political-crisis-in-israel/

October 27, 2025 Posted by | Israel, politics | Leave a comment

Stabilizing the U.S.-China Rivalry.

RAND think tank, famous for its influential policy papers which have shaped US-Russian relations, has released an eye-opening call for a change of course on China. This comes by way of the latest Trump-China escalations which, it appears, have greatly worried insiders of the ‘deep state’ system; enough so that for once they have begun swallowing their pride and envisioning a calmer, more placating approach toward China so as not to upset the global status quo too much.

Michael J. Mazarr, Amanda Kerrigan, Benjamin Lenain, Oct 14, 2025, https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA4107-1.html?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

The geopolitical rivalry between the United States and China embodies risks of outright military conflict, economic warfare, and political subversion, as well as the danger that tensions between the world’s two leading powers will destroy the potential for achieving a global consensus on such issues as climate and artificial intelligence. Moderating this rivalry therefore emerges as a critical goal, both for the United States and China and for the wider world.

The authors of this report propose that, even in the context of intense competition, it might be possible to find limited mechanisms of stabilization across several specific issue areas. They offer specific recommendations both for general stabilization of the rivalry and for three issue areas: Taiwan, the South China Sea, and competition in science and technology.

Key Findings

Several broad principles can guide efforts to stabilize intense rivalries

  • Each side accepts that some degree of modus vivendi must necessarily be part of the relationship.
  • Each side accepts the essential political legitimacy of the other.
  • In specific issue areas, especially those disputed by the two sides, each side works to develop sets of shared rules, norms, institutions, and other tools that create lasting conditions of a stable modus vivendi within that domain over a specific period (such as three to five years).
  • Each side practices restraint in the development of capabilities explicitly designed to undermine the deterrent and defensive capabilities of the other in ways that would create an existential risk to its homeland.

  • Each side accepts some essential list of characteristics of a shared vision of organizing principles for world politics that can provide at least a baseline for an agreed status quo.
  • There are mechanisms and institutions in place — from long-term personal ties to physical communication links to agreed norms and rules of engagement for crises and risky situations — that help provide a moderating or return-to-stable-equilibrium function.

Recommendations

Six broad-based initiatives can help moderate the intensity of the U.S.-China rivalry

  • Clarify U.S. objectives in the rivalry with language that explicitly rejects absolute versions of victory and accepts the legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party.
  • Reestablish several trusted lines of communication between senior officials.
  • Improve crisis-management practices, links, and agreements between the two sides.
  • Seek specific new agreements — a combination of formal public accords and private understandings — to limit the U.S.-China cyber competition.

  • Declare mutual acceptance of strategic nuclear deterrence and a willingness to forswear technologies and doctrines that would place the other side’s nuclear deterrent at risk.
  • Seek modest cooperative ventures on issues of shared interest or humanitarian concern.

More-specific strategies should guide efforts to stabilize the issues of Taiwan, the South China Sea, and competition in science and technology

  • Stabilizing the Taiwan issue should focus on creating the maximum incentive for Beijing to pursue gradual approaches toward unification.
  • For the South China Sea, combine deterrence of military escalation with intensified multilateral and bilateral diplomacy to create a medium-term route to a peaceful solution as the default international process and expectation.
  • In the U.S.-China science and technology rivalry, manage the worst aspects of emerging technologies for mutual security and the condition of the rivalry, and step back from the most extreme versions of efforts to undermine the other side’s progress.

October 26, 2025 Posted by | China, politics international, USA | Leave a comment

ED MILIBAND’S NUCLEAR NIGHTMARES

Jonathon Porritt, 22 Oct 25, https://jonathonporritt.com/uk-nuclear-subsidies-desnz-spending/

Meanwhile, in a parallel universe, the legions of nuclear fat cats residing here in the UK are smiling very broadly indeed. It would appear that both Rachel Reeves and Ed Miliband have nothing better to do with our money, as taxpayers, than to go on filling up their subsidy saucers more or less on demand.

Taxpayers really don’t know very much about how DESNZ spends our money. More problematically, not a lot of the UK’s more or less mis-informed energy correspondents are particularly interested in helping taxpayers to understand what’s really going on – for the most part because they’re ‘ideologically captured’, with very little interest in the truth.

A bit harsh? Well, why is it, for instance, that not one of them provides any serious analysis of DESNZ’s annual expenditure? Not least as the details of this (on p.18 of its 2024-2025 Annual Report & Accounts) are completely mind-blowing. To summarise:

DESNZ TOTAL DEPARTMENTAL SPEND

Total departmental spend:     £8.6 billion

Total spend on nuclear power:   £5.1 billion (60%)

Total spend on everything else:  £3.5 billion (40%)

See what I mean? Literally mind-blowing! A few more details on the nuclear side of things:

*Great British Nuclear: £26 million (the more or less useless quango overseeing this fiasco).

*Nuclear Decommissioning Agency : £3 billion (dealing with the legacy of past nuclear programmes).

*Support for Sizewell C power station: £1.67 billion.

*UK Atomic Energy Agency (UKAEA): £400 million (doing bonkers stuff like nuclear fusion).

That’s the size of the nuclear sink hole: roughly £5.1 billion! Leaving roughly £3.5 billion for everything else, including all direct support for renewables, ‘delivering affordable energy’, science, research and ‘capability’, as well as other arm’s length bodies. Moreover, even that low figure is not quite what it seems: roughly £450 million is set aside for another of Ed Miliband’s sink holes, namely Carbon Capture and Storage.

Do you need any more persuading that this is obviously a completely mis-titled Department: instead of DESNZ, it really should be called DNPB&B – the Department of Nuclear Power and Bits & Bobs.

Where the hell are you, Rachel Reeves? For those sick of your hangdog ‘black hole blathering‘, it would be wonderful to think you might instruct just a few of your civil servants to instruct the ever-well-meaning Ed Miliband to undertake an exercise in zero budgeting for FY 25/26. Great British Nuclear could go at a stroke of a pen – no one would notice. The UKAEA’s budget could be halved, leaving it to focus on decommissioning redundant reactors and dealing with nuclear waste. Subsidies for Sizewell C could be massively reduced – although the Department did such a poor deal with various private sector investors that there will be significant compensation to be paid.

Sadly, of course, there is nothing that can be done about the £3 billion set aside, EVERY YEAR, for dealing with the legacy of earlier nuclear programmes – decommissioning, site security, managing nuclear waste and so on. Nuclear campaigners have struggled for years to explain that our ‘nuclear legacy’ is in fact our ‘current nuclear reality’, and that this is a figure which can only grow and grow over the years. The Public Accounts Committee looked recently at the cost of decommissioning many of the facilities at Sellafield, currently assessed at £396 million through to 2070, and couldn’t have made their incredulity any clearer. On top of that, we have the looming additional cost of building a long-term Geological Disposal Facility, for which taxpayers will be paying hundreds of billions of pounds through to the end of this century.

Ask the Treasury or officials at DNPN&B what they believe that total legacy figure will be in FY2030/2031,or FY2040/2041, and you can be absolutely guaranteed to get literally no answer at all.

And yet – AND YET – we go on pouring yet more billions into NEW waste-generating nuclear monstrosities like Hinkley C and now Sizewell C.

It’s nearly 50 years since the highly influential Flowers Report was published in 1976. Its single most important recommendation was as follows:


“There should be no commitment to a large programme of nuclear fission power until it has been demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt that a method exists to ensure the safe containment of long-lived, highly radioactive waste for the indefinite future.”    

We are, truly, led by nuclear donkeys.

Meanwhile, back in the real world, all this never-ending filling-up of the industry’s subsidy saucers has massive opportunity costs for what we should really be doing with precious taxpayers’ money.

As in:

  • getting as enthusiastically as possible behind the potential for tidal power (see yesterday’s blog).
  • getting as enthusiastically as possible behind retrofitting and the green economy (see tomorrow’s blog).

I’ll return to the whole question of just how many billions Rachel Reeves could divert from these nuclear sink holes as we get a little closer to the budget in November.

Managing our ‘Energy Legacy’: £85 million (roughly half the total figure).

October 26, 2025 Posted by | business and costs, politics, UK | Leave a comment

Biden hands off Ukraine war to Trump…who now owns it.

Walt Zlotow, West Suburban Peace Coalition, Glen Ellyn IL, 25 Oct 25

President Biden provoked the Russian invasion of Ukraine for 13 months with reckless NATO expansion before Russia said ‘enough’ and pushed back violently. Biden then spent his last 37 months pouring over $150 billion in military aid which proved worthless in achieving Ukrainian victory. All it did was prolong Ukraine’s suffering with hundreds of thousands dead and wounded in a shattered country.

2024 candidate Trump called out this senseless stupidity for what is was, Biden’s war that Trump wouldn’t have provoked had he won in 2020. He further boasted he’d end it on first day of second term.

Tho Trump largely stopped the direct funding that Biden kept squandering till his last sorrowful day, he’s still selling weapons to the European dead-enders UK, France, Germany and others to gift Ukraine. One day Trump says Ukraine should quit without return of a single lost square mile; next day he claims Ukraine can retrieve it all. One day he ponders sending Ukraine Tomahawk missiles likely to provoke nuclear war; next day he tells Ukraine President Zelensky, who flew 4,867 miles to beg for them…’Faggedaboudit.’

Trump’s got bigger war fish to fry than the lost cause of Ukraine. He’s still supporting Israel’s genocidal ethnic cleansing of Gaza, his fake ceasefire notwithstanding. He’s getting ready to bomb Venezuela, not content with just blasting small, unarmed Venezuelan boats to smithereens. He may be planning another round of air strikes on Iran in his quest at regime change and destabilization there.

Ukraine will collapse on Trump’ watch. Biden never wavered in support of a war impossible to win. Trump, however, wavered in his boast he would end Biden’s war, allowing it to continue incurring hundreds of thousands more casualties and more lost Ukrainian territory. By so doing, history will record Trump’s ownership of America’s failed proxy war to weaken Russia at the end, as surely as it records Biden’s ownership at the beginning.

October 26, 2025 Posted by | Ukraine, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Pentagon Creates New Legion of PR Toadies

Malcolm Ferguson (New Republic, 10/22/25): “It should alarm every American that the defense secretary is making an effort to fill the press corps with people who will never hold him accountable.”

Ari Paul, October 24, 2025, https://fair.org/home/pentagon-creates-new-legion-of-pr-toadies/

When the Pentagon announced that reporters would only be credentialed if they pledged not to report on documents not expressly released by official press handlers, free press advocates, including FAIR (9/23/25), denounced the directive as an assault on the First Amendment.

The impact of this rule cannot be understated—any reporter agreeing to such terms is essentially a deputized public relations lackey.

Many journalists, thankfully, displayed solidarity with each other and the idea of a free press when they resisted the state’s new censorship efforts. “Dozens of reporters turned in access badges and exited the Pentagon…rather than agree to government-imposed restrictions on their work,” reported the AP (10/15/25).

CNN’s Brian Stelter (10/15/25) reported:

A flyer with the words “journalism is not a crime” appeared Tuesday on the wall outside the “Correspondents’ Corridor” where journalists operate at the Pentagon. It was a silent protest of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s new policy that severely restricts press access.

The policy criminalizes routine reporting, according to media lawyers and advocates, so news outlets are refusing to abide by it. Instead, they are giving up their access to the building, while vowing to continue thoroughly covering Hegseth and the military from outside the Pentagon’s five walls.

Reuters (10/15/25) noted that it and at least 30 other outlets refused to sign the pledge, citing the others:

Associated Press, Bloomberg News, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, CNN, Fox News, CBS, NBC, ABC, NPR, Axios, Politico, the Guardian, the Atlantic, The Hill, Newsmax, Breaking Defense and Task & Purpose.

Good on these outlets for showing some spine against an administration for whom anti-media bellicosity has been a central feature of its authoritarian impulse. It’s a sign that perhaps at least some of them can toughen up against the administration’s threats against democratic and constitutional order. Even some outlets on the right–Murdoch properties Fox News and Wall Street Journal, and Christopher Ruddy’s Newsmax–declined to be part of Hegseth’s captive news corps.

‘The new Pentagon press corps’

However, the Pentagon is touting the success of its draconian order. “Today, the Department of War is announcing the next generation of the Pentagon press corps,” Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell announced on X (10/22/25):

Over 60 journalists, representing a broad spectrum of new media outlets and independent journalists, have signed the Pentagon’s media access policy and will be joining the new Pentagon press corps….

New media outlets and independent journalists have created the formula to circumvent the lies of the mainstream media and get real news directly to the American people. Their reach and impact collectively are far more effective and balanced than the self-righteous media who chose to self-deport from the Pentagon. Americans have largely abandoned digesting their news through the lens of activists who masquerade as journalists in the mainstream media. We look forward to beginning a fresh relationship with members of the new Pentagon press corps.

In fact, this “broad spectrum” of outlets represents the fringes of the right, including One America Network, Epoch Times, Gateway Pundit, Human Events, LindellTV, Frontlines and the National Pulse (New York Times, 10/22/25).

These outlets are old and new. Human Events shaped its worldview in early Cold War nationalism. Frontlines is a project of the late Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA. LindellTV is the brainchild of MyPillow CEO and 2020 election denialist Mike Lindell (Guardian, 5/4/25; BBC, 6/19/25).

The Times quoted LindellTV bragging about its elevation into the halls of power in twisted, Orwellian speak: “We are officially part of the new Pentagon press corps, this is a major win for free speech and real journalism.”

The Gateway Pundit blog has been around since 2004, long enough to have pushed birther conspiracy theories before it promoted 2020 stolen election theories. National Pulse (slogan: “radically independent”) is more recent, founded and edited by a former chief advisor to British far-right leader Nigel Farage.

One America Network, which FAIR founder Jeff Cohen observed “makes Fox News sound like Democracy Now!,” was founded in 2013 so that AT&T could add a second right-wing network to its DirecTV platform (FAIR.org, 10/15/21). Epoch Times is affiliated with China’s Falun Gong movement, and comes to its Trumpy politics through Chinese anti-Communism.

Conspiracy outlet InfoWars—famous for losing a $1.4 billion defamation judgement for falsely stating the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting was faked (Reuters, 10/14/25), as well as something about chemicals turning frogs gay (InfoWars, 8/28/24)—is also reportedly in the revamped press pool. “Breanna Morello is responsible for covering the Pentagon on behalf of Infowars and will do so from outside of DC,” the Hill (10/23/25) reported.

‘Maximum lethality

This new directive didn’t come about in a vacuum; the Pentagon is closing its doors to the press, and by extension the rest of the public, at a time of ramping up violence off the coasts of South America (AP, 10/22/25) and elsewhere. Hegseth couldn’t have been clearer in his recent speech to the military’s top officers when he said the Pentagon’s only mission was “warfighting, preparing for war and preparing to win, unrelenting and uncompromising in that pursuit,” highlighting a focus on “common sense, maximum lethality and authority for warfighters.”

President Donald Trump, despite his claims of ending wars (CNN, 10/17/25), is certainly acting like he wants more war in the future, a crucial development for the public. “Trump Beats the Drums of War for Direct Action in Venezuela,” rang a headline in the Washington Post (10/22/25), with the subhead:

The administration has surged warships, planes and troops to the Caribbean for drug interdiction. Some see the ultimate goal as toppling Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

The Trump administration has already carried out attacks on Iran (Axios, 6/22/25) and Yemen (BBC, 4/18/25). And the administration “continues to expand troop deployments to US cities, escalating a campaign to assert military power at home with little precedent in US history” (Bloomberg, 10/6/25).

The Economist (10/23/25) warned that the Trump administration, which has invoked cartel violence to justify the president’s lethal hostility toward Venezuela (Center for Strategic and International Studies, 10/3/25), was turning the War on Drugs into a full-scale, international military campaign with little restraint. The magazine said:

Past presidents have also stretched their powers to wage wars and even to start them. Indeed, Mr. Trump is gesturing at precedents they set. But “this administration is going further, and going further with less public, detailed defense of what they’re doing,” says Peter Feaver, a political scientist at Duke University. “I think the biggest difference is that Congress is not holding this administration to account in the way that they did even to Trump 1.0, let alone to Biden and to Bush.”

Just because Mr. Trump has labeled some migrants and even leftist opponents as “terrorists” does not mean he will use the armed forces against them. But right now, it’s not clear what, besides his own inclinations, might prevent him.


This new loyalty pledge has now chipped away at another restraint: the press. It is true, as many FAIR readers know, that the Pentagon has sold wars to the public through the establishment media without these draconian credentialing pledges (Extra!, 1–2/90, 11–12/90, 7–8/99; FAIR.org, 3/19/07). However, what we are likely to see now is an army of meme-obsessed, MAGA sycophants posing as independent journalists obediently copy-and-pasting Pentagon press releases into articles, selling an imperialist agenda to the president’s right-wing, nationalist base. That’s chilling news for those of us living here, and for any country that might sit in the crosshairs of the Trump administration’s imperial ambitions.

There is some hope that military reporters will continue to do their jobs and receive information from the inside via channels that exist outside the actual walls of the Pentagon. Atlantic correspondent Nancy Youseff (10/15/25), one of the recently departed from the official pool, said “mid-level troops have been reaching out to me, unsolicited, and promising that they would keep providing journalists with information” in order to “uphold the values embedded in the Constitution.”

If legacy publications are truly horrified by these developments, they will get more creative in their methods of reporting when it comes to the Pentagon’s advances. That can result in more critical and less obedient coverage of the war machine, which would be a good thing, for once.

October 26, 2025 Posted by | media, USA | Leave a comment

Trump says he will inform Congress of plans to strike land-based cartel targets in Venezuela

CLG News, Oct 24, 2025. https://legitgov.substack.com/p/trump-says-he-will-inform-congress?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=3203936&post_id=176990365&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

Trump says he will inform Congress of plans to strike land-based cartel targets in Venezuela | 23 Oct 2023 | President Trump said Thursday he will inform Congress of his plans to attack land-based cartel targets in Venezuela as he looks to expand his thus-far seaborne military campaign.

“We’re going to go [to Congress]. I don’t see any loss in going — no reason not to,” Trump told reporters at a White House event touting a federal crackdown that’s arrested roughly 3,200 alleged drug cartel members over the past month. “You know they will always complain, ‘Oh, we should have gone.’ So we’re going to definitely,”

Trump said. Trump has threatened land-based strikes for weeks after the administration on Sept. 2 began targeting vessels smuggling drugs off the Caribbean coast of Venezuela. “I don’t think we’re going to necessarily ask for a declaration of war. I think we’re just going to kill people that are bringing drugs into our country. Okay? We’re going to kill them, you know, they’re going to be like dead, okay?” Trump said.

Trump announces military strike kills narcoterrorists, destroys drug submarine | 18 Oct 2025 | President Donald Trump said Saturday that a U.S. military strike destroyed a “very large drug-carrying submarine” in the Caribbean this week, killing two suspected narcoterrorists and capturing two others alive, while releasing video of the strike.

In a statement posted to Truth Social, Trump said the vessel was carrying mostly “fentanyl and other narcotics” toward the U.S. on a “well known narcotrafficking transit route.” He claimed the interdiction prevented as many as 25,000 American overdose deaths.

“It was my great honor to destroy a very large DRUG-CARRYING SUBMARINE,” Trump wrote. “U.S. Intelligence confirmed this vessel was loaded up with mostly Fentanyl… There were four known narcoterrorists on board. Two of the terrorists were killed. The two surviving terrorists are being returned to their Countries of origin, Ecuador and Colombia, for detention and prosecution.”

October 26, 2025 Posted by | USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Iran, Russia, China question IAEA’s mandate after end of UN resolution.


 Iran International 25th Oct 2025

Iran, Russia and China have told the International Atomic Energy Agency that its monitoring and reporting linked to the 2015 nuclear deal should end following the expiry of the UN resolution that endorsed it, Iranian media said on Friday.

Kazem Gharibabadi, Iran’s deputy foreign minister, said the three countries sent a joint letter to IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi arguing that Resolution 2231, which endorsed the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), formally expired on Oct. 18.

He said the letter followed a previous joint message the countries had sent to the UN secretary-general and the president of the Security Council, declaring the resolution terminated. “All provisions of Resolution 2231 have now lapsed, and attempts by European countries to reactivate sanctions through the so-called snapback mechanism are illegal and without effect,” Gharibabadi said, according to state media………………………………………………..

Grossi urges diplomacy, notes Iran stays in NPT

IAEA chief Rafael Grossi said earlier this week that diplomacy must prevail to avoid renewed conflict and noted that Iran had not withdrawn from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty despite tensions. He said continued cooperation between Iran and the agency was vital to prevent escalation.

Grossi told Le Temps newspaper on Wednesday that Iran holds enough uranium to build ten nuclear weapons if it enriched further, though there is no evidence it seeks to do so. He said Israeli and US airstrikes in June had caused “severe” damage to Iran’s nuclear facilities in Isfahan, Natanz and Fordow, but that the country’s technical know-how “has not vanished.”

Tehran and the IAEA have yet to agree on a framework to resume full inspections at the bombed sites. Grossi said Tehran was allowing inspectors access “in dribs and drabs” for security reasons, adding that efforts were continuing to rebuild trust and restore routine monitoring. https://www.iranintl.com/en/202510255409

October 26, 2025 Posted by | Iran, politics international | Leave a comment

Miliband starts fight with SNP over deploying new nuclear in Scotland

 By Tom Pashby

 Miliband starts fight with SNP over deploying new nuclear in Scotland.
Energy secretary Ed Miliband has asked Great British Energy – Nuclear to
explore deploying new nuclear at Torness, Hunterston and potentially other
parts of Scotland, despite the fact that the SNP-run Scottish Government
does not allow new nuclear developments in Scotland.

 New Civil Engineer 24th Oct 2025, https://www.newcivilengineer.com/latest/miliband-starts-fight-with-snp-over-deploying-new-nuclear-in-scotland-24-10-2025/

October 26, 2025 Posted by | politics, UK | Leave a comment

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