The Empire Backs Down, For Now
Caitlin Johnstone, Apr 08, 2026, https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/the-empire-backs-down-for-now?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=193539985&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
Trump has announced a two-week ceasefire with Iran after previously threatening to exterminate their “entire civilization”, citing “a 10 point proposal from Iran” as the reason for the climb-down.
Trump and his cronies are spinning this as a colossal victory for the United States and framing Tehran’s 10-point plan as a major capitulation to the president’s threats. But some reporters are noting that Iran has had the same terms on the table for weeks — which would mean that it is in fact the White House who is backing down.
Hours before the president’s announcement, Drop Site’s Ryan Grim posted a TikTok video arguing that Trump could save face while walking back from his apocalyptic threats by simply accepting Iran’s 10-point peace plan and acting like it’s a new proposal the Iranians had only just put forward. Grim argued that Trump could get away with this because the western media have been completely ignoring Iran’s stated terms for a ceasefire this entire time.
Interestingly, this appears to have been precisely what Trump wound up doing. After previously rejecting Iran’s proposals as “not good enough”, the president turned around and framed the Iranian offer as a brand new response to the pressures his administration was able to impose upon them.
All the way back on March 28, Drop Site News reported the following:
“Among Iran’s terms for permanently ending the war are a longterm guarantee that the U.S. and Israel will not attack Iran again and that any ceasefire also apply to Lebanon, Iraq and Palestine; reparations for the damages done to Iran during the war; sanctions relief; and that Iran retain control over the Strait of Hormuz.”
These are the same terms Iran is claiming it pressured the US to accept today. Iranian state media outlet Press TV cited Iran’s supreme national security council as saying “Iran achieved historic victory by forcing criminal US to accept its 10-point plan. US has accepted Iran’s control over Strait of Hormuz, enrichment right, removal of all sanctions.”
The New York Times reports the following:
“Two senior Iranian officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive negotiations, said the proposal included a guarantee that Iran would not be attacked again, an end to Israeli strikes against Hezbollah in Lebanon and the lifting of all sanctions.
“In return, Iran would lift its de facto blockade of the key shipping route through the Strait of Hormuz. Iran would also impose a fee of roughly $2 million per ship that it would split with Oman, which sits across the strait. Iran would use its share of the proceeds to reconstruct infrastructure destroyed by American and Israeli attacks, rather than demand direct compensation, according to the plan.”
So as things stand right now this certainly looks like a humiliating defeat for the empire. Iran gets a lot of things it didn’t have before the war, including tolling the Strait of Hormuz and relief from the US sanctions that have been crushing its economy for years, while the empire gets to resume its shipping for a hefty fee and pretend it just rescued the world from a nuclear Iran.
Quite the turnaround from a White House that just last month was saying “There will be no deal with Iran except UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER!”
Quincy Institute’s Trita Parsi, who always has great insights regarding western warmongering toward Iran, writes the following:
“I cannot emphasize this enough. A new dynamic will be at play when the US and Iran meet in Islamabad to negotiate a final deal based on Iran’s 10-point plan: Trump’s failed war has eliminated the potency of American military threats in US-Iran diplomacy. The US can still issue threats, but everyone will know that they no longer carry much weight. Essentially, war with Iran was tried and failed. As a result, negotiations will have to be based on genuine compromises from both sides, rather than coercion from either side.
There are of course many, many reasons to be pessimistic. The US and Israel have demonstrated time and time again that they will attack Iran during negotiations, and even if the US holds up its end of the bargain we can always see Israel sabotage the deal with its own aggressions. By now Iran has to know that the only way to protect itself from Israel is to impose costs for Israeli aggression on the entire western world; Tehran will have us all heating our homes with trash fires and growing carrots in our backyards if the west can’t find a way to rein in Israel.
For what it’s worth, Zionist Twitter is in absolute meltdown right now, with notorious Israel apologists like Laura Loomer, Eve Barlow and Eli David rending their garments in outrage that the killing has ended with Iran positioned as it is. I’m as skeptical about this ceasefire as anyone, but the fact that the world’s worst people are in meltdown about it right now does provide a faint glimmer of hope.
We shall see.
14 April – Zoom -Nuclear Power is Not the Solution
Nuclear Power is Not the Solution – (Apr 15, 2026 01:00 AM in Canberra, Melbourne, Sydney)
Join the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) on Tuesday, April 14th for a timely webinar exploring the risks associated with nuclear power and challenging the myth that it offers a simple, safe, carbon-free solution to the climate crisis. Taking place in the context of the 40th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster and the upcoming Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference, this discussion will reflect on past lessons while looking ahead to a nuclear-free future.
Taking place in the context of the 40th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster and the upcoming Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference, this webinar will explore the risks associated with nuclear power and challenge the myth that it offers a simple, safe, carbon-free solution to the climate crisis.
Expert speakers include:
- Linda Pentz Gunter, Beyond Nuclear, highlighting overall dangers of nuclear power
- Dr. Paul Saoke, IPPNW Kenya, highlighting reflections from his 2025 book on extractive practices of uranium mining across the continent
- Tim Jusdon, Nuclear Information and Resource Service, highlighting nuclear power expansion in response to AI energy needs
- Vladimir Slyviak, Ecodefense, highlighting Zaporizhzhia and risks in war zones
- Moderator: Laura Wunder, IPPNW Germany
Trump’s Genocidal Threats on Iran Are Enabled by a Vast Apparatus of Destruction
most people with common sense are speculating whether Trump will use one of the United States’ 3,700 nuclear weapons on Iran. Let us not forget that Israel — the only actually nuclear-armed state in the region, the one that’s spent nearly three years now committing genocide against Palestinians and is currently wiping out entire villages in Lebanon — also has an estimated 90 nuclear weapons.
“A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again,” Trump threatened.
By Negin Owliaei , Truthout, April 7, 2026
Somehow, in a war already bent on turning Iran into a failed state, Donald Trump’s threats against the country have become increasingly disturbing. For days now, Trump has threatened to bomb key civilian infrastructure in Iran, from bridges to power plants. On April 5, in a terrifying screed, he wrote: “Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped in one, in Iran.” He went on to say, “Open the Fuckin’ Strait you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell — JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah.”
He doubled down on that threat the next day, when a reporter asked how his threatened strikes would not amount to a war crime. “They’re animals and we have to stop them,” he said. He also attempted to justify himself by suggesting that he was calling for Iranian liberation. “They want to hear bombs because they want to be free.”
Finally, on the morning of April 7, he issued his most chilling threat yet: “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.”
These statements, from a man who directs the incomprehensibly lethal power of the U.S. military, should make the world stop. For me, personally, it does feel like the world has stopped: What do you do in the hours between the moment the president of the United States threatens to annihilate your homeland and the time he has vowed to conduct the actual act? Trump is holding an entire nation hostage. But, somehow, the rest of the world continues on. The markets chug along. Congress continues to be in recess, with dissent confined largely to social media posts. It is hard not to feel like we have failed some critical test of the bounds of our own humanity.
Now, as the entire world waits to see what kind of fate a single man will inflict upon an entire nation, we have entered new territory. As I type these words, most people with common sense are speculating whether Trump will use one of the United States’ 3,700 nuclear weapons on Iran. Let us not forget that Israel — the only actually nuclear-armed state in the region, the one that’s spent nearly three years now committing genocide against Palestinians and is currently wiping out entire villages in Lebanon — also has an estimated 90 nuclear weapons.
The nuclear threat is animating for its sheer terror, and for good reason. Some military experts have cast doubt on the U.S.’s ability to use a nuclear weapon against Iran. Other political pundits, meanwhile, suggest that this is a perfect example of Trump making a maximalist threat in order to seek a better negotiating position.
But to pretend that this is the limitation of the threat — that, if a nuclear weapon is not deployed, we have somehow won something crucial — is to miss the point. The U.S. and Israel have already inflicted mass death upon Iran in the form of conventional missiles. In terms of specifically nuclear threats, Iran’s nuclear power plant at Bushehr has come under repeated attack during this aggression. Mainstream U.S. media outlets have largely moved past the fact that Israel bombed fuel depots in Iran, causing oil to rain down from the skies — a chemical attack if there ever was one.
Trump’s threats to bomb power plants and bridges and civilian infrastructure more broadly are already terrifying enough as it is. And Trump’s language alone is monstrous. It is genocidal and should be treated as such; threatening genocide, legal experts are pointing out, is itself a war crime.
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… On the first day of the war, we learned that the earliest reported casualties of U.S.-Israeli aggression were kids going to school, and eventually found they were killed while huddled together in a prayer room, their bodies hit with a U.S.-made and delivered missile. I wrote then that “we in the U.S. need to reckon with the fact that so much of our state wealth, capacity, and technology goes toward burying children in rubble.” We still need to do that, desperately.
We also need to address the dehumanization that persists in every single aspect of American life — from politics to culture to media — that has sent us down the path in which Trump can threaten to annihilate a civilization and we find ourselves with few answers about how to stop it. By calling for the death of a civilization, Trump is making the goal explicit. But decades of sanctions paved the way for his words. Politicians on both sides of the aisle who have and continue to frame Iran as a particular threat, even as a “cancer,” have made this possible. The media outlets that uncritically platform those racist tirades bear responsibility, too. Sadly, Iranians in the diaspora who insisted that their fellow country people were desperate for bombs — some of whom continue to call for further violence against their people — played a role here as well.
…………………………………………………………………………….. Trump might be able to threaten a civilization with mass death. But there is an entire apparatus that makes those threats credible — from the whole spectrum of the U.S. political establishment constantly voting to fuel the war machine, to the international organizations that shaped international law to favor the powerful, to the media that downplay and obfuscate the viciousness of U.S. empire. A civilization that allows these threats to repeat unabated should question whether, somewhere along the way, it was the one that actually died. https://truthout.org/articles/trumps-genocidal-threats-on-iran-are-enabled-by-a-vast-apparatus-of-destruction/?utm_source=Truthout&utm_campaign=ca3edbadaa-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2026_04_07_09_29&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_bbb541a1db-ca3edbadaa-650192793
Prominent New York synagogue hosts presentation on why U.S. Jews should support the ethnic cleansing of Gaza
Benjamin Anthony’s speech at New York’s influential Park Avenue Synagogue, where he argued that U.S. Jews need to support ethnic cleansing in Gaza, illustrates how the American Jewish community has embraced Israeli racism and brutality.
By Philip Weiss Mondoweiss, April 2, 2026
The American press does its best not to cover savage Israeli views of Palestinians, but a leading New York synagogue gave an honored platform to those views ten days ago. It hosted an Israeli advocate with connections in its government who argued for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza, and said American Jews need to support that operation.
Benjamin Anthony said that all “Palestinian Arabs” in Gaza pose such a threat to Israel that the international community should use “muscular diplomacy” with Egypt so as force the population out of Gaza into an “enclave” in the Sinai peninsula.
“I believe the international community would very handily be able to create some sort of enclave for the…Gazans in the Sinai peninsula. And then we might have the breathing room to think about long-term solutions.”
Though those two million Gazans would likely be displaced again, into African countries, said Anthony, the leader of an Israeli think tank called the MirYam Institute.
“I think someone like [Egyptian president] Sisi would likely move the Gazans along from the Sinai peninsula in the event that he didn’t want to build a place for them there, and you would probably see them dispersed through the continent of Africa quite quickly.”
Anthony’s argument is widely shared by Israelis (according to a 2025 poll), and it only received mild push back from Eliot Cosgrove, a leading conservative rabbi in the U.S., who had brought Anthony, his first cousin, onto the synagogue dais.
Cosgrove called the scheme “very intriguing,” but protested that Anthony was conflating “Hamas with the entire Gaza population.” And that by creating a refugee population with a “narrative”, Israel was practically and morally kicking the can down the road. Speaking “as a proud Zionist,” Cosgrove said the scheme is not in Israel’s interest.
Anthony insisted that no Gazans could be trusted because Gazan civilians cheered the atrocities against Israelis on October 7. Cosgrove folded his hand: “Well, I love you, and I disagree with you, but let’s move on.”
Cosgrove ended the hour-long dialogue by thanking Anthony “for fighting the good fight” and “for representing our people.”
I must point out that if a speaker called for Israeli Jews to be displaced because Palestinians are unsafe with Jews living there, that person would instantly face serious, perhaps career-ending, repercussions. Recall what happened to Helen Thomas, an accomplished reporter of Lebanese ancestry, when she said that Israeli Jews need to “go home,” back to Europe. She was forced to retire in 2010.
Anthony’s toughness had a goal. He’d come to “implore” American Jews to support Israel and America’s war with Iran as a war for the Jewish future in America. Trump is a unique leader who has taken action, he said. The next president could be anti-Israel.
“My feeling is that the entire Zionist project, and dare I say the fate of world Jewry not just Israeli Jewry, but diaspora Jewry as well, rests on the outcome of this war against Iran,” Anthony said. “You don’t need to be a pollster to know where the [Israeli] people are. On the fight against Iran, there is near unanimity behind the idea that this regime needs to come to an end.”
In fact, Anthony’s militaristic view is echoed in the American Jewish community. The leading Jewish organizations have commended the U.S. and Israel for going to war.
But non-Zionist and anti-Zionist Jewish groups have opposed the war. The liberal Zionist group J Street has also done so and called on American Jews to speak out against the war so as to show Americans that Jews are not pushing the war. J Street’s leader acknowledged that pro-Israel groups played “a role in setting the table for Trump’s decision,” but warned that those lobbying actions could make Jews the “scapegoat for failure.”
American Jews must oppose “the overwhelming majority of [the Israeli] people” and declare that this war “was not in our interest, and that it was not pursued in our name,” Jeremy Ben-Ami said
No such concern was evident at the Park Avenue Synagogue on March 20. Benjamin Anthony called on American Jews to stand “shoulder to shoulder” with Israeli Jews in an “absolute” war that will end all the other wars, so as to ensure “the long-term survival of the state of Israel.”
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. The marvel of Anthony’s appearance is that our press routinely gives Israelis and American Zionists a pass when they express extreme ideas. Anthony says he has consulted White House officials (he does not say which administration) and Israelis with similar views, such as Ron Dermer, who come and go at the Trump White House, according to Trump’s former counter-terrorism chief who lately resigned over the misguided U.S. policy.
The tragedy for me of this Passover is that the American Jewish community rolls out the red carpet for racist talk, because they are “proud Zionists.” So a thuggish Israeli endorses brutal policies against Palestinians in a leading New York synagogue, and the response is We love you. https://mondoweiss.net/2026/04/prominent-new-york-synagogue-hosts-presentation-on-why-u-s-jews-should-support-the-ethnic-cleansing-of-gaza/
US Satellite Firm Blacks Out Iran War Images Per US Government Request
by Alan Mosley | April 5, 2026, https://news.antiwar.com/2026/04/05/us-satellite-firm-blacks-out-iran-war-images-per-us-government-request/
Planet Labs says it will “indefinitely withhold” satellite visuals of Iran and the wider Middle East war zone after a request from the US government and the Trump administration. In an email to customers, the firm said it is shifting to a “managed distribution” model, releasing imagery only case-by-case for “urgent, mission-critical requirements,” or when release is deemed “in the public interest.” Planet also said it will withhold imagery dating back to March 9, and it expects the policy to remain in effect until the conflict ends.
On March 6, Planet Labs announced a mandatory 96-hour delay on new imagery collected over the Gulf states, arguing that near-real-time pictures could be exploited to “endanger allied, NATO, and civilian personnel.” That measure later expanded into a 14-day delay, described by Planet as an extension of the earlier hold. By March 30, Al Jazeera’s Digital Investigations unit was reporting that independent verification had become harder as commercial providers restricted satellite imagery.
Satellite imagery matters because, unlike press briefings, it can corroborate damage, assess patterns of targeting, and check narratives that would otherwise be accepted on authority. Reporting by the Global Investigative Journalism Network describes how open-source teams used satellite imagery and videos to probe contested incidents during this war, quoting Bellingcat’s head of research warning that a “two-week delay” slows verification and reduces the certainty investigators can reach while events are still developing. It also quotes the Defense Secretary saying, “Open source is not the place to determine what did or did not happen.”
Despite the insinuation that open source investigative journalism is less credible, even mainstream news organizations utilize such tools in their reporting. For example, Reuters has also used satellite imagery in its war coverage, including sharing said imagery and post-strike visuals with a munitions researcher in reporting on the strike on a girls’ school in Minab which killed over 170 people, mostly children. While later reporting added that the strike may have involved outdated targeting intelligence, it is worth noting that the president claimed “without evidence” that Iran was responsible.
One can concede that operational security is real and still recognize that “trust us” is an unsafe substitute for public evidence. In mid-March, the White House claimed Iran’s ballistic-missile capacity was “functionally destroyed,” with “complete and total aerial dominance,” while reporting in the same period described continued missile incidents and interceptions. But the Trump administration’s claim of total control over Iranian airspace seems dubious when countered with reports of military losses, such as the downing of multiple aircraft just since the start of April.
The blackout of satellite imagery from the region is not a story about one firm’s products or customer service. It is a reminder that foreign intervention tends to produce domestic control, often without the drama of a formal censorship order. The same state that wages war can narrow the evidence available to judge that war. The predictable result is that the public is pushed to take the word of the administration’s spokesmen at face value, without timely means to verify or falsify their claims.
Alan Mosley is a historian, jazz musician, policy researcher for the Tenth Amendment Center, and host of It’s Too Late, “The #1 Late Night Show in America (NOT hosted by a Communist)!” New episodes debut every Wednesday night at 9ET across all major platforms; just search “AlanMosleyTV” or “It’s Too Late with Alan Mosley.”
Trump threatened a civilisation – We must respond to nuclear threats
International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), Melissa Parke, 8 April 26
Yesterday, US President Donald Trump threatened to escalate the US and Israeli war on Iran to the point that, in his own words, “a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.” Vice President JD Vance further warned that the United States might have to use “tools it hasn’t used so far”. These were barely veiled references to nuclear weapons.
Mercifully, Trump stepped back before the deadline. A temporary ceasefire was brokered, with Iran agreeing to reopen the Strait of Hormuz for two weeks. The new deadline is April 21.Click to teach Gmail this conversation is not important
The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) is alarmed and appalled by President Trump’s threat. It warrants unequivocal condemnation by all who value peace, international law, and human rights. The brokered temporary ceasefire, while welcome in itself, does not change the fact that a nuclear threat was made by the US president. The logic of one person having the ability to destroy an entire people, at any time, for any reason, remains fully intact.
But there is an alternative. 99 states have joined the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. They have made a categorical choice to condemn any and all nuclear threats, whether implicit or explicit, and irrespective of the circumstances. They are working actively towards the elimination of nuclear weapons. Those who know best the horror that nuclear threats present are actively protesting against them. ANT-Hiroshima held protests at the Atomic Bomb Dome yesterday to call for an end to the hostilities.
Nuclear weapons are not a force of nature, they are a political choice. And that means we, too, have a choice. Demand that your government condemns Trump’s threat. Demand that it makes clear: nuclear threats are unacceptable. And if your country has not yet joined the TPNW, demand that it does so.
Ignoring genocide. The bill for Australia’s silence has arrived
by Andrew Brown | Apr 7, 2026 , https://michaelwest.com.au/ignoring-genocide-the-bill-for-australias-silence-has-arrived/
There is a bitter truth that must be spoken before we can talk honestly about what is happening to us now. Andrew Brown on Australia’s quiet complicity in the illegal US-Israeli war on Iran, fourth in a series.
When the bombs fell on Gaza, Australia was quiet.
When the hospitals were destroyed, when the aid was blocked, when children were pulled from rubble in pieces, when the United Nations, the International Criminal Court, and humanitarian organisations with decades of credibility in conflict zones used words like genocide, ethnic cleansing and collective punishment, Australia was quiet.
Not uniformly. Not entirely. There were protests in every major city, sustained over months, of a size and seriousness this country has not seen since the Iraq War.
There were independent senators who stood in Parliament and said what needed to be said, in plain language, without diplomatic hedging. There were journalists, academics, former diplomats, and hundreds of thousands of ordinary Australians who signed petitions, marched in the streets, and wrote letters that went largely unanswered.
Palestinian-Australian, Muslim-Australian, Arab-Australian communities, and many others with no personal connection to the conflict beyond a functioning conscience, screamed into a political void and were told, in effect, to calm down.
Or apprehended for wearing a t-shirt.
The country, as a political entity, its government, its major institutions, its official voice to the world, was quiet.
The cost of silence
That silence had a cost. Not just a moral cost, though the moral cost is staggering and will take generations to fully reckon with. A strategic cost. The cost of allowing a logic of unchecked military impunity to establish itself as the operating principle of the US-Israeli alliance. A logic that, once normalised in Gaza, did not stay in Gaza.
It never does.
Over 72,000 people killed so far. Over 171,000 injured. An entire civilian population, in one of the most densely populated places on earth, was systematically starved, displaced, and destroyed.
Journalists were killed in numbers that constitute, by any honest accounting, a deliberate campaign to eliminate witnesses. Paramedics were bombed. UN peacekeepers were struck. Aid workers from Australia’s own partner organisations were killed in strikes so precise they could not have been accidental.
Australia expressed concern.
“Calibrated, diplomatically worded, operationally meaningless concern.”
And then, when the same alliance, emboldened by eighteen months of zero meaningful consequence, turned its weapons on a sovereign nation-state, on Iran, on February 28 of this year, Australia expressed support. Called it constructive. Offered the American justification back to its own people as sovereign Australian policy.
Warnings ignored
The people warning loudest about Gaza were not merely warning about Palestinians. They were warning about a system. A system in which American military power and Israeli strategic ambition, freed from the constraints of international law and serious allied pushback, would expand. Would find new targets. Would come, eventually, for the stability of every country caught in its orbit.
“They were right. And they were called antisemitic for saying so.“
Iran did not come from nowhere. The assault on Iran is the direct and logical extension of the impunity normalised in Gaza. If you can destroy a civilian population with no meaningful consequence, you can bomb a sovereign nation.
If the ICC arrest warrant for Netanyahu means nothing, then international law means nothing. And if international law means nothing, then the only operating principle is force. And the consequences of force are distributed not just to the combatants but to every country whose government chose alignment over principle.
Australia chose alignment over the people of Gaza. It chose it again over Iran. And now it is discovering, at the bowser and the checkout and the business bank account, exactly what that choice costs.
The war came home
Here is what makes this moment different from every protest march and every unanswered letter that came before.
The pain is no longer abstract.
When Gaza burned, the average Australian, cocooned by geographic distance, insulated by a media that kept the most confronting images off prime time, reassured by politicians who described it as heartbreaking while doing nothing, could maintain the fiction that this was someone else’s tragedy.
Terrible, certainly. Distant. Manageable. Something that happened over there, to people over there, in a conflict that had been going on forever and would presumably continue
“without any particular bearing on the school fees or the mortgage or the quarterly business figures.”
That fiction is now dead.
The fuel price spike is not over there. The supply chain disruption is not over there. The investment uncertainty showing up in superannuation statements, in business loans that just got harder to service, in the job that exists today and may not exist in three months. None of that is over there.
business loans that just got harder to service, in the job that exists today and may not exist in three months. None of that is over there.
The war came home. Not in body bags. Not in the specific grief of a military family. It came home in the way that imperial adventurism always eventually comes home to the countries that enable it. Through the economy. Through the slow, grinding, distributed punishment of a population that was never consulted, never warned, and never honestly told what their government’s choices would cost them.
Australia’s complicity
Australia was a participant in Gaza’s destruction. Not with weapons. Not with soldiers. With silence. With diplomatic cover. With the specific, material legitimacy that flows from a liberal democracy declining to formally object. And with the arms adjacent, intelligence and security cooperation that flows through Five Eyes and has never been seriously interrogated in the Australian public domain.
When you have the power to intervene, to sanction, to condemn, to withdraw diplomatic cover, and you choose not to, you are not a bystander. You are a participant. And participants, eventually, share in the consequences.
The Palestinian people could not make Australia listen with their suffering alone.
Not because Australians are cruel. They are not. But because the suffering was made distant. The media made it complex. The politicians made it delicate. The lobby groups made it professionally dangerous to say in plain language what was plainly happening.
“The whole architecture of managed consent did its job with brutal efficiency for eighteen months.”
But a forty percent fuel price increase cuts through managed consent, as does a wave of small business closures. And young Australians told to absorb the economic consequences of a war their government endorsed without their knowledge or consent. That cuts through everything.
The people who protested Gaza, who were dismissed and belittled and accused of antisemitism and told they were being naive about geopolitical complexity, understood something that the political class is only now beginning to grasp: That the world does not offer permanent non-involvement. That the wars you enable reach you. That the impunity you excuse comes back denominated in currencies you understand personally.
Fuel. Food. Jobs. Mortgages. Businesses. Futures.
This is that reckoning. The genocide in Gaza did not wake Australia up, the bill for enabling it will.And when Australia wakes, fully, clearly, with the focused fury of people who now understand exactly what was done to them, the politicians who called it constructive and the media that told them to blame the Energy Minister are going to find that managed consent has a shelf life.
That shelf life has expired.
How the neoconservative influence over U.S. war-making paved the way for Trump’s war crimes in Iran
Donald Trump’s naked threats to target Iran’s civilian infrastructure are the culmination of a strand of neoconservative thought that has defined U.S. war-making over three decades, from the Iraq war to Obama’s drone campaigns to the Gaza genocide.
By Abdaljawad Omar Mondoweiss, April 6, 2026
On Sunday morning, as Christians across Iran and the world marked Easter, Donald Trump posted a profanity-laced ultimatum on Truth Social. “Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran,” he wrote. “Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell — JUST WATCH!”
The post was the latest in a week of escalating threats — to bomb Iran “back to the Stone Ages,” to destroy its power plants, bridges, and “possibly all desalinization plants” after a ten-day deadline issued on March 26 expires at 8 p.m. ET on Tuesday. Over a hundred international law experts have already warned that targeting civilian infrastructure constitutes a war crime under the Geneva Convention. Trump, characteristically, appears neither to have read their letter nor to care.
The language is Trump’s own: crude, performative, calibrated for the scroll. But the logic it serves is not his. It belongs to a longer and more deliberate tradition of strategic thought — one that was articulated, with far greater sophistication, more than three decades ago. It has been advancing, precedent by precedent, toward exactly this moment, and to understand how threats of destroying Iranian civilian infrastructure not only became thinkable but inevitable, one must return to the man who first laid the intellectual groundwork for it in the contemporary age: Eliot Cohen.
A professor of strategic studies at Johns Hopkins and later Counselor of the State Department under Condoleezza Rice, Cohen was one of the most consequential war intellectuals of his generation. One of his more memorable and deliberately irreverent lines, first appearing in an article in Foreign Affairs in the aftermath of the First Gulf War, compared airpower to modern courtship, because it appeared “to offer gratification without commitment.” The Gulf War had produced a euphoria among politicians, commentators, and generals due to the emergence of airpower as an instrument of surgical precision, coming at negligible cost and with minimal political consequence. Smart bombs had entered the popular imagination, and press briefings started to feature grainy cockpit footage of missiles threading through ventilation shafts. The message of it all was unmistakable: war had been technologically redeemed.
Cohen’s essay dispelled this fantasy, not to restrain the conduct of war, but to liberate it. His first and most fundamental argument was that war is cruelty, and no degree of technological sophistication changes that. But where a humanitarian critic might have drawn from this the conclusion that force should be constrained, Cohen drew the opposite: the pretense of constraint, far from a moral achievement, was a strategic weakness. ……………………………………………………….
When Trump threatens to destroy Iran’s power grid and water desalination plants, an infrastructure upon which millions of civilian lives depend, he is speaking, whether he knows it or not, in the language codified by Cohen.
There’s a second argument in Cohen’s essay that is relevant here, and it followed naturally from the first. Cohen endorsed, without apology, the killing of the enemy leadership as the logical endpoint of airpower doctrine,………………………………
How Israel refined the Cohen doctrine
These two ideas — that war must be waged with unflinching cruelty against the full depth of the enemy’s society, and that leadership decapitation is airpower’s natural culmination — did not remain academic propositions. They germinated over the course of three decades in the operational doctrines of the states most invested in aerial warfare……………………………………………………………………
And so we arrive at Trump’s deadline: “Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one.” The threat to destroy civilian infrastructure that sustains millions of lives is not an aberration, but the next room in a long corridor of precedent, each section built to make the next step feel less dramatic than it is……………………………………………………………………….
Cohen’s courtship metaphor promised gratification without commitment; what it delivered, in the end, was cruelty without limit — and a world in which the consequences of that cruelty fall not on the men who authorized it, but on everyone else. https://mondoweiss.net/2026/04/how-the-neoconservative-influence-over-u-s-war-making-paved-the-way-for-trumps-war-crimes-in-iran/
They Reject American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)—But Not the War Machine
what does it mean for a state to claim a right to exist if that existence is sustained through the death, displacement, and destruction of others?
April 7, 2026 Joshua Scheer, https://scheerpost.com/2026/04/07/they-reject-aipac-but-not-the-war-machine/
In Washington, a quiet rebrand is underway.
One by one, prominent Democrats positioning themselves for 2028 are announcing that they will no longer accept money from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). On its face, this seems like a meaningful break from decades of bipartisan deference. For years, AIPAC has functioned as a gatekeeper of acceptable discourse on U.S. policy toward Israel—rewarding loyalty, punishing dissent.
But look closer, and the shift begins to feel less like a rupture—and more like a recalibration.
Because while the money may be refused, the machinery of war remains firmly intact.
A Political Adjustment, Not a Moral One
Recent polling shows a dramatic shift among Democratic voters, with overwhelming sympathy now leaning toward Palestinians rather than Israelis. Currently, 65 percent of Democrats say their sympathies lie more with the Palestinians, while 17 percent say they sympathise more with the Israelis. That reality has forced politicians to adapt. For the first time in a generation, the moral ground beneath U.S. support for Israel is cracking—driven not by politicians, but by a public no longer willing to ignore the scale of destruction in Gaza.
So candidates pivot.
They distance themselves from AIPAC. They speak in softer tones. Some even flirt with language once considered taboo—words like “apartheid,” quickly walked back when backlash arrives.
Yet beneath this rhetorical repositioning lies a stubborn continuity: unwavering support for military aid, strategic alliance, and the broader architecture of U.S. dominance in the Middle East.
This is not transformation. It is triangulation.
To demonstrate that most clearly, here is the front-runner for 2028 discussing his reversal of calling Israel an apartheid state and his reverence for the country. Newsom’s reversal—pairing regret over the word “apartheid” with an insistence that he “revere[s] the state of Israel”—captures where Democrats are now: distancing from Netanyahu without challenging the system itself.
However, Cory Booker defended the group—from which he has received significant funding—arguing that the intense focus on AIPAC is misplaced. He noted that many ethnic and interest groups raise and bundle political donations, often for causes he personally disagrees with, yet AIPAC has become a singular target of criticism. As he put it, “There are Iranian Americans that bundle money. There are Turkish Americans that bundle money. There are a lot of ethnic groups that bundle money… but somehow AIPAC seems to be drawing a lot of attention, and that’s problematic to me.” At the same time, Booker has said he would no longer accept PAC money in general. Still, at least he stands by his position.
The Illusion of Courage
Rejecting AIPAC donations is being framed as a bold stand. In reality, it is the lowest bar imaginable.
What would actual political courage look like?
It would mean voting to halt weapons transfers used in devastating campaigns across Gaza, Lebanon, and beyond. It would mean openly confronting the human cost of U.S. foreign policy—not just its public relations problem. It would require breaking not just with a lobbying group, but with a system that treats military force as the default instrument of policy.
Few are willing to go that far.
Instead, we see a familiar pattern: symbolic gestures paired with substantive silence.
Blaming Individuals, Protecting Systems
Another tactic has emerged in this moment of discomfort—one as old as politics itself.
Blame the leader, not the structure.
Criticism is carefully directed at Benjamin Netanyahu, portrayed as an outlier or aberration. The implication is that without him, the underlying policies would somehow be more humane, more restrained, more just.
But this framing obscures more than it reveals.
Netanyahu did not create the system—he operates within it. A system sustained by decades of U.S. military funding, diplomatic shielding, and bipartisan consensus. To isolate him as the problem is to avoid confronting the deeper reality: that the policies themselves, not just their most visible architect, are responsible for the devastation.
Here is that dynamic in clear focus with former Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel. A longtime supporter of Israel—whose father was Israeli. At the same time, he has also vowed not to take AIPAC’s money.
Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear underscored again what we have been saying: that the party cannot change its ways despite cutting off one group that has become politically problematic, further showing the disconnect between the people they represent and Israel.
Here, Beshear sticks to familiar pro-Israel talking points in a recent interview and resists labeling the devastation in Gaza as “genocide,” dismissing such language as an unwelcome party “litmus test.” Rep. Ro Khanna pushed back, arguing that defending human rights should be the most basic standard—and that the party must find a new moral direction.
The Money Isn’t the Whole Story
Even as AIPAC becomes politically radioactive in some circles, its influence persists—often through parallel organizations, aligned donors, and entrenched institutional relationships.
More importantly, AIPAC has never been the sole driver of U.S. policy. It is a symptom of a broader alignment between American power and Israeli military strategy—an alignment rooted in geopolitics, not just lobbying.
Which means that removing AIPAC from the equation, while leaving everything else intact, changes very little.
The pipeline of weapons continues.
The bombs keep falling.
The rhetoric adjusts.
And while AIPAC often dominates the conversation, it is far from the only force shaping pro-Israel advocacy in U.S. politics. A wide network of organizations operates across the political spectrum, each reinforcing the U.S.-Israel relationship in different ways. Christians United for Israel (CUFI), the largest pro-Israel group in the country with over seven million members, mobilizes grassroots evangelical support rooted in Christian Zionist beliefs. J Street, founded in 2008, presents itself as a more progressive alternative, advocating for a two-state solution and diplomacy over military approaches, even as it maintains a pro-Israel stance. Within party politics, the Democratic Majority for Israel (DMFI) works to ensure the Democratic Party remains firmly aligned with Israel, while the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) advances similar priorities within Republican circles. Other groups, such as Pro-Israel America PAC and the Israeli-American Coalition for Action, focus on supporting candidates and advancing legislation that strengthens bilateral ties, including efforts like anti-BDS laws at the state level. Additional organizations—including NORPAC, the Joint Action Committee for Political Affairs (JAC), and Americans for Good Government (AGG)—further reinforce this ecosystem by backing candidates who support a strong U.S.-Israel relationship. While these groups differ in strategy—ranging from grassroots mobilization to direct political funding and lobbying—they collectively demonstrate that AIPAC is not an isolated actor but part of a broader, deeply embedded network.
At the same time, opposition has begun to coalesce through the “Reject AIPAC” coalition, which includes groups like IfNotNow, Jewish Voice for Peace Action, and Justice Democrats, signaling a growing pushback against this entrenched influence.
The Bottom Line
The deeper problem is not rhetorical—it is structural. Israel is a settler-colonial state, and until that truth is spoken plainly—alongside the histories of the United States, South Africa, and others built on dispossession—we are not having an honest conversation. We are circling it, softening it, avoiding it. Because the real question cuts too deep: what does it mean for a state to claim a right to exist if that existence is sustained through the death, displacement, and destruction of others? That is the question buried beneath every speech, every careful statement, every political pivot.
Instead, we are handed villains. Netanyahu becomes the embodiment of the problem—like Trump, grotesque enough to absorb our outrage. But this is a sleight of hand. Systems do not begin or end with men like him; they outlive them, operate through them, and are protected by those who claim to oppose them. By narrowing the blame, we absolve the structure.
And so the language collapses. Even Gavin Newsom, for a fleeting moment, brushed against the truth—only to retreat, unable to hold the weight of the word “apartheid,” unable to let it stand. That retreat is not incidental; it is the boundary of acceptable politics. Because to name the system is to implicate ourselves—our history, our alliances, our silence.
Until that boundary is broken, until the words match the reality, there is no path forward—only repetition, only evasion, only the quiet normalization of what should be unthinkable.
Trump, Hegseth and the Language of War Crimes
9 April 2026 Dr Binoy Kampmark, https://theaimn.net/trump-hegseth-and-the-language-of-war-crimes/
He’s out of ideas, a mind running on empty. Increasingly, he is also short of reason, zapped by geopolitical addling and meddling. Now that US President Donald J. Trump has reached an uneasy understanding with Tehran that a two-week ceasefire should apply to the warring parties (Israel, as usual, has its own elastic interpretation as it continues attacking Lebanon), it is worth considering the warring language he has been using since February 28. Of note is the shrill wording of various ultimata he has directed at Iran.
On April 7, the President seemed to flirt with the notion of genocide in promising that “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back. I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will.” With biblical promise, he was certain that “one of the most important moments in the long and complex history of the World” was about to befall humanity. “47 years of extortion, corruption, and death, will finally end.”
On Easter Sunday, another message was posted bellowing that “Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!!” Strong language followed. “Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards,” he railed in making reference to Iran’s restrictive hold on the Strait of Hormuz, “or you’ll be living in Hell – JUST WATCH!” Showing a mind turned to slurry, America’s commander-in-chief then praised Allah.
A few days prior, the President issued another threatening note to his adversaries. “If there is no deal, we are going to hit each and every one of their electric generating plants, very hard and probably simultaneously.” This came after strained suggestions that Iran’s new leadership was seeking a ceasefire but could expect nothing without the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz. “Until then, we are blasting Iran into oblivion, or, as they say, back to the Stone Ages!!!”
No degree of lexical polishing, ducking and adjustment escapes the central tenet of such words. They show a lack of discrimination, a lack of proportion, and can only amount to war crimes, either in terms of promised or ongoing operations. Article 52 of the Geneva Convention Additional Protocol I, for instance, makes it abundantly clear that attacks shall only “be limited strictly to military objectives.” Targeted objects shall only be those that “make an effective contribution to military action and whose total or partial destruction, capture, or neutralization, in the circumstances ruling at the time, offers a definite military advantage.” Article 57 affirms that “constant care shall be taken to spare the civilian population, civilians and civilian objects.” A number of precautionary steps to ensure that aim are enumerated, including, for instance, verifying “that the objectives to be attacked are neither civilians nor civilian objects.”
In a measured assessment of Trump’s spray of promised annihilation published in Just Security, Margaret Donovan and Rachel VanLandingham, both former uniformed military lawyers, also consider the grave effects of such statements on serving personnel. “[W]e know the president’s words run counter to decades of legal training of military personnel and risk placing our warfighters [sic] on a path of no return.” Such rhetoric did not merely “undermine US legitimacy and global standing” but posed “a significant risk of moral and psychic injury for servicemembers.” They further imperilled soldiers by placing them at risk of future prosecutions for war crimes that would not fall within the statute of limitations.
To Trump’s chilling language can also be added various sinister remarks from Secretary of Defense (or War, as he prefers) Pete Hegseth, who has soiled the conventions of international humanitarian law by expressly declaring that “no quarter, no mercy for our enemies” will be shown. That’s the Lieber Code, the Hague Conventions, and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court out the door, perhaps unsurprising from a man who had claimed that US forces should pursue “maximum lethality, not tepid legality.”
Far from being unbecoming aberrations, these comments from Trump and Hegseth are not out of character in the history of American warfare. The no-quarter logic was habitually demonstrated during the Civil War, notably when it came to killing captured Black American soldiers. Historian George S. Burkhardt goes as far as to suggest that an unofficial policy existed among the Confederates that they could execute Black American soldiers and their white officers captured in combat fighting for the Union.
This pattern of no prisoners and no quarter would again assert itself in such theatres of conflict as the Philippines, when, in September 1901, Brigadier General Jacob H. Smith demanded of Major Littleton Waller that no prisoners were to be taken in the aftermath of a surprise attack on the island of Samar which left 54 American soldiers dead. “I wish you to kill and burn,” he growled, insisting that the island of Samar be turned into a “howling wilderness.” Ditto the ferocious combat shown in the Pacific during the Second World War, when merciless no-quarterism was manifest as US forces made their way towards Japan.
Having noted all three examples, Ali Sanaei of the University of Chicago observes that such instances are not only unlawful but diagnostic. “It appears when war is not imagined as reciprocal combat but as punitive domination over populations thought incapable of deserving the usual protections.” Whatever gilded rhetoric on notions of freedom issue from the Trump administration when it comes to the Iran War, it has become increasingly clear that distinctions between foe and non-combatant have fogged up and vanished, leaving the sort of stubborn resistance that demands punishment. Yet, even as statute books are blotted and conventions maligned, the stubborn continue to prevail.
Former presidents must call for end to Trump’ criminal Iran war destabilizing the world…but won’t.
Walt Zlotow West Suburban Peace Coalition Glen Ellyn IL 7 April 26
Former presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Joe Biden, like all ex-presidents, tend to refrain from criticizing the current White House occupant. They view themselves as members of the most exclusive American club so are loathe to excoriate their next member joining them upon leaving office. Criticizing the current president is generally political in nature, best left to those still battling in the political arena.
But these are no ordinary times. Current President Trump has embarked on a catastrophic war on Iran that besides needlessly killing thousands, is destabilizing the world economy. Iran wins by not losing. The US loses by not winning.
All US bases in the region have suffered damage, forcing thousands of US military personnel to evacuate. Israel is being bombed relentlessly by Iran and its allies Hezbollah and the Houthis from Lebanon and Yemen respectively. Not only has Iran choked off a fifth of the world’s oil supply by closing the Strait of Hormuz, they are destroying Gulf States oil production facilities.
Iran, Israel, the Gulf States, even the US and the rest of the world may be facing an existential crisis brought on by morally and mentally degraded Trump.
Instead of acknowledging his monstrous crimes against Iran and cease hostilities, Trump is double, triple, quadrupling down, threatening Stone Age destruction of Iran with war crimes against civilian infrastructure. He’s clearly become unhinged facing likely the worst self-imposed military disaster in US history, one with calamitous worldwide aftereffects.
We need Clinton, Bush, Obama, Biden to jump into the national debate. They must call out Trump’s criminal war destabilizing the world economy in strongest words possible. They should request the International Criminal Court indict Trump for war crimes and issue a warrant for his arrest.
But instead of lending their status as former presidents to aid the desperate effort to end hostilities, the Former 4 are silent. And it’s not just their collegiality as former presidents preventing their speaking out. All four adhere to American Exceptualism which demands that US wars of choice are never wrong and never to be lost. All four promulgated US world dominance costing hundreds of thousands of lives having nothing whatsoever to do with US national security interests.
Clinton bombed Iraq after his cruel economic sanctions killed hundreds of thousands. When asked by CBS News if the half million Iraqi killed by Clinton’s sanctions were worth it, his Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said “I think that is a very hard choice, but the price we think is worth it.” Clinton bombed Serbia for 78 days, killing 2,000 to create a fractured Balkans still unsettled three decades later.
George W. Bush launched two criminal wars that killed over half a million Iraqis and Afghans along with 7,000 Americans. Both countries remain largely failed states a quarter century on. While the Afghan Taliban booted US troops out in 2021, we’re still defiling Iraq with US troops subject to attack by Iraqis trying to replicate the Taliban’s success.
Barack Obama may have succeeded Bush s president, but he couldn’t succeed in removing all US troops from those two sorrowful countries or stopping US servicepersons from being killed there. Inexplicably and senselessly, Obama jumped into the Libyan civil war to oust hated strongman Muammar Ghaddafi. Result? Over 30,000 Libyans dead and another failed state thanks to US meddling. His Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gloated regarding Ghaddafi “We came, was saw, he died.” Grotesque.
Joe Biden was the first US president to preside over genocide. He enabled Israel’s near complete destruction of Gaza with tens of billions in genocide weapons that killed over 70,000 while destroying nearly every school, hospital and home for the remaining 2,200,000 Palestinians now living in tents and still be slaughtered by Israeli invaders.
Biden also provoked the Russian invasion of Ukraine by supporting Ukraine’s war killing thousands of Russian leaning Ukrainians in Ukraine Donbas. He totally dismissed Russia’s security concerns regarding NATO membership for Ukraine that could place NATO nukes on Russia’s borders. Biden knew Russia would invade but lusted to see Russia destroy itself in the process. By following Biden’s astonishing stupidity it was Ukraine that is destroying itself with over a million casualties, a shattered economy and loss forever of a fifth of its most productive territory.
No wonder the Former 4 remain silent as Trump rains down death and destruction thruout the Middle East and possibly blows up the world economy. To Clinton, Bush, Obama and Biden, Trump is just following their blood soaked US presidential tradition.
Trump accelerates new nuclear warhead production, nearly doubles funding for plutonium “pit” bomb core production.
The Pentagon has always explicitly rejected “minimum-deterrence” in favor of keeping “counterforce” capabilities to wage nuclear war. This is why the U.S. has thousands of nuclear weapons and a $2 trillion “modernization” program to keep them forever. Indefinitely maintaining and expanding nuclear capabilities is contrary to the 1970 NonProliferation Treaty
None of this future pit production is to maintain the safety and reliability of the existing stockpile, but instead is entirely for new-design nuclear weapons
The Trump 2027 budget speeds up this backwards trend. For nuclear warhead production:
April 6, 2026, Jay Coghlan, Nuclear Watch, New Mexico, https://nukewatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Trump-Accelerates-Nuclear-Warhead-Production-PR.pdf
Santa Fe, NM – The Trump Administration has released military budget numbers for the federal fiscal year 2027 (which begins October 1, 2026). This still current fiscal year 2026 is already a record breaker for military spending at one trillion dollars. Trump now proposes nearly $1.5 trillion in military spending in FY 2027, of which $1.1 trillion is base funding for the Department of War and an additional $350 million is through so-called budget reconciliation.
On top of all this, Trump will likely seek $200 billion in supplementary appropriations for the war in Iran, for a potential total of $1.7 trillion in military spending in FY 2027 (a 70% increase above FY 2026). At the same time, there is a 10% across-the-board cut to non-military spending. Much of the remaining discretionary funding for education, wildfire protection, environmental regulations, health care, etc., will be constrained by a focus on border control and immigration enforcement.
Trump proposes $53.9 billion for the Department of Energy (DOE) in FY 2027. Sixty-one per cent ($32.8 billion) is for its semi-autonomous nuclear weapons agency, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA). DOE’s Office of Science is gutted by $1.1 billion which “eliminates funding for climate change and Green New Scam research.” DOE’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy is eliminated. Nationwide cleanup of legacy Cold War radioactive and toxic wastes at DOE sites is cut by $386 million to $8.2 billion ($3 billion of which is reserved for the Hanford Site; other site-specific cleanup budget numbers are still not yet available).
With respect to the Department of Energy’s nuclear weapons agency, the Trump FY 2027 budget:
“… focuses NNSA on its most important mission—producing a robust, credible, and modern nuclear deterrent that protects the American people. The United States must maintain and expand its set of nuclear capabilities that allow the President flexibility to protect the homeland and deter adversaries. Specifically, the Budget makes strong investments to develop new warheads that would bolster deterrence, modernize NNSA’s supporting infrastructure, and extend the life of existing warheads.”
The Pentagon has always explicitly rejected “minimum-deterrence” in favor of keeping “counterforce” capabilities to wage nuclear war. This is why the U.S. has thousands of nuclear weapons and a $2 trillion “modernization” program to keep them forever. Indefinitely maintaining and expanding nuclear capabilities is contrary to the 1970 NonProliferation Treaty, which required the nuclear weapons powers to “to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament…” After more than a half-century that has never even begun. An NPT Review Conference, held every five years, is scheduled to begin April 27 at the United Nations. It is widely expected to fail for the third time over fifteen years to make any progress whatsoever toward nuclear disarmament.
The Trump 2027 budget speeds up this backwards trend. For nuclear warhead production:
• A feasibility study for a new B61-13 limited earth-penetrating bomb is funded at $46.4 million in FY 2027. A full budget request of $1 billion is expected for FY 2028 followed by an average of $870 million for each fiscal year 2029 – 2031.
• The W80-4 warhead for the Long-Range Stand-Off weapon (i.e., air-launched cruise missile) is funded at $1 billion in FY 2027. There is an average of $970 million in projected costs for each fiscal year 2028-2031.
• No funding is requested in FY 2027 for the W80-5 warhead for the Sea-Launched Cruise Missile. However, there is an average of $1.4 billion in projected costs for each fiscal year 2028-2031.
• The W87-1 nuclear warhead program is for the new Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile, with likely multiple warheads for each missile (which is particularly dangerous and destabilizing). The Sentinel ICBM itself is already massively over budget. The W87-1 warhead program is increased 41% from $650 million in FY 2026 to $913 million in FY 2027, with an astounding average of $3.5 billion in projected costs for each fiscal year 2028-2031.
• The submarine-launched W93 nuclear warhead program, which the United Kingdom has actively lobbied for, is increased 37% from $807 million in FY 2026 to $1.1 billion in FY 2027. There is an average of $1.95 billion in projected costs for each fiscal year 2028-2031.
• There is a new “Future Programs” budget line item of $99.8 million in FY 2027 for feasibility studies for other new-design nuclear weapons, followed by an average of $92 million for each fiscal year 2028-2031.
Plutonium “pit” bomb core production: Plutonium pits are the essential “triggers” for modern nuclear weapons. Pit production has been the chokepoint for resumed industrial-scale nuclear weapons production by the U.S. ever since an FBI raid investigating environmental crimes stopped operations at the Rocky Flats Plant in 1989.
Trump’s FY 2027 budget proposes:
An 83% increase in funding for pit production at the Los Alamos National Laboratory from $1.3 billion in FY 2026 to $2.4 billion in FY 2027. There is an average of $2.3 billion in projected costs for each year FY 2028-2031. NNSA has directed LANL to double pit production to at least 60 pits per year because of increasing delays at the Savannah River Site (SRS).
• An 87% increase in funding for pit production at SRS from $1.2 billion in FY 2026 to $2.25 billion in FY 2027. There is an average of $2.5 billion in projected costs for each year FY 2028-2031. The Savannah River Plutonium Processing Facility’s upper range in estimated costs is now $25 billion, which would make it by far the most expensive building in U.S. history. Gloveboxes at SRS for canceled “dilute and dispose” of surplus plutonium are being diverted to “purification instead of disposition” to create feedstock for manufacturing new plutonium pits. There is only one glovebox left at SRS to process and remove excess plutonium, which could lead to resumed legal conflict with the State of South Carolina.
Total “Plutonium Modernization” for expanded plutonium pit production at both sites is increased 87% from $2.6 billion in FY 2026 to $4.9 billion in 2027. There is an average of $5.1 billion in projected costs for each year FY 2028-2031.
None of this future pit production is to maintain the safety and reliability of the existing stockpile, but instead is entirely for new-design nuclear weapons. This is despite the fact that in 2006 independent experts found that pits have serviceable lifetimes of at least 100 years. The average age of pits is now around 43 years. NNSA has avoided any full pit lifetime studies since 2006 (however, a new one is reportedly pending).
At least 15,000 pits are already stored at NNSA’s Pantex Plant. The independent Government Accountability Office has repeatedly reported that NNSA has no credible cost estimates for pit production, its most expensive and complex program ever. New pits cannot be tested because of the existing international testing moratorium, which could erode confidence in the stockpile. Or, conversely, new pits could prompt the U.S. to resume testing (which Trump has already threatened), after which other nuclear weapons powers would surely follow, thereby rapidly accelerating the new nuclear arms race.
Other nuclear weapons production programs:
• The “Tritium and Defense Fuels” program is increased by 79% from $520 million in FY 2026 to $881 million in 2027. There is an average of $1.8 billion in projected costs for each fiscal year 2028-2031.
“Non-Nuclear Capability Modernization” for non-nuclear components manufacturing, primarily at the Sandia National Laboratories, is increased 130% from $195.5 million in FY 2026 to $449 million in FY 2027. There is an average of $370 million in projected costs for each fiscal year 2028-2031.
• “Weapons Dismantlement and Disposition” is increased 10% from $82.3 million in FY 2026 to $90.7 million in FY 2027 (a mere 1.3% of total warhead funding). Rather than being a worthy step toward nuclear disarmament, the stated objective of weapons dismantlements is to “recover critical components and materials to support existing weapon programs, Naval Reactors, and other national priority missions.” There is an estimated backlog of up to 1,500 retired warheads to dismantle and dispose. However, NNSA’s Pantex Plant is so busy rebuilding existing nuclear warheads with new military capabilities that dismantlements have been at a historic low since the end of the Cold War.
In all, NNSA’s budget category of “Total Weapons Activities” is increased 35% from $20.4 billion in FY 2026 to $27.4 billion in FY 2027. There is an average of $29 billion in projected costs for each fiscal year 2028-2031.
Jay Coghlan, Director of Nuclear Watch, commented, “New nuclear weapons won’t give us more security as our nation is being hollowed out by tax cuts for the ultrarich, cuts to domestic programs, and the gutting of programs to address adverse climate change. It is way past time for the nuclear weapons powers to honor their obligations under the 1970 NonProliferation Treaty to negotiate verifiable nuclear disarmament instead of keeping nuclear weapons forever. We should be cleaning up, not building up new nuclear weapons.”
Sources:……………………………………………………………..
Ceasefire on the Brink — The Day Genocide Became a Negotiating Tactic
once a leader openly invokes the destruction of an entire civilization, the threshold has already been crossed. The unthinkable has been spoken—and therefore made thinkable.
April 7, 2026 , Joshua Scheer. https://scheerpost.com/2026/04/07/ceasefire-on-the-brink-the-day-genocide-became-a-negotiating-tactic/
In the span of a single day, the United States came terrifyingly close to crossing a line that cannot be uncrossed.
A president publicly threatened the destruction of “a whole civilization,” only to pivot hours later to a fragile, last-minute cease-fire brokered through frantic diplomacy.
That whiplash is not strategy. It is the normalization of annihilation as a negotiating tool.
And now, the world’s leading human rights bodies are saying exactly what Washington refuses to confront: this is not just reckless rhetoric—it may be criminal.
Amnesty International warned that such threats reflect a “staggering level of cruelty and disregard for human life,” and could constitute a threat of genocide under international law.
Not hyperbole. Not partisan outrage. Legal language.
Let’s be clear about what was on the table.
The deliberate targeting of power plants, water systems, bridges, and essential infrastructure is not some abstract military option. It is the dismantling of civilian life itself—the systems that make survival possible. As Amnesty and medical experts warned, such attacks would deprive millions of access to water, food, healthcare, and basic human dignity, while potentially triggering environmental and even nuclear catastrophe.
This is not war in the conventional sense. It is the engineering of societal collapse.
And yet, in today’s Washington, even genocidal rhetoric is spun as leverage.
This is the deeper crisis: not just the war itself, but the erosion of boundaries that once constrained power. The idea that you can threaten mass civilian death to force compliance—and then walk it back as part of a deal—is not diplomacy. It is coercion dressed up as statecraft, a performance of dominance in which human lives become bargaining chips.
The cease-fire, reportedly mediated by Pakistan under intense global pressure, buys two weeks.
Two weeks to negotiate.
Two weeks to pause the bombing.
Two weeks for markets to stabilize and headlines to cool.
But what does it not do?
It does not undo the more than 1,600 civilians already reported killed.
It does not rebuild the infrastructure already shattered.
It does not erase the terror inflicted on tens of millions of people suddenly forced to contemplate their own annihilation.
And it does not undo the precedent.
Because once a leader openly invokes the destruction of an entire civilization, the threshold has already been crossed. The unthinkable has been spoken—and therefore made thinkable.
Human rights experts are warning that the danger is not only what might happen next, but what has already been normalized. As Amnesty put it, the very act of making such threats “brazenly shreds core rules of international humanitarian law.”
That is the real story here.
Not just a war spiraling toward catastrophe—but a global order in which the rules meant to prevent catastrophe are being openly discarded.
We have seen this trajectory before. Iraq was justified with certainty that did not exist. Afghanistan became a forever war without a clear end. Now Iran sits at the edge of something even more dangerous—not just invasion or occupation, but the explicit threat of civilizational erasure.
Even some of the president’s allies have recoiled, recognizing that this is not strength but instability masquerading as resolve. When threats alienate allies, embolden adversaries, and horrify the world, they are not strategic—they are reckless.
Meanwhile, Congress drifts. Calls for oversight, war powers votes, even removal from office have surfaced—but only after the rhetoric crossed into territory that international law was designed to prevent.
This is the central failure of American governance in the age of permanent war: the abdication of responsibility until crisis becomes catastrophe.
The cease-fire should not be mistaken for success. It is a pause forced by global alarm and the sheer gravity of what was nearly unleashed. It is proof that diplomacy still exists—but only under the shadow of something far darker.
Because the question now is unavoidable:
If threatening to destroy a civilization is part of the negotiating playbook, what happens when threats stop working?
History offers a grim answer: escalation.
And next time, there may be no last-minute intervention.
No diplomatic scramble.
No two-week pause.
Only the consequences of a line already crossed.
Could a New Nuclear Reactor Double or Triple Electricity Rates in New Brunswick?
The implication of these experiences and proposals is that a new 1,000-MW reactor for New Brunswick could carry a price tag of $15 to $26 billion. Estimates of the costs of electricity needed to cover the capital costs of new nuclear plants, if they’re financed through electricity rates, range from the mid-20¢ to more than 40¢ per kilowatt-hour—nearly double to even triple current consumer electricity costs in New Brunswick. Such increases would undermine energy affordability, economic competitiveness, and any plans for decarbonization through electrification.
April 9, 2026, Mark Winfield and Susan O’Donnell, https://www.theenergymix.com/could-a-new-nuclear-reactor-double-or-triple-electricity-rates-in-new-brunswick/
At the end of last month, the NB Power Review Panel report recommended considering building a new large nuclear reactor at the Point Lepreau site in New Brunswick. That recommendation raises a series of questions, not least whether the province can afford a new reactor, how it would be paid for, and its impact on electricity rates and the province’s overall financial position.
It is important to grasp the scale of such a project and its potential economic impacts. Based on recent experience in other jurisdictions, a new large reactor of the types likely to be considered for Lepreau could cost between $15 and $26 billion. That would be a far higher capital expenditure than the original Point Lepreau reactor, which itself came in at more than $5 billion in 2026 dollars.
If the cost of a new reactor were passed on directly to NB Power customers through electricity rates, those rates could double or even triple.
Already, the costs of the original construction and later refurbishment of New Brunswick’s existing reactor at Lepreau make up $3.6 billion of the utility’s current crippling debt, the NB Power Review noted. That debt, plus the fact that the reactor has been operating below capacity since the refurbishment, is costing ratepayers dearly.
But despite New Brunswick’s costly nuclear experience, a new reactor has been in the cards since 2023, when NB Power and the provincial government published plans calling for 600 megawatts (MW) of new nuclear power by 2035 at the Point Lepreau site on the Bay of Fundy.
The original plan was to build two small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs). After spending almost $130 million in public funds for SMR activities, New Brunswick found it couldn’t attract the private investment the designs needed to move forward.
The NB Power Review Panel strongly advised against SMRs, echoing a statement by Energy Minister René Legacy six months ago. He rejected the notion of building first-of-a-kind SMRs because of the technological and economic risks associated with their incomplete and unproven designs.
Instead, the review panel recommended that the province consider “initiating the planning assessment phase for an additional large scale, proven technology nuclear plant to be sited alongside the Point Lepreau facility.”
The last new full-scale nuclear reactor project in Canada, the Darlington nuclear power plant east of Toronto, was completed more than 30 years ago. The enormous cost overruns on that project contributed significantly to the effective bankruptcy of the province’s utility, Ontario Hydro, leading to its eventual break-up.
As the memories of these previous experiences with large nuclear construction projects have faded, new projects are now being proposed in Ontario and Alberta. These projects, and experiences with the handful of new-build nuclear projects initiated in Europe and the United States in the last two decades, give us some indication of the reactor options, and their potential costs, for New Brunswick.
At the end of last month, the NB Power Review Panel report recommended considering building a new large nuclear reactor at the Point Lepreau site in New Brunswick. That recommendation raises a series of questions, not least whether the province can afford a new reactor, how it would be paid for, and its impact on electricity rates and the province’s overall financial position.
It is important to grasp the scale of such a project and its potential economic impacts. Based on recent experience in other jurisdictions, a new large reactor of the types likely to be considered for Lepreau could cost between $15 and $26 billion. That would be a far higher capital expenditure than the original Point Lepreau reactor, which itself came in at more than $5 billion in 2026 dollars.
If the cost of a new reactor were passed on directly to NB Power customers through electricity rates, those rates could double or even triple.
Already, the costs of the original construction and later refurbishment of New Brunswick’s existing reactor at Lepreau make up $3.6 billion of the utility’s current crippling debt, the NB Power Review noted. That debt, plus the fact that the reactor has been operating below capacity since the refurbishment, is costing ratepayers dearly.
But despite New Brunswick’s costly nuclear experience, a new reactor has been in the cards since 2023, when NB Power and the provincial government published plans calling for 600 megawatts (MW) of new nuclear power by 2035 at the Point Lepreau site on the Bay of Fundy.
The original plan was to build two small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs). After spending almost $130 million in public funds for SMR activities, New Brunswick found it couldn’t attract the private investment the designs needed to move forward.
The NB Power Review Panel strongly advised against SMRs, echoing a statement by Energy Minister René Legacy six months ago. He rejected the notion of building first-of-a-kind SMRs because of the technological and economic risks associated with their incomplete and unproven designs.
Instead, the review panel recommended that the province consider “initiating the planning assessment phase for an additional large scale, proven technology nuclear plant to be sited alongside the Point Lepreau facility.”
The last new full-scale nuclear reactor project in Canada, the Darlington nuclear power plant east of Toronto, was completed more than 30 years ago. The enormous cost overruns on that project contributed significantly to the effective bankruptcy of the province’s utility, Ontario Hydro, leading to its eventual break-up.
As the memories of these previous experiences with large nuclear construction projects have faded, new projects are now being proposed in Ontario and Alberta. These projects, and experiences with the handful of new-build nuclear projects initiated in Europe and the United States in the last two decades, give us some indication of the reactor options, and their potential costs, for New Brunswick.
In Ontario and Alberta, two reactor designs, the CANDU MONARK and the Westinghouse Electric AP1000, have been considered for the expansion of the Bruce Nuclear power plant on Lake Huron, a proposed 10,000-MW Ontario Power Generation plant at Wesleyville on Lake Ontario, and the proposed 4,800-MW Peace River Nuclear Project in Alberta.
The 1,000-MW CANDU MONARK, intended as a successor to the existing CANDU reactors in Ontario and New Brunswick, is owned by Montreal-based multinational AtkinsRéalis (formerly known as SNC Lavalin). Although it’s being aggressively promoted to potential international customers, the MONARK design remains incomplete. The situation has already led the Alberta project’s proponents to switch their proposal to favour the AP1000 design by Westinghouse Electric.
Westinghouse is a U.S.-based company owned by two Canadian firms: infrastructure developer Brookfield Renewable Partners; and uranium miner Cameco Corporation.
Cost information is available on the AP1000 reactor, as two units were completed in 2024 at the Vogtle nuclear power plant in Georgia. The total estimated cost of those two 1,100-MW reactors was US$36 billion, or about $26 billion per reactor in 2026 Canadian dollars. The plant has been described as “the most expensive power plant ever built on Earth.” When it went into service, Vogtle resulted in a nearly 24% increase in Georgia Power’s electricity rates, the largest jump in the utility’s history.
AtkinsRéalis is currently pitching the CANDU MONARK to Poland, with a reported estimated cost of $45 to $50 billion for a three-reactor plant, or about $15 billion per unit. The company has also proposed an “Enhanced CANDU 6” design, an updated version of the existing plant at Point Lepreau.
The implication of these experiences and proposals is that a new 1,000-MW reactor for New Brunswick could carry a price tag of $15 to $26 billion. Estimates of the costs of electricity needed to cover the capital costs of new nuclear plants, if they’re financed through electricity rates, range from the mid-20¢ to more than 40¢ per kilowatt-hour—nearly double to even triple current consumer electricity costs in New Brunswick. Such increases would undermine energy affordability, economic competitiveness, and any plans for decarbonization through electrification.
The province could also try to finance the costs through its general tax base. That is the approach that Ontario seems to be taking, at an estimated cost to the provincial treasury of $7 to $8.5 billion per year. Electricity subsidies now account for more than half of Ontario’s deficit, exceeding annual capital expenditures on education and health care by wide margins.
In New Brunswick, the annual costs of that approach, even spread over the decade or more of construction, could exceed the province’s current, record $1.39 billion deficit, and match or exceed its entire annual capital spending plans in all other areas. Adding the cost to New Brunswick Power’s current $6-billion debt would further cripple the utility and likely put it on a path to the kind of de facto bankruptcy that befell Ontario Hydro.
In addition to the financial risks for New Brunswick, a single large reactor project would repeat and magnify a key problem associated with the original Lepreau project—putting an even higher portion of the province’s electricity supply eggs in a single, very expensive and high-risk basket.
The delivery of the NB Power Review Panel report gives New Brunswick an opportunity to reflect on its future electricity pathways. Those directions need to emphasize affordability, decarbonization and sustainability, reliability, and the capacity to adapt to changing economic, technological, and geopolitical circumstances. A single large nuclear project is unlikely to meet those criteria.
Mark Winfield is a professor at the Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change at York University in Toronto, and co-chair of the faculty’s Sustainable Energy Initiative. Susan O’Donnell is adjunct research professor and lead researcher on the CEDAR project in Sustainability and Environmental Studies at St. Thomas University.
Creating bases on the Moon
April 07, 2026, Bruce Gagnon, https://space4peace.blogspot.com/2026/04/creating-bases-on-moon.html
Video on original
NASA outlines this $20 billion project to build bases on the moon.
The speaker in the video mentions RTG’s – which are nuclear power sources for the base. The nuclear industry views space as a new market. Imagine the dirty nuclear fabrication process at DoE labs across the country and then a series of launches that could be a disaster for life on Earth if there are accidents on take off.
The US has had a plan for military base control of the moon since the 1950’s.
The US (and some allies) are in a race to take control of the moon before China & Russia can get there.
In this 1989 Congressional study ‘Military Space Forces’ they discuss the Earth-Moon gravity well and state that who ever covers the top of the well would be able to control access on and off the planet earth. This has relevance not only for deciding who can control the Earth below, but also who can mine the sky, etc.
Thus all of this is connected to current US mission to the moon.
Moon has helium-3 and water which the competitors will want to control. So we now face a duplication of the current global war system on Earth moving into space.
Mars has magnesium, cobalt, uranium, etc and the nuclear-powered rovers driving around Mars are doing planetary mapping and soil ID operations.
Everyone says that a moon-based colony would be a launch pad for deeper space exploration and mining operations so again ‘control’ becomes a priority for those who have such ambitions.
I find it sad that we have competing space missions, goals, and priorities.
I’d wish we’d go off into space when we were a more mature human race here on Earth rather than carrying the ‘bad seed of war, greed, and environmental degradation’ that we’ve sown into the depths of our Mother Earth.
I’d rather we had a global informed debate about what kind of seed we should carry into space when we do go – and then go as united and clear thinking Earth people. Like envisioned in Star Trek.
Imagine the money for human development on Earth we’d save if we went as one people rather than competing national blocs spending massive amounts of taxpayer funds.
This has been the work of the Global Network since our founding in 1992 – to help usher in such a needed global consciousness, debate and organizing.
We also need a renewed effort to create international space law that bans weapons/war in space, regulates launches into the shrinking and contested parking spaces in Lower Earth Orbit (LEO), renewed treaties for the planetary bodies and determining just who can benefit from resource extraction in space.
Let’s not create a new ‘Wild West Show’ in space.
1 This Month
of the week– Nuclear Reactor Information Task Force
14 May – online event From Bombs to Data Centres: the Face of Nuclear Colonialism
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