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$10 billion, 10 year US Army contract elevates Palantir to defense contracting royalty.

Crashes the multibillion-dollar DoD party alongside Boeing, Lockheed, and Raytheon.

Brandon Vigliarolo. Fri 1 Aug 2025 , https://www.theregister.com/2025/08/01/palantir_us_army_contract/

There are no official criteria for what constitutes membership in the upper echelon of the US military industrial complex, but a $10 billion deal that consolidates dozens of contracts under a single blanket purchase agreement sure makes it seem like Palantir has earned entry.

The US Army announced on Thursday that, rather than continue to buy Palantir products on one of 75 different contracts the branch has with the data analytics software company, it’s awarding a ten-year Enterprise Agreement (EA) with the aforementioned cap of $10 billion. Like a standard blanket purchase agreement, the deal allows the Army to buy what it needs from Palantir over the course of a decade. 

It doesn’t appear that the Army is awarding Palantir any new contracts based on the press release or a procurement notice published about the contract in May. According to that document, the Army had figured out that it’s doing so much business with Palantir over so many separate procurement actions that it’s wasting a lot of time and money.

“Consolidating these efforts under an EA will streamline future modifications and task orders under a single set of ordering instructions and terms and conditions,” the May publication pointed out. “Instead of managing dozens of contracts with varying terms, the government will empower a single team to manage the contract.” 

With 75 active contracts between the Army and Palantir, it’s nearly impossible to track down what exactly the Army is using from Palantir, though we do have some ideas.

Palantir won its first major defense contract from the Army in 2019 when it scored $800 million to work on new battlefield intelligence software for the branch. It also scored contracts to build things like mobile battlefield intelligence trucks, and the Pentagon tapped it to develop the Maven Smart System after Google backed out of the deal following employee protests. 

More broadly, Palantir offers various data analytics tools and suites, any number of which may be in use. 

Beyond the US Army and the DoD, Palantir has also worked with US Immigration officials to develop deportation software, at the IRS to help it with new software initiatives, and even at US-backed mortgage broker Fannie Mae, where the company’s code has been put to use detecting fraud.

Palantir has found itself in US President Donald Trump’s good graces thanks to CEO Alex Karp’s previous comments about his opposition to “woke” ideology, support for DOGE, and comments about “powering the West to innate superiority.” This latest contract will likely do little to assuage conspiracy-minded fears that Palantir is gobbling up and monetizing government data for the benefit of Trump and a coterie of right-wing billionaires. 

By scoring an EA, Palantir finds itself in the company of defense contractors like Boeing, Northrop Grumman, and Lockheed Martin – an elite club, to be sure.

Palantir declined to comment on this story beyond pointing to the Army press release, while the US Army didn’t immediately respond to questions.

August 11, 2025 Posted by | USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

YouTube bans prominent Zelensky critic

Former TV host Diana Panchenko had more than 2 million subscribers when her account was deleted.

9 Aug 25, https://www.rt.com/russia/622688-youtube-ban-zelensky-critic/

YouTube has removed the 2-million-subscriber account of exiled Ukrainian Journalist of the Year Diana Panchenko, a fierce critic of Vladimir Zelensky.

In 2023, Kiev imposed personal sanctions on the former TV presenter and started criminal proceedings against her for her alleged anti-Ukrainian reporting.

Panchenko has long criticized Zelensky for rampant corruption in Ukraine, as well as his clampdown on freedom of speech. She has also condemned Kiev’s military actions in Donbass since 2014, and later accused the former actor of dragging the nation into a “forever war.”

“Diana Panchenko @Panchenko_X is one of the most famous women in Ukraine, former Journalist of the Year and opponent of the grossly corrupt Zelensky regime,” Irish journalist Chay Bowes wrote on X on Friday.

“YouTube just banned her and erased her account. She had 2 million followers,” he wrote. “The most dangerous weapon is Truth.”

Panchenko’s YouTube account is deleted as of the time of writing, but an archived snapshot shows that at least 2.09 million people subscribed to her channel as of last month.

Youtube, which is owned by Google, has extensively cracked down on and banned Russian media channels, as well as large pro-Moscow private accounts since the escalation of the Ukraine conflict.

Panchenko has also routinely criticized Kiev’s crackdown on alternative narratives in Ukraine.

Soon after the escalation of the conflict in 2022, Zelensky shut down multiple television channels associated with his political opposition and consolidated some of the country’s largest networks into a single 24/7 broadcast called the United News TV Telemarathon.

August 11, 2025 Posted by | media | Leave a comment

Australia to chart its own course on Palestinian statehood, without Trump’s say-so.

Trump’s return to the White House has already shifted global diplomatic currents, with several leaders recalibrating their positions to maintain favour. By declaring that Australia’s decision will not be subject to U.S. approval, Albanese is signalling a willingness to resist that pressure – even if it means copping criticism from one of the country’s most powerful media empires.

9 August 2025 Michael Taylor, https://theaimn.net/australia-to-chart-its-own-course-on-palestinian-statehood-without-trumps-say-so/

Australia’s decision on whether to recognise a Palestinian state will not be dictated by Washington – and that, apparently, was enough to attract howls of condemnation and disapproval from sections of the Murdoch media.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese confirmed this week that he was unlikely to consult with U.S. President Donald Trump before making any decision on recognition. It’s a simple case of Australia acting in Australia’s national interest, emphasising that the issue will be decided in Canberra, not in the White House.

The reaction from the Murdoch media was swift and fierce. Headlines and opinion columns framed Albanese’s stance as a diplomatic snub to a “key ally,” warning of potential damage to the Australia–U.S. relationship. The coverage fits a familiar pattern: when leaders diverge from U.S. policy – especially under a Republican president – Murdoch media frequently portrays it as reckless or unpatriotic.

At the heart of the dispute is a deeper question of sovereignty. Critics argue that Australia should stand firm on charting its own foreign policy, particularly on sensitive Middle East matters, which have been shaped for decades by complex international law and humanitarian concerns. Recognition of a Palestinian state has long been debated within Australia, with supporters citing the need for a two-state solution and opponents warning of diplomatic repercussions with Israel and the United States.

Trump’s return to the White House has already shifted global diplomatic currents, with several leaders recalibrating their positions to maintain favour. By declaring that Australia’s decision will not be subject to U.S. approval, Albanese is signalling a willingness to resist that pressure – even if it means copping criticism from one of the country’s most powerful media empires.

In a political environment where foreign policy is often filtered through the prism of domestic politics and media narratives, Albanese’s comments draw a sharp line: Australia will make its own call. The real question is whether the public sees that as principled independence – or unnecessary defiance.

Either way, the stance taps into a deeper tradition in Australian foreign policy: the belief that while alliances matter, sovereignty matters more. From Whitlam’s recognition of China to Howard’s refusal to sign the Kyoto Protocol, Australia has occasionally charted its own course against the preferences of powerful allies. Albanese’s decision – or even just his refusal to seek Trump’s blessing – may yet be remembered as another of those moments.

August 11, 2025 Posted by | AUSTRALIA, politics international | Leave a comment

No Nukes for Power, Posturing or Destruction

Karl Grossman, COUNTERPUNCH, August 8, 2025

(This is a presentation, titled “No Nukes for Power, Posturing or Destruction,” that I gave at the 2025 Hiroshima-Nagasaki Commemorative Event on Long Island this week organized by the South Country Peace Group and co-sponsored by other peace organizations and also religious institutions including the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Stony Brook; Bellport United Methodist Church; and Old South Haven Presbyterian Church. Peace groups included Pax Christi LI; LI Alliance for Peaceful Alternatives; North Country Peace Group; Veterans for Peace Long Island Chapter 138; and Peace Action New York State).

“We are in the hands of lunatics and at the crossroads of time,” Dr. Helen Caldicott said several years ago. A medical doctor, the author of books including Nuclear Madness published in 1978 and The New Nuclear Danger out three years ago, she declared: “It’s time we rise up and say ‘this is our world, we want to live.’”

It’s high time, very high time.

Indeed, we’re now on borrowed time.

This past Friday, President Trump stated: “Based on the highly provocative statements of the former president of Russia, Dmitry Medvedev…now…deputy chairman of the Security Council of the Russian Federation, I have ordered two nuclear submarines to be positioned in the appropriate regions.”

Medvedev, upon Trump’s demand reducing a ceasefire deadline in Russia’s war on Ukraine, said Trump was playing an “ultimatum game” with Russia. “Each new ultimatum is a threat and a step towards war. “Not between Russia and Ukraine, but with his own country.”

Medvedev said Trump should “revisit his favorite movies about the living dead and recall just how dangerous the mythical ‘Dead Hand’ can be.”

Russia’s “Dead Hand” system, as has been reported in recent days, is an automatic nuclear retaliation mechanism going back to the Cold War designed to launch a counterstrike even if the Russian leadership is wiped out in a first strike.

Trump shot back: “Tell Medvedev, the failed former President of Russia, who thinks he’s still president, to watch his words. He’s entering very dangerous territory!”

Russian President Putin of course has repeatedly threatened the use of nuclear weapons by Russia since its invasion of Ukraine.

Meanwhile, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un earlier was present when, as the headline of the Associated Press dispatch reported, “North Korea launches new intercontinental ballistic missile designed to threaten the U.S.,” said North Korea “will never change its line of bolstering up its nuclear forces.”

Indeed, “We are in the hands of lunatics and at the crossroads of time.” By the skin of our teeth, the world, since the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki 80 years ago, has avoided a global nuclear holocaust.

But as the heading of the announcement on January 28, 2025 of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, it’s Doomsday Clock is: “Closer than ever: It is now 89 seconds to midnight.” The Bulletin defines midnight on its Doomsday Clock as “nuclear annihilation.”

The announcement by the Bulletin, founded by Albert Einstein and former Manhattan Project scientists including J. Robert Oppenheimer immediately following the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, began: “In 2024, humanity edged ever closer to catastrophe. Trends that have deeply concerned” the Bulletin have “continued, and despite unmistakable signs of danger, national leaders and their societies have failed to do what is needed to change course. Consequently, we now move the Doomsday Clock from 90 seconds to 89 seconds to midnight—the closest it has ever been to catastrophe” since being set up in 1947.

The Bulletin’s announcement continued: “Our fervent hope is that leaders will recognize the world’s existential predicament and take bold action….In setting the Clock one second closer to midnight, we send a stark signal: Because the world is already perilously close to the precipice, a move of even a single second should be taken as an indication of extreme danger and an unmistakable warning that every second of delay in reversing course increases the probability of global disaster.”

It went on: “In regard to nuclear risk, the war in Ukraine, now in its third year, looms over the world; the conflict could become nuclear at any moment because of a rash decision or through accident or miscalculation….The countries that possess nuclear weapons are increasing the size and role of their arsenals, investing hundreds of billions of dollars in weapons that can destroy civilization.”

“Blindly continuing on the current path is a form of madness,” it said. “The United States, China, and Russia have the collective power to destroy civilization. These three countries have the prime responsibility to pull the world back from the brink, and they can do so if their leaders seriously commence good-faith discussions about the global threats outlined here. Despite their profound disagreements, they should take that first step without delay. The world depends on immediate action.”

“After 80 years, nuclear threat remains grave,” was the headline of a piece this week by Ira Helfand of the International Steering Group of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons.

Helfand began: “As we approach the 80th anniversary of the U.S. bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki…on Aug 6 and 9, respectively, the danger of nuclear war is great and growing….The world can no longer indulge in the denial which has marked our thinking since the end of the Cold War. Nuclear war is a real and present danger that we must acknowledge and confront.”

“A large-scale nuclear war between the United States and Russia, according to best available science, would kill hundreds of millions of people in the first afternoon, and lead to a global famine that kills some 6 billion people, three quarters of humanity, in the first two years,” it continued. “Even a more limited nuclear war, as might have taken place between India and Pakistan, could trigger a global famine that kills 2 billion people worldwide, including 130 million in the United States.”

I host a television program broadcast nationally and a while back interviewed Commander Robert Green formerly of the British Navy. He said: “I do feel that we’re in more dangerous times than in the Cold War at the moment and people don’t realize it.”

He was deeply involved in British readiness to use nuclear weapons……………………………

He said there has been a “systematic effort to play down the appalling side effects and ‘overkill’…with even the smallest modern nuclear weapons,” how they are “not weapons at all. They are utterly indiscriminate devices that combine the poisoning horrors of chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction, plus effects…of radioactivity, with almost unimaginable explosive violence.” Green is devoted to working for a “nuclear-free world.”

There is an illusion, a false notion that continues in many government quarters and among those with a vested interest in nuclear weapons—that nuclear war is feasible and winnable.


In my book, Cover Up: What You Are Not Supposed to Know About Nuclear Power, I quote from Legacy of Hiroshima, a book by Edward Teller, “father” of the hydrogen bomb.

Teller asserts that “we can survive a nuclear attack.” There is “no doubt” that millions of people would die, he concedes, but “most people” can be saved. ……………………………….

Nuclear power provides a direct link to nuclear weaponry. With more nations having the ability to construct nuclear weapons—and any country with a nuclear power facility has the materiel and trained personnel to make nuclear weapons—the likelihood of this luck running out is high. Any nuclear power facility can serve as a nuclear bomb factory……………………………………………………………………………………………………………… https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/08/08/no-nukes-for-power-posturing-or-destruction/

August 11, 2025 Posted by | opposition to nuclear | Leave a comment

Fire safety improvements required at Dungeness A

Sam Williams, 7 Aug 25, https://www.kentonline.co.uk/romney-marsh/news/fire-safety-improvements-required-at-power-station-328268/

Fire safety failings have been uncovered at a nuclear site in Kent, prompting a formal enforcement notice from the UK’s watchdog.

The Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) issued the notice to Nuclear Restoration Services (NRS) following inspections at its Dungeness A site on Romney Marsh.

Inspectors identified several safety shortfalls in the Fill House facility, a building used to retrieve and manage nuclear waste.

According to the ONR, issues were found with the site’s risk assessment, fire safety protocols, firefighting arrangements, and fire detection systems.

Tom Eagleton, ONR superintending inspector, said: “Fire safety is important in order to protect workers and the public, and we expect the necessary standards to be maintained at all times.

“This enforcement notice sets out the specific improvements that must be made by NRS to ensure adequate fire safety provisions are in place.

“We will continue to monitor NRS’ progress in addressing these issues in line with the relevant legislation.”

The enforcement action has been taken under the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005. NRS has been given a deadline of September 30, 2025, to rectify the problems and meet the required standards.

August 11, 2025 Posted by | safety, UK | Leave a comment

The Christian Zionist View of Foreign Policy Is Holy War.

Christian Zionists see Israel as the focus of US foreign policy — a handy euphemism for US empire.

By Sara Gabler , Truthout, August 6, 2025, https://truthout.org/articles/the-christian-zionist-view-of-foreign-policy-is-holy-war/?utm_source=Truthout&utm_campaign=7925a4b885-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2025_08_06_09_12&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_bbb541a1db-7925a4b885-650192793

You’re very much into God in this room and that’s very nice,” President Donald Trump told a group of business leaders at a July 14 luncheon hosted by the White House Faith Office. In attendance were dozens of corporate executives, including Hobby Lobby CEO David Green and oil billionaire Albert Huddleston, along with senior administration officials. “You’re more than just CEOs and business leaders and entrepreneurs. You’re stewards on divine assignment,” praised Paula White-Cain, the former televangelist who leads the White House Faith Office.

It seemed like a strange group of people to invite to the first-ever Faith Office luncheon, an office with the stated mission of ensuring religious groups can “compete on a level playing field for grants, contracts, programs, and other Federal funding opportunities.” But this was a gathering for Christian nationalists who believe that the United States was founded as a “Christian nation”; that the government should reflect Christian values (narrowly defined as white evangelical Protestant values); and that businesses such as Hobby Lobby can impose religious beliefs.

“We believe God is raising up business leaders who don’t separate faith from enterprise, but who see their platforms and their pulpits as their businesses and their instruments for eternal impact,” stressed White-Cain. This was not an ecumenical or interfaith message because, unsurprisingly, the Faith Office’s leaders are all Christians, and their “faith” is the political ideology of white Christian nationalism.

In true prosperity gospel form, Trump assured the CEOs and cabinet members: “Together we’re going to continue the fight for Judeo-Christian values of our Founding Fathers, we’ll grow our economy, we’ll protect our children.”

Trump’s language about Judeo-Christian values is also operative in another extremist ideology at work in his administration: Christian Zionism. Whereas Christian nationalism gives Trump and his supporters a shared language to talk about issues like so-called “anti-Christian bias” and “parental choice,” Christian Zionism gives them a language to make their support of Israel the focus of U.S. foreign policy — a handy euphemism for U.S. empire.

Cashing In on Spiritual Blessings

Christian Zionists believe that Israel is God’s “chosen” nation whose lands should be returned to the Jews, and they base their unwavering support of Israel and the Israeli government on literal readings of the Christian Bible. They often turn to a passage in the book of Genesis in which God promises the patriarch Abraham protection and prosperity, telling him: “I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse.” Christian Zionists interpret “great nation” in an ahistorical way, conflating the Bronze Age “nation of Israel,” the modern-day nation state of Israel, the Israeli government, and Jews, all of whom, they say, become God’s “chosen people.”

Pastor John Hagee, the founder of Christians United for Israel (CUFI), an organization with over 10 million members, loves to quote these verses. During CUFI’s 2025 national summit this summer, Hagee repeated this passage several times, building to a moral fervor in his warbling voice to announce: “We’re trying to be loyal to the state of Israel and loyal to the word of God.”

CUFI’s Christian Zionist message puts the prosperity gospel on steroids by yoking the U.S.’s material and spiritual success not just to the faith of its CEOs or political leaders, but to its support of the state of Israel. This reflects a desire on the part of Christian Zionists to write the United States into a biblical narrative. Because they struggle to find biblical grounds to explain the U.S.’s place in God’s divine plan, they’ve created a scenario in which American evangelical Christians become the champion of God’s original “chosen people,” and therefore reap God’s blessing.

And Dealing Out Curses

Christian Zionists then layer on a 19th-century apocalyptic theology known as “premillennial dispensationalism.” It’s a theory about how the world will end, and those who follow it believe that the return of Jews to Zion is a precondition for the rapture, tribulation, second coming of Christ, and the apocalypse. The establishment of the state of Israel in 1948, the conquering of the Old City of Jerusalem in 1967, and now the annexation of Palestinian territory and destruction of Gaza all are interpreted by Christian Zionists as the fulfillment of biblical prophecy.

Though there were and are theological debates about the apocalypse, premillennial dispensationalism gained currency. In the early 2000s, the Left Behind series of adult and young adult novels about new Christians living through the tribulation popularized these views and demonstrated how this version of Christian Zionism was far from fringe. These ideas cropped up again after the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023. They surfaced yet again after the U.S. bombed Iran on June 21 — when evangelical Christians in the U.S. started commenting with glee about how we were entering the “end times.”

The disgraced evangelical pastor Mark Driscoll was one figure claiming geopolitical and spiritual victory after the June bombing. On his YouTube channel he decried Iran, repeated worn racist tropes about “jihadists,” and said that it was time for the U.S. to cut off the “head of the snake” (meaning Iran, which Driscoll claimed is backing Hamas) in order to trigger the battle of Armageddon. Driscoll said that for this to happen, “Iran needs to be obliterated.”

Hagee also focused on Iran at the CUFI summit and quoted from Isaiah 62:1, which says, “For Zion’s sake will I not hold my peace, and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not rest,” to rationalize ending the peace process and sending more military aid to Israel. He repeated multiple times that, “Israel and Israel alone is the only friend we have in the Middle East,” further entrenching the orientalist idea of “civilized nations” (the U.S. and Israel) embattled against “uncivilized” religious and ethnic “others.” Both Driscoll and Hagee use the Bible to make their anti-Muslim and anti-Arab racism morally permissible.

For many lay Christian Zionists, the idea of a “holy war” between Israel and Iran has become their primary way of understanding U.S. foreign policy. And holy war can give America First-ers a rationale for supporting the U.S. wars in the Middle East, which would otherwise clash with their isolationist beliefs. We see this when Driscoll claims that the bombing of Iran is doubly successful because the U.S. has protected Israel and put no “boots on the ground” in the process. But this doesn’t mean that there were or are no U.S. troops or interests in the region. As Annelle Sheline of the Quincy Institute notes, there are plenty of U.S. contractors in the region causing further violence. In June, the U.S. deployed warships and aircraft to the Mediterranean Sea and the region to defend Israel. Further, nearly 40,000 U.S. troops are stationed in the Middle East across almost 30 bases, according to one count.

The fetishization of Jewish people and their history, the gatekeeping around what it means to be Jewish and attacks on anti-Zionist Jews, and Christians’ belief that Jews will have to convert to Christianity in order to be saved are all actual instances of antisemitism. Hagee has even promoted the idea that Hitler was a Jew. And at the CUFI summit, Hagee called for the passing of the “Antisemitism Awareness Act,” which uses the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism to effectively silence speech, against the wishes of the IHRA’s author. As lawyers Itamar Mann and Lihi Yona write, Christian nationalists, not Jewish people, serve to benefit from this proposed policy.

The fact that Israel is actively engaged in the genocide of Palestinians doesn’t seem to bother Christian Zionists because they believe in “the Jewish people’s right to return to their homeland,” which includes Gaza and the West Bank (or as Mike Huckabee, a Christian Zionist and now ambassador to Israel, prefers to call it, “Judea and Samaria”) — a settler and Christian Zionist revisioning of geography and language. As historian Thomas Lecaque writes, Christian Zionists “make the murder of Israelis and Palestinians — including children — about them and their religious ideas.”

Supremacist Ideology at Work

Christian Zionism was at the core of the lessons of my childhood in an evangelical community in Texas. I prayed for the “persecuted church” in the Middle East and longed to go on a Holy Land vacation. I watched John Hagee on TV and read books on spiritual warfare. I didn’t know any Jewish people, and, though my church put on a yearly Seder, it was only a kind of cultural tourism, an appropriation of a Jewish ritual.

I learned that Christian Zionists have little interest in actual, living Jewish people; they treat Jews as pawns on the way to Christians’ spiritual blessing or instrumental to the fulfillment of ancient prophetic texts. It took years to see this ideology for what it really was: supremacist and nationalist. There was a reason I wasn’t taught the history of the Bible or U.S. empire: Christian Zionist theology crumbles under the weight of fact and history. But in order to fully leave that world behind, I had to physically leave, get an education, and meet people who were different from me.

Repetition With a Difference

Christian Zionists’ rhetoric of holy war isn’t new and has shaped U.S. foreign policy since the 1970s, as American Studies scholar Amy Kaplan documented. Hal Lindsey and Tim LaHaye wrote best-selling books about the impending apocalypse and introduced several generations of evangelicals to the importance of Israel in political life. Other leaders like Jerry Falwell supported Menachem Begin’s 1981 strike on Iraq’s nuclear reactor and opposed the Oslo Accords of 1993, further entrenching Christian Zionists within the Republican Party. Hagee backed the transfer of the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in 2018. And the movement’s Islamophobia was revived by 9/11 and the Iraq War.

But what is new for Christian Zionists is Donald Trump. He is more than willing to use Christian Zionist prosperity-gospel messaging as a cover for the settler colonial project of turning the Gaza strip into the “Riviera of the Middle East.” Sending bombs and fighter jets to Israel is making this possible, and it’s a plan that has the support of Israeli politicians. If you’re Trump, supporting Israel is simply good for business, and he can bring his Christian base along by letting the Christian Zionists explain away war, ethnic cleansing, and genocide as spiritual matters.

August 9, 2025 Posted by | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

The Satanic Nature of the Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

 August 6, 2025 By Edward Curtin / Behind the Curtain, https://scheerpost.com/2025/08/06/the-satanic-nature-of-the-atomic-bombings-of-hiroshima-and-nagasaki/

“The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid ‘dens of crime’ that Dickens loved to paint…But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed, and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voice.”– C. S. Lewis, author’s preface, 1962, The Screwtape Letters

American history can only accurately be described as the story of demonic possession, however you choose to understand that phrase. Maybe radical “evil” will suffice. But right from the start the American colonizers were involved in massive killing because they considered themselves divinely blessed and guided, a chosen people whose mission would come to be called “manifest destiny.” Nothing stood in the way of this divine calling, which involved the need to enslave and kill millions of innocent people that continues down to today. “Others” have always been expendable since they have stood in the way of the imperial march ordained by the American god. This includes all the wars waged based on lies and false flag operations. It is not a secret, although many Americans, if they are even aware of it, prefer to see it as a series of aberrations carried out by “bad apples.” Or something from the past. Most know nothing about it, for they have never opened a history book.

Our best writers and prophets have told us the truth: Thoreau, Twain, William James, MLK, Fr. Daniel Berrigan, et al.: we are a nation of killers of the innocent.  We are conscienceless. We are brutal. We are in the grip of evil forces.

The English writer D. H. Lawrence said it perfectly in 1923, “The American soul is hard, isolate, stoic and a killer. It has never yet melted.” It still hasn’t.

When on August 6 and 9, 1945 the United States killed 200-300 thousand innocent Japanese civilians with atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, they did so intentionally. It was an act of sinister state terrorism, unprecedented by the nature of the weapons but not by the slaughter. The American terror bombings of Japanese cities that preceded the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki – led by the infamous Major General Curtis LeMay – were also intentionally aimed at Japanese civilians and killed hundreds of thousands of them.

Is there an American artist’s painting of Tokyo destroyed by the firebombing to go next to Picasso’s Guernica, where estimates of the dead range between 800 and 1,600?

In Tokyo alone more than 100,000 Japanese civilians were burnt to death by cluster bombs of napalm. All this killing was intentional. I repeat: Intentional. Is that not radical evil?  Demonic? Only five Japanese cities were spared such bombing. Sixty-seven cities were fire-bombed.

As a conclusion to such bombings, in August 1945 the atomic bombings were an intentional holocaust, not to end the war, as the historical record amply demonstrates, but to send a message to the Soviet Union that we could do to them what we did to the residents of Japan. President Truman made certain that the Japanese willingness to surrender in May 1945 was made unacceptable because he and his Secretary-of-State James Byrnes  wanted to use the atomic bombs – “as quickly as possible to ‘show results’” in Byrnes’ words – to send a message to the Soviet Union.

So “the Good War” was ended in the Pacific with the “good guys” killing hundreds of thousand Japanese civilians to make a point to the “bad guys,” who have been demonized ever since. Shortly after, in September 1945 the U.S War Department made plans to wipe out the U.S.’s ally, the Soviet Union, with a massive nuclear strike aimed at 66 major cities. Professor Michel Chossudovsky documents it here.

Satan always wears the other’s face.

Many Baby Boomers like to say they grew up with the bomb. They are lucky. They grew up. They got be scared. They got to hide under their desks and wax nostalgic about it. Do you remember dog tags?  Those 1950s and 1960s?  The scary movies?

The children of Hiroshima and Nagasaki who died under our bombs on August 6 and 9, 1945 didn’t get to grow up. They couldn’t hide. They just went under. To be accurate: we put them under. Or they were left to smolder for decades in pain and then die. But that it was necessary to save American lives is the lie. It’s always about American lives, as if the owners of the country actually cared about them.  But to tender hearts and innocent minds, it’s a magic incantation. Poor us!

Fat Man, Little Boy – how the names of those atomic bombs echo down the years to the now fat Americans who grew up in the 1950s and who think like little boys and girls about their country’s demonic nature. Innocence – it is wonderful! We are different now. “We are great because we are good”; that’s what Hillary Clinton told us. The Libyans can attest to that. We are exceptional, special. The 2020 election was said to prove that if we can defeat Mr. Pumpkin Head and restore America to its “core values,” all will be well.

Now that they were restored with Biden’s support for the U.S. proxy war against Russia via Ukraine and the Israeli genocide of the Palestinians, delusionary Trump 2024 voters might be learning that those core values are bipartisan. “We are great because we are good,” goes the mantra. We kill, therefore we are. There is a straight line from the nuclear bombing of Japan to the arrant U.S. support for Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians.

Perhaps you think I am cynical. But understanding true evil is not child’s play. It seems beyond the grasp of most Americans who need their illusions. Evil is real.  There is simply no way to understand the savage nature of American history without seeing its demonic nature. How else can we redeem ourselves at this late date, possessed as we are by delusions of our own God-blessed goodness?

But so many Americans play at innocence. They excite themselves at the thought that with the next election the nation will be “restored” to the right course. Of course there never was a right course, unless might makes right, which has always been the way of America’s rulers. Today, as in 2016, Trump is viewed by so many as an aberration. He is far from it. He’s straight out of a Twain short story. He’s Vaudeville. He’s Melville’s confidence man. He’s us. Did it ever occur to those who are fixated on him that if those who own and run the country wanted him gone, he’d be gone in an instant? He can tweet and tweet idiotically, endlessly send out messages that he will contradict the next day or minute, but as long as he protects the super-rich, accepts Israel’s control of him, and allows the CIA-military-industrial complex to do its world-wide killing and looting of the treasury, he will be allowed to entertain and excite the public – to get them worked up in a lather in pseudo-debates. And to make this more entertaining, he will be opposed by the “sane” Democratic opposition, whose intentions are as benign as an assassin’s smile.

Look back as far as you can to past U.S. presidents, the figureheads who “act under orders” (whose orders?), as did Ahab in his lust to kill the “evil” great white whale, and what do you see? You see servile killers in the grip of a sinister power. You see hyenas with polished faces. You see pasteboard masks. On the one occasion when one of these presidents dared to follow his conscience and rejected the devil’s pact that is the presidency’s killer-in-chief role, he – JFK – had his brains blown out in public view. An evil empire thrives on shedding blood, and it enforces its will through demonic messages.

Resist and there will be blood on the streets, blood on the tracks, blood in your face.

Despite this, President Kennedy’s witness, his turn from cold warrior to an apostle of peace in the final year of his presidency, remains to inspire a ray of hope in these dark days. As recounted by James Douglass in his masterful JFK and the Unspeakable, Kennedy agreed to a meeting in May 1962 with a group of Quakers who had been demonstrating outside the While House for total disarmament. They urged him to move in that direction. Kennedy was sympathetic to their position. He said he wished it were easy to do so from the top down, but that he was being pressured by the Pentagon and others to never do that, although he had given a speech urging “a peace race” together with the Soviet Union. He told the Quakers it would have to come from below. According to the Quakers, JFK listened intently to their points, and before they left said with a smile, “You believe in redemption don’t you?” Soon Kennedy was shaken to his core by the Cuban missile crisis when the world teetered on the brink of extinction and his insane military and “intelligence” advisers urged him to wage a nuclear war. Not long after, he took a sharp top-down turn toward peace despite their fierce opposition, a turn so dramatic over the next year that it led to his martyrdom. And he knew it would. He knew it would when he gave his extraordinary American University Commencement Address on June 10, 1963.

So hope is not all lost. There are great souls like JFK to inspire us. Their examples flash here and there. But to even begin to hope to change the future, a confrontation with our demonic past (and present) is first necessary, a descent into the dark truth that is terrifying in its implications. False innocence must be abandoned. Carl Jung, in “On the Psychology of the Unconscious,” addressed this with the words:

It is a frightening thought that man also has a shadow side to him, consisting not just of little weaknesses – and foibles, but of a positively demonic dynamism. The individual seldom knows anything of this; to him, as an individual, it is incredible that he should ever in any circumstances go beyond himself. But let these harmless creatures form a mass, and there emerges a raging monster; and each individual is only one tiny cell in the monster’s body, so that for better or worse he must accompany it on its bloody rampages and even assist it to the utmost. Having a dark suspicion of these grim possibilities, man turns a blind eye to the shadow-side of human nature. Blindly he strives against the salutary dogma of original sin, which is yet so prodigiously true. Yes, he even hesitates to admit the conflict of which he is so painfully aware.

How can one describe men who would intentionally slaughter so many innocent people?  American history is rife with such examples up to the present day. The native peoples, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Gaza, Ukraine, Iran, etc. – the list is very long. Savage wars carried out by men and women who own and run the country, and who try to buy the souls of regular people to join them in their pact with the devil, to acquiesce to their ongoing wicked deeds. Such monstrous evil was never more evident than on August 6 and 9, 1945.

Unless we enter into deep contemplation of the evil that was released into the world with those bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we are lost in a living hell without escape. And we will pay. Nemesis always demands retribution, as the ancient Greeks said. We have gradually been accepting rule by those for whom the killing of innocents is child’s play, and we have been masquerading as innocent and good children for whom the truth is too much to bear. “Indeed, the safest road to Hell is the gradual one,” Screwtape, the devil, tells his nephew, Wormwood, a devil in training, “the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.”  That’s the road we’ve been traveling, as Trump’s second term is showing us, as he facilely and recklessly talks of nuclear war and makes moves that make it more likely.

The projection of evil onto others works only so long.  We must reclaim our shadows and withdraw our projections.  Only the fate of the world depends on it.

August 9, 2025 Posted by | Religion and ethics | Leave a comment

No more Hiroshimas

  by beyondnuclearinternational

Why is our response to atomic horror to arm up and ignore other atrocities, asks Linda Pentz Gunter.

For 80 years, the Hibakusha (survivors) of the United States atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, have been warning the world  — “never again”. Never again should such weapons of terror be used, on civilians or on anyone. Never again should human beings treat other human beings as sacrificial and expendable. Peace is the only way forward, they plead.

Now it is 80 years since those two terrible days on August 6 and 9, 1945, when the United States chose to end the lives of what would eventually become at least 200,000 people in a callous public relations exercise to prove its might to the Soviet Union. Today, those Hibakusha still alive must surely be asking: “why haven’t you been listening?”

Even though the world has not used nuclear weapons again in war, the nine official nuclear-armed nations went on to “test” their nuclear weapons more than 2,000 times on other innocent communities mostly far away from their own — including in the Pacific, Australia, the Sahara and Kazakhstan — and even, in the case of the US, on its own people in Nevada. The very first atomic victims were of course those downwind of the July 16, 1945 Trinity test in New Mexico that launched the atomic age and the nuclear arms race.

Thanks to luck or grace but certainly not wisdom, we have not yet arrived at the finish line of nuclear annihilation. But we have not won the race to eliminate nuclear weapons, either. Despite international efforts, first with the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) of 1968 and then the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons that entered into force in 2021, nuclear weapon nations are arming up, not drawing down. 

The United States already has 5,428 nuclear weapons but is looking at spending around $95 billion a year on the euphemistically named “modernization” of its nuclear arsenal, code for “expansion”. For example, the US has ordered the development of a new B61-13 nuclear gravity bomb, just one part of a significant rebuild.

The Russian arsenal remains the world’s largest with 5,580 nuclear weapons. Russia claims to have tested new nuclear weapons, including undetectable ones, and the US has accused Russia of planning to develop a space-based anti-satellite nuclear weapon, something the Russians deny. China has also increased the number of its nuclear warheads from the low 200s to approximately 500.

France, which possesses 290 operational nuclear warheads – the fourth largest inventory in the world – is also “modernizing” its nuclear weapons systems. This year, it chose to allocate at least 14 percent of its defense budget to nuclear “deterrence” operations, up from 12.5 percent in 2020.

The UK government announced in June 2025 that it would purchase twelve nuclear-capable F-35A fighter jets from the US and raise its spending on defence to 5 percent of the national GDP by 2035. The UK is also replacing its Vanguard nuclear-armed submarines with a new class of Dreadnought submarines equipped with Trident II D-5 missiles, at an estimated cost of at least $42 billion. 

By July 2025, there were clear indications that US nuclear weapons, specifically the B61-12 thermonuclear gravity bomb, were already back in Britain at RAF Lakenheath in Suffolk, actually a US Air Force base despite its misleading name.

North Korea, India and Pakistan show no intention of abandoning their nuclear weapon programs. Israel, the only undeclared nuclear weapon state, endowed with a unique status by the United Nations of having to neither confirm nor deny the existence of its atomic arsenal, has anywhere between 80 to 200 nuclear weapons.(South Africa remains the only country ever to develop and then dismantle its nuclear weapons.)

Other countries aspire to join the Nuclear Club, but they disguise their plans under the pretext of civil nuclear power programs. …………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

Before long, most of the Hibakusha will be gone. They will join the other ancestors from past and now present atrocities, who stare back at us with horror, asking us “why are you still letting this happen?” https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2025/08/06/no-more-hiroshimas/

August 9, 2025 Posted by | Uncategorized | 1 Comment

80 years since Hiroshima and Nagasaki — time for a nuclear-free world for a peaceful, sustainable future

Sam Annesley,  Executive Director at Greenpeace Japan.6 Aug 2025 ,https://www.greenpeace.org/international/story/77462/80-years-since-hiroshima-and-nagasaki-time-for-a-nuclear-free-world-for-a-peaceful-sustainable-future/

This year marks the 80th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. First, I would like to express my deepest condolences to all those who lost their lives as a result of the atomic bombings, and to those who survived the ravages of war and still live with physical and mental scars, as well as to those around the world who are still in the midst of war and violence.

On August 6 and 9, 1945, atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, instantly claiming the lives of tens of thousands of people. Even after that, radiation-related disabilities, illnesses, and discrimination continued to have a huge impact on the lives of many people. 

However, even 80 years later, the threat of nuclear weapons has not disappeared from the world. In fact, the development of nuclear weapons and missiles by certain nations – Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and nuclear threats, and recent airstrikes by the United States and Israel on Iran’s nuclear facilities – all pose nuclear threats that endanger countless lives, lurking just beyond our daily lives. However, the international community at large, lacks the power to strongly deter such threats and faces an extremely serious crisis. 

If nuclear weapons were ever used again, the damages would be unimaginably devastating. Japan experienced this firsthand. As the only country in the world to have experienced the devastation of nuclear weapons in war, Japan has already witnessed the inhumane consequences of such weapons in Hiroshima and Nagasaki 80 years ago. And as a nation that has personally experienced the horrors of war and nuclear weapons, Japan has a responsibility to firmly oppose any act of war and to clearly demonstrate its commitment to achieving peace. 

Greenpeace was founded in 1971 to oppose nuclear testing by the U.S. military in Alaska, and has since taken numerous actions to protect human life and the environment, including rescuing and transporting residents of Rongelap Island in the Marshall Islands who had been exposed to U.S. nuclear testing. In 1991, during the Gulf War, Greenpeace, in cooperation with other organizations, investigated the environmental pollution caused by oil intentionally released into the Persian Gulf by the Iraqi military, and found that the oil had caused serious damage to the marine ecosystem. We are convinced that protecting the environment goes hand in hand with protecting peace for all.

During wars, oil spills, fires and bombings may all happen and even individually release massive amounts of greenhouse gases and toxic chemicals that seriously contaminate water, air, soil and ecosystems. War is not only the greatest form of human destruction, but also of environmental destruction. The use of nuclear weapons, which carry the risk of  exposure to radiation and radioactive contamination, seriously affects the environment and people’s lives and health. That is why it is essential to aim for a world free from war and nuclear weapons. 

2021 marked the entry into force of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW). However, Japan, the only country in the world to have suffered atomic bombings during wartime, has yet to ratify the treaty. Greenpeace will continue to urge Japan and all nuclear-armed states to join. We believe that passing on the determination to never start war to the next generation is a vital step toward protecting all lives and building a green and peaceful society. We will persist in our efforts to make this vision a reality.

August 9, 2025 Posted by | politics international | Leave a comment

AUKUS delusions. More rivets pop in submarine drama.

by Rex Patrick | Aug 4, 2025 https://michaelwest.com.au/aukus-delusions-more-rivets-pop-in-submarine-drama/

Announcing a new one-sided subs-deal with the UK, resisting calls for a review, ignoring a US Admiral’s caution, while building hundreds of houses for US military. AUKUS is having a shocker. Former senator and submariner  Rex Patrick reports.

On Friday, 25  July, Defence Minister Richard Marles and Foreign Minister Penny Wong stood beside their UK counterparts at a brief press conference in Sydney. They answered questions on a new 50-year treaty-level agreement between the UK and Australia related to the AUKUS submarine scheme.

The journalists who attended the press conference were not in possession of the text of the agreement, which was not actually signed by Marles and UK Defence Secretary John Healey until the following day, and not in Sydney but rather in Geelong. Without the text of the treaty being released, no hard questions could be asked (see below).

Marles apparently thought it more important to have the text signed a day after the ministerial discussions so that the “Nuclear-Powered Submarine Partnership and Collaboration Agreement between the Government of Australia and the Government of Great Britain and Northern Ireland” could be informally named after his hometown, as “the Geelong Treaty”.

The whole stage-managed affair was one that would have left everyone feeling warm and fuzzy in the halls of Parliament, where rhetoric counts for more than reality.

Meanwhile, in US Congress

About the same time, the Geelong Treaty was being announced, news was breaking in Australia of the testimony to the United States Senate of the nominee to serve as the next US Chief of Navy, Admiral Daryl Caudle.  What he had to say did not augur well for Australia eventually being provided with three US Virginia-class nuclear-powered attack submarines as envisaged under AUKUS.

“The question of Australia’s ability to conduct undersea warfare is not in question by me or by anyone,” the admiral told the Senate Armed Services Committee’s seapower subcommittee. “But as you know, the delivery pace is not where it needs to be to make good on the Pillar 1 of the AUKUS agreement, which is currently under review by our Defense Department”.

Caudle testified that “There are no magic beans.”

“We do have to understand whether or not the industrial base can produce the submarines required so that we can make good on the actual pact that we made with the U.K. and Australia, which is around 2.2., 2.3 Virginia-class submarines per year.”

“That’s going to require a transformational improvement, not a 10 percent improvement, not a 20 percent, a 100 percent improvement.”

Of course, none of this was really news. The US Congressional Research Service and numerous other well-informed observers have been spelling out these facts for some time, but Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Defence Minister Marles remain wilfully blind to the facts.  Having put all their political chips on AUKUS, they don’t want to see or hear anything negative.  Instead of a pause, they’ve been writing taxpayer-funded cheques to gift United States shipyards.

They quietly slipped the US Government another non-refundable $800M last week – following on from a non-refundable $800M in February.

No control, no warranty

By Monday, the ‘Geelong Treaty’ had been tabled in the Parliament.

A read of the treaty documents revealed the completely lop-sided nature of the partnership with the UK. Whilst Australia gets to have a bit of a say, the UK get to decide the design of SSN-AUKUS.  Australia will be buying and building a British design, and the success, delivery schedule, and cost will be absolutely dependent on the United Kingdom’s currently run-down and struggling submarine industrial base.

And if it doesn’t work in the end, there is no warranty.


During the election campaign, a number of cross-benchers and the Greens started calling for an AUKUS inquiry, a call repeated this week by Senator David Shoebridge. He lodged a motion to establish a Select Committee into what is our most expensive and purportedly most important Defence procurement project ever.

The inquiry motion was originally set to be voted on on Tuesday, but as the week progressed, Senator Shoebridge kept postponing it. That’s a signal that he didn’t have the numbers to get a ‘yes’ vote. The Labor Party has already ruled out an inquiry, and it looks like the Senator is trying to get the Liberal Party on board.

We’ll now find out the inquiry’s fate on 25 August. The Liberal Party are unlikely to support the inquiry. They want to criticise the government’s handling of the US alliance, but they have no intention of questioning AUKUS, which, after all, was first conceived by their man, Prime Minister Scott Morrison.

It’s an all-eggs-in-the-one-$368B-basket capability acquisition full of risk – but it appears as though there will be no oversight.

As the Parliament appears reluctant to review AUKUS, in true Trump tariff negotiation style, the US Defence Department announced its review of AUKUS would not be completed until “fall” (the next three months).

Housing bill waved through

To add icing on the cake, the government’s first Housing Bill in the 48th Parliament, voted through the House on Wednesday by the duopoly, was one to build houses, not for Australians, but for foreign military personnel and their families in Perth.

As Senator Shoebridge tried to have this Bill referred to a Senate Committee, he laid it out:

“In the last parliament, we saw Labor coming up with a million reasons they couldn’t do anything on public housing. They couldn’t help people out on rents, they couldn’t build public housing, and they kept saying it was all the Greens’ fault for not supporting their crap bills. Then, in this parliament, they start with a public housing bill. Well done, Labor! You bring a public housing bill into the chamber. You push it through the lower house. And do you know what public housing they’re building? They’re building public housing for US troops under AUKUS. That’s their public housing bill.”

“Please, minister, you haven’t explained in the bill how much this is going to cost; is it going to come from the Defence budget or some other budget?”

No answer was given, and no referral to a committee occurred.

The AUKUS week closed with some lobbying on Sky by former Secretary of Home Affairs, Michael Pezzulo. Pezzulo is officially disgraced, but is not without expertise on national security issues.

Pezzulo does know something about the financing of Australia’s defence capabilities, and he issued a blunt warning about the scale and urgency of Australia’s AUKUS commitments, saying the nuclear submarine program will demand a national effort on par with Medicare.

“It’s like having the military version of Medicare. It’s something that’s got to become an all-consuming, focused effort that transcends Commonwealth, state, territory governments into industry, academia, the training pipeline through both universities and vocational educational training institutions.”

All that statement does is roll out the trifecta. The US can’t deliver Virginia Class submarines to us; the UK submarine industry is a cluster fiasco; and Australia’s not ready. And, we will have to make AUKUS submarines our number one national priority if we are to have any chance of success.


In 2023 Paul Keating – without knowledge of the total $4.7B that is to be gifted to the United States, or the similar amount that is being gifted to the UK, nor the facts that the US is unlikely to deliver, and that we really don’t have any rights in relation to the SSN-AUKUS – called it “the worst deal in all history”.

Knowing what we know now, Keating was wrong. He should have said “dumbest deal in all history”.

August 9, 2025 Posted by | AUSTRALIA, politics international | Leave a comment

Nuclear Roulette

 by Dr David Lowry, Institute for Resource and Security Studies

 OR more than 60 years, good management and good fortune have meant
that nuclear arsenals have not been used. But we cannot rely on history
just to repeat itself, “ so said Margaret Beckett when Labour’s foreign
secretary in a notable speech to a nuclear affairs conference in Washington
DC on June 25 2007. This week, as the world commemorates the atomic
immolation of two Japanese cities — the unforgettable Hiroshima and
Nagasaki — in which some 200,000 human beings were instantly incinerated
and fatally irradiated, the nuclear sabres have been rattling once more.

 Morning Star 8th Aug 2025
https://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/article/nuclear-roulette

August 9, 2025 Posted by | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Israel Preparing To Escalate Military Offensive in Gaza

An Israeli official said Netanyahu is pushing for ‘the release of hostages as part of a military resolution’

by Dave DeCamp | August 3, 2025 https://news.antiwar.com/2025/08/03/israel-preparing-to-escalate-military-offensive-in-gaza/

The Israeli military is drawing up plans to escalate its genocidal war in the Gaza Strip that will soon be presented to Israeli political leadership, Haaretz reported on Sunday.

An Israeli official said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “is pushing for the release of hostages as part of a military resolution,” and he is set to discuss the matter with his cabinet on Tuesday. According to the Haaretz report, the idea is to extend ground operations into sensitive areas, including Gaza’s central refugee camps, where Israeli captives are believed to be held.

Israeli officials are now claiming that Hamas doesn’t want a deal, even though the group has long said it is willing to release all remaining Israeli captives in exchange for a permanent ceasefire. Officials are pointing to Hamas’s denial of a claim by US envoy Steve Witkoff, who said the group was willing to disarm. Hamas responded that it would only give up its weapons if an independent Palestinian state were established.

Witkoff was in Israel on Friday and Saturday and met with family members of Israelis being held in Gaza. He told them that President Trump no longer seeks a temporary ceasefire deal but wants a comprehensive one that will free the remaining 20 living Israeli captives. However, Netanyahu hasn’t shown interest in a deal, and there’s no sign that Trump is willing to put pressure on him.

The family members of Israeli captives in Gaza want a diplomatic solution and are against military escalation. The Hostages and Missing Families Forum has criticized the reported plans for the expansion of military operations, warning that “expanding the war endangers the lives of the hostages, who are already in immediate danger of death.”

Netanyahu claimed on Sunday that the videos of two emaciated Israeli captives released by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) show that Hamas “doesn’t want a deal” and vowed that he would work to “eliminate” the Palestinian group. For its part, Hamas insisted that the Israeli prisoners eat “what our fighters and our people eat” and said that the Red Cross could deliver aid to them if Israel permanently opened humanitarian corridors and halted airstrikes during aid deliveries.

Israel has been under significant international pressure to allow more aid into Gaza as Palestinians are starving to death due to its blockade. The Haaretz report said that the US and Israel appear to be moving toward expanding Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) distribution points in north Gaza, which would require Israel to occupy more territory.

Nearly 1,000 Palestinians have been killed by the IDF near GHF distribution sites, according to the UN. Anthony Aguilar, a retired US Army Green Beret who worked at GHF sites, has blown the whistle on the operation and says that the sites were designed purposely so Palestinians seeking aid would have to walk through combat zones where they can be killed. He said that he witnessed the IDF commit war crimes by firing into crowds of hungry civilians.

Despite the massacres near GHF sites, the operation has received a resounding endorsement from the Trump administration. On Friday, Witkoff and US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee visited a GHF site, a move that was criticized as a PR stunt.

August 7, 2025 Posted by | Gaza, Israel, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Europe’s electricity system tested by heatwaves as air-conditioning use soars – nuclear power plants affected.

 Record temperatures force temporary shutdowns at power plants.
Europe’s energy systems have come under intense strain this summer as
repeated heatwaves have driven up demand for electricity and forced plants
to pause production. June was the hottest on record in western Europe,
fuelling a rise in the use of air conditioning and prompting a sharp
increase in electricity prices. Most parts of the region experienced at
least two intense periods of heat in June and July, with some suffering
more.

The barrage of heatwaves this summer marked a “massive change”
for Europe’s energy systems, said Jan Rosenow, leader of the energy
programme at Oxford university’s Environmental Change Institute. Peak
electricity demand has historically happened in winter in Europe, but as
“summers get hotter at some point that might flip”, he said. SSE, the
UK power company, said generation from its hydropower plants dropped by 40
per cent quarter on quarter to the end of June, as Britain also grappled
with heatwaves and severe drought. Inland nuclear power plants across
France and Switzerland temporarily suspended or reduced activity earlier in
the summer, as it is harder to cool reactors in hot weather.

In France, 17 out of 18 nuclear power plants faced capacity reductions during the
June-July heatwave, Ember said. Most inland nuclear plants rely on rivers
to cool reactors and spent fuel, heating the water in the process before
discharging it back. But with many rivers already hot, the plants could not
discharge heated water without potentially damaging the river ecology.

 FT 3rd Aug 2025, https://www.ft.com/content/23b3dc59-b40f-48e2-ad93-e301de7ac5f2

August 7, 2025 Posted by | climate change, EUROPE | Leave a comment

Chris Hedges: The Gaza Riviera

Text originally published July 26, 2025.

Scheerpost, By Chris Hedges / The Chris Hedges Report, August 4, 2025 , https://scheerpost.com/2025/08/04/chris-hedges-the-gaza-riviera-2/

TRANSCRIPT:


Israelis do not see the images of skeletal corpses of Palestinian children who they have starved to death as a curse. They do not see the slain families they gun down at food hubs — designed not to deliver aid but lure starving Palestinians into a massive concentration camp in the south of Gaza in preparation for deportation — as a war crime. Israelis do not look at the savage bombing and shelling that kill or wound dozens of Palestinian civilians, where an average of 28 children die daily, as anything extraordinary. They do not see the wasteland of Gaza, pulverized by bombs and methodically being torn down by bulldozers and excavators, leaving virtually the entire population of Gaza homeless, as barbaric. They do not see the destruction of water purification plants, decimation of hospitals and clinics, where doctors and medical staff are often unable to work because they are weak from malnutrition, as savage. They do not blink at the assassinations of doctors as well as journalists, 232 of whom have been murdered for trying to document the horror.

Israelis have blinded themselves morally and intellectually…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

The genocide in Gaza signals the abolition, for Israelis as well as Palestinians, of the rule of law. It marks the obliteration of even the pretense of an ethical code. Israelis are the barbarians they condemn. If there is any warped justice in this genocide it is that Israelis, once they finish with the Palestinians, will be forced to live together in moral squalor. https://scheerpost.com/2025/08/04/chris-hedges-the-gaza-riviera-2/

August 7, 2025 Posted by | Atrocities, Gaza, Israel, Religion and ethics | Leave a comment

The new space race: How the US, China, and Russia are all vying to be the first to build a nuclear reactor on the MOON.

By WILIAM HUNTER, SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY REPORTER, 5 August 2025, https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-14971339/new-space-race-US-China-Russia.html

In the years of the Cold War, the US and the Soviet Union tussled to prove their superiority by rushing to become the first nation to put a man on the moon.

While America might have claimed that particular prize in 1969, a new and even more dramatic space race is only just beginning.

This week, it was revealed that Sean Duffy, the new head of NASA, is preparing to install an American nuclear reactor on the moon before 2030.

In a directive, first reported by Politico, Mr Duffy claims this would allow the US to declare a ‘keep-out zone’ on the lunar surface.

This is seen as a necessary step towards protecting the landing site for a future American moon base, planned as part of the Artemis Programme.

However, the US is far from being the only country to set its sights on our lunar satellite.

In May, China and Russia signed a memorandum of cooperation to build their own nuclear reactor on the moon.

But with Russia and China targeting 2036 as their completion date, the three superpowers are now locked in a head-to-head race to get there first.

This comes as the US makes a rapid and unexpected shift towards prioritising human exploration in space.

Despite slashing scientific missions and giving NASA the smallest budget since 1961, the agency has allocated more than $7 billion for lunar exploration.

The Artemis programme, once feared to be a target for Donald Trump’s cuts, is now scheduled to return a human presence to the moon by 2027.

In the directive, Mr Duffy called for NASA to ‘move quickly’ in establishing a nuclear reactor on the moon in order to ‘support a future lunar economy‘.

Mr Duffy, who is also US transport secretary, has asked NASA to place a reactor capable of producing at least 100 kilowatts on the moon by the end of the decade.

That is enough energy to power 80 average American households and could provide the energy backbone for a permanent lunar base.

NASA had previously planned to place a 40-kilowatt reactor on the moon in a similar timeframe, but it is not clear if they will be able to use the same designs.

Mr Duffy will give NASA 30 days to appoint an official to oversee the operation and 60 days to issue a request seeking proposals from commercial companies for the project.

Nuclear power is seen as key for establishing a lunar presence because it is plunged into complete, freezing darkness for two weeks every month.

At the South Pole, where NASA is planning to establish its operations, the sun never rises high above the horizon and some craters are shrouded in permanent darkness.

That makes it practically impossible for spacecraft or bases to survive on the moon using solar power and batteries alone.

However, this sudden swing back to lunar exploration may be a product of increasing competition from other superpowers.

Tellingly, Mr Duffy warned that ‘the first country to do so could potentially declare a keep-out zone which would significantly inhibit the United States from establishing a planned Artemis presence if not there first.’

This is almost certainly a reference to Russia and China’s recent plans to build a nuclear reactor on the moon, announced in May.

That reactor would be used to power the International Lunar Research Station (ILRS), which should be completed by 2036 according to the latest plans.

Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, wrote in a statement at the time: ‘The station will conduct fundamental space research and test technology for long-term uncrewed operations of the ILRS, with the prospect of a human being’s presence on the Moon.’

The groundwork will be laid by China’s upcoming Chang’e-8 mission, which will be the nation’s first attempted human moon landing.

This means that the moon, and especially the south pole, is now becoming the target of a new international space race.

Dr Mark Hilborne, a security studies expert from King’s College London, told Daily Mail: ‘The Moon is a place where nations will have competing interests. There will be parts of the moon that are more valuable than others and, therefore, could be particular points of competition.

‘The Moon is valuable as a low-gravity staging base where future space developments can be built. Lunar materials, mined in situ, would be valuable in building elements that would further lunar exploration.

‘If these could be built on the Moon, rather than sent from Earth, the cost would be far cheaper.’

The big concern for the US, and presumably Russia and China, is that whatever country starts building on the moon first could effectively claim it as its own territory

Countries’ dealings in space are governed by a set of rules called the Outer Space Treaty, which was first signed in 1967.

Signatories to the treaty agree that space is ‘not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means.’

This explicitly means that nations are not legally able to make territorial claims on celestial bodies like the moon.

However, in practice, America has recently doubled down on a far more assertive version of the law by signing a series of rules called the Artemis Accords in 2020.

Critically, the Artemis Accords also gives states the power to implement ‘safety zones’ – exclusive areas which members of other states will not be able to enter or use without permission from the owner.

While the US insists that these boundaries will end ‘when the relevant operation ceases’, for a permanent colony, this would function almost exactly like the borders of a sovereign territory.

These rules essentially create a principle that whoever gets to a part of the moon first gets to keep it for their own use.

Dr Jill Stuart, an expert on space law from the London School of Economics, told Daily Mail: ‘Countries could use a part of the lunar surface for a scientific base – without claiming long-term ownership of it – but must communicate to other users where that base is and be transparent about its purpose.

‘Although this seems like a potentially “fair” way to allow for future activity on the moon, it also creates a “first mover advantage” in that those who can set up bases first have the right to claim a safety zone around it.’

That idea may now be alarming to America as China shows rapid advancements in its spaceflight program that have put a human presence on the moon within reach.

While these safety zones might be essential for a nuclear reactor, experts say this may lead to an increasingly risky space race. 

Dr Fabio Tronchetti, a space law expert from Northumbria University, told Daily Mail: ‘It is evident that we are heading towards a space rush.

‘The United States is attempting to act quickly and get to the Moon first, at least before China and Russia, so as to be able to unilaterally claim the right to set out the rules of the game.’

This has the serious potential to spark conflict between the nations since China and Russia, having not signed the Artemis Accords, have no legal requirement to respect the US ‘keep-out zones’. 

Dr Tronchetti says that international law ‘does not recognise the possibility’ of the US’s claims, adding that the US is attempting to ‘force its [China’s] hand to set out rules favourable to its own interests’. 

How this conflict might play out on the lunar surface remains to be seen, but in the future, we might see the conflicts here on Earth extend out into space.

August 7, 2025 Posted by | politics international, Reference, space travel | Leave a comment

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