Australia’s coal and gas exports violate our human rights, group says in new UN case
Lana LamSydney, 23 June 26, https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn8q5nx6jw6o
A group of Australians have accused the government of violating their human rights by continuing to export coal and gas and are asking the UN to take action.
The group say their lives have been harmed due to extreme weather in Australia – bushfires, floods, heatwaves, rising sea levels and toxic algal blooms – and the government’s support of fossil fuel companies is to blame.
It is the first legal claim taken to an international body or court since 2025’s ruling by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) that countries can be sued over climate change.
Any decision by the UN is not legally binding but Australia – one of the world’s largest coal and gas exporters – would be expected to respond.
The BBC has contacted Environment Minister Murray Watt for comment.
Dr Barry Traill, a wildlife ecologist and volunteer firefighter, is one of the ten litigants.
In 2009, several of his friends died during the devastating Black Saturday bushfires in Victoria, despite being prepared and experienced, he said.
“That deeply changed me,” Traill said, and “it became clear that the old rules around fires and survival no longer applied”.
In 2019, he was on the frontlines battling severe blazes in Queensland during the so-called Black Summer fires where he saw that climate change was not a future problem.
“It is already killing people and hurting lives, landscapes and communities across Australia,” he said.
“Continuing to allow coal and gas companies to increase pollution, while people face worsening disasters, is a profound failure of responsibility.”
Brendon Donohue has also joined the legal claim, describing how he was trapped in his home for 10 days in 2022 when floods in Brisbane damaged the power supply of his apartment block, meaning the lifts, intercom and exits were not accessible.
“Because I live with blindness and mobility challenges, climate impacts affect me differently and can make everyday life much harder to navigate safely,” he said.
Another case is that of Prof Anne Poelina, an Indigenous woman from the Kimberley region in Western Australia, who describes being displaced from the area around the Fitzroy River, one of the state’s most important waterways, because of catastrophic flooding.
“When the river is healthy, our people are healthy,” she said, and “when the river suffers, our people suffer.”
“What concerns me most is the intergenerational loss of cultural knowledge,” she added as “so much of our knowledge is not written down”, but passed on by being physically present on the land.
“They are asking the United Nations Human Rights Committee to declare that it’s unlawful for Australia to continue approving and subsidising coal and gas for export without a plan to protect people from dangerous climate change,” said Hannah White, senior lawyer with Environmental Justice Australia.
Last July, the ICJ – considered the world’s highest court with global jurisdiction – ruled that countries can sue each other for climate change, including over historic emissions of planet-warming gases.One of the lawyers helping the group with their claim said that “climate harm caused by Australia’s coal and gas doesn’t stop at a border, and neither does Australia’s responsibility for it”.
U.S. Military Bases Around the World Are Facing Growing Protest From an Emboldened Antiwar Movement
Jeremy Kuzmarov, Jun 23, 2026
Previously published at CovertAction Magazine
In early April, an unidentified Irish man climbed onto the roof of a U.S. C-130 Hercules military transport vehicle parked at Shannon Airport in County Claire, Ireland, and sabotaged its wing and fuselage using a hatchet, causing $75 million in damage.
The heroic action was part of a wave of protests at Shannon Airport, which has functioned since the end of the Cold War as a transport hub for U.S. troops and refueling and transit spot for CIA and U.S. military planes, including ones that transported prisoners to Guantánamo Bay under the infamous rendition program.
Edward Hogan is a a regular participant in the protests at the Shannon Airport who was a featured speaker at a June 6 webinar hosted by Global Women for Peace—United Against NATO, which aimed to raise awareness about the widening protests against U.S. military bases in Europe and around the world.
A former member of the Irish defense force and UN peacekeeper, Hogan said that he has been arrested eight times in protests outside Shannon Airport, which are growing in scale because of popular anger at Ireland’s complicity in the Israeli genocide in Gaza and Iran War—along with previous illegal U.S. and NATO wars like in Libya, Afghanistan, Iraq and Serbia in the 1990s.
Hogan emphasized that, by allowing the U.S. military to use Shannon Airport, it has violated a neutrality policy that was signed into law by the Irish government in 1939.
Since 2002, more than three million U.S. troops have passed through Shannon Airport, many through flights classified as “civilian,” though most troop carriers are operated by Omni Air International, which the Irish government acknowledges has been allowed to carry weapons on board.
Additionally, the Irish Foreign Minister has granted permission for U.S. Navy and Air Force planes to land at Shannon—in violation of Irish law.
Hogan was followed up in his remarks by Ilse Terheggen, a Dutch punk rock musician and activist, who spoke about growing protests she is involved in outside the Leeuwarden Air Base in Friesland near Leiden………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
At the end of the webinar, a woman from Sweden came on to highlight the Pentagon’s push for the expansion of military bases in the Nordic countries (Sweden, Finland, Denmark and Norway) from which the U.S. can launch direct attacks on Russia.
When the woman asked why Swedish anti-war activism was not featured in the webinar, others said they would have liked to but that, unfortunately, there was not much anti-war activism there except for some small actions.
The woman agreed that, unfortunately, this was true and lamented that the entire Swedish parliament had supported an agreement that would allow the U.S. to use Sweden’s 17 military bases to attack Russia.
Despite a conservative political climate reminiscent of the Cold War and insane war escalations being carried out in Washington and Tel Aviv, the June 6 Global Women for Peace—United Against NATO webinar made clear that there is a growing grass-roots opposition across Europe and parts of Southeast Asia, which is beginning to make some political headway.
Many speakers emphasized a widening coalition at anti-base and anti-war protests involving pro-Palestinian groups, climate change activists, trade union activists, feminists and pacifists, along with a growing number of young people who are experiencing a political awakening.
If they continue to expand, these networks may threaten the hold on power of ruling classes whose war-mongering and fealty to U.S. imperial designs have put them on the wrong side of history. https://jeremykuzmarov.substack.com/p/us-military-bases-around-the-world?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=2091638&post_id=203170903&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=rq1nt&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
Even If the Strait of Hormuz is Open, it Ain’t Open
22 June 2026 by Larry C. Johnson , https://sonar21.com/even-if-the-strait-of-hormuz-is-open-it-aint-open/
It is open. Nope, it is closed. Wait… It is open. What? Closed again? If you are following the media reports on the Strait of Hormuz you are probably dizzy from hearing about the changing status of the Strait of Hormuz. If you think that getting a firm agreement between Iran and the US to open the Strait of Hormuz will result in an instant solution to restoring global oil reserves, think again.
Even if Iran agrees to a 60-day moratorium on charging ships entering and leaving the Persian Gulf a “usage fee” (Trump calls it a “toll”), and the moratorium starts this week, the world still faces some serious economic shocks from the disruption of Crude Oil and LNG. Crude Oil and LNG production will take time to ramp back up to the pre-Ramadan War levels. We still do not have a full assessment of the damage to the Oil and LNG infrastructure in the Gulf nations. Even if all those systems are intact and functioning — they are not — there is still the problem of having the tankers that carry the Black Gold ready to take the shipments.
The tankers, aka ships, that have been sitting idle in the warm, salty waters of the Persian Gulf for four months face months of the maintenance recovery cycle before they will be ready to get back to the task of hauling oil and LNG. An expert in this field explained it to me this way:
Oil tankers are likely to lose weeks to months depending on fouling, coating condition, and drydock access. LNG carriers are likely to lose longer because the hull problem is coupled to cargo-system and gas-management reliability.
For planning, assume crude/product tankers lose 1-3 months in the median case and 3-6 months in the heavy case. Assume newer LNG carriers lose 2-4 months and older/system-stressed LNG carriers lose 4-9+ months. Some vessels will be faster, but the market should plan for a long tail of slow, disputed, or yard-bound tonnage.
The global perspective is clear: physical movement will recover first; commercial availability will recover second; fleet efficiency will recover third. The market will separate clean, documented, charter-ready tonnage from vessels that are merely moving. The maintenance backlog will be the next bottleneck after Hormuz.
Besides the delay in getting tankers back on the high seas, there is the problem of the Middle-Distillate Inflection Point. What the hell is that? As you can see in the image at the top of this article, a barrel of oil is not like a can of Coca Cola, i.e., a consistent liquid from the top to the bottom of the can. A barrel of Oil consists of segments, with the middle-distillate portion of the barrel providing the raw material from which both diesel and jet fuel are derived. That segment is the critical fuel for the real economy because diesel runs freight, rail, agriculture, construction, and distribution, while jet fuel supports both civil aviation and military air operations.
The structural constraint at the heart of the current energy crunch is the refinery barrel itself. Military jet fuel (JP-8) and civilian diesel are not refined from separate barrels — they compete for the same distillate cut from every barrel processed. So if Trump orders the Pentagon to start bombing Iran again, that will trigger draw downs on stocks — assuming the ops tempo in the Gulf is sustained — and refiners will face pressure to tilt output toward JP-8, which directly squeezes the supply of diesel and civil aviation fuel. In other words, there is no free barrel; every gallon of military fuel is a gallon not available to a trucking company, a farmer, or an airline.
Of all the downstream effects, diesel tightness is the most economically dangerous and the fastest-moving. Unlike gasoline, which is a consumer cost, diesel is an input cost — embedded in every freight shipment, every food delivery, every industrial process. When diesel tightens, the price increase doesn’t stop at the pump; it cascades through supply chains and lands simultaneously on freight rates, grocery prices, manufacturing margins, and retail costs. That kind of broad-based input inflation is one of the more reliable causes of recession, because it compresses margins economy-wide while simultaneously suppressing consumer purchasing power.
This helps explain why Donald Trump pivoted so quick to support the MoU with Iran. The real allocation question is not whether to release the SPR or whether to jawbone OPEC into producing more — it is how hard to run the war. Every incremental increase in operational intensity consumes distillate that the domestic economy cannot easily replace, tightening a transmission belt that runs directly from the Strait of Hormuz into Main Street prices. The tradeoff between war intensity and economic stability is not an abstract strategic concern; it is a daily refinery scheduling decision with macroeconomic consequences
Here is the problem: currently, the US has approximately a 30-day supply of diesel. It is estimated that somewhere between 8% (VLCC class alone) and a figure approaching 15–20% of the broader crude and product tanker fleet is either stranded or effectively withdrawn from global circulation — a supply shock to shipping capacity that compounds the underlying oil supply disruption. This means there is no ready, quick solution to fill that gap in 30 days. In fact, the delay to restore the US supply of diesel could last as long as 60 days. In short, oil is not going to flow fast enough globally to meet existing demand, which probably accounts for Trump sudden decision last week to sign the MoU with Iran. A knowledgeable expert who provided me with this information believes that we will hit the wall of diesel shortage in July.
How’s that for cheery news?
Israel takes perverse pleasure in torturing, raping, and murdering Palestinian hostages
In August 2024, Israeli human rights advocacy group, B’Tselem, published a report highlighting the systematic torture, abuse, and rape of Palestinian prisoners. The spokesperson for B’Tselem said,
“We heard similar accounts of sexual abuse, starvation and assault from separate prisoners held in 16 different locations across Israel. As we gathered the testimonies, we realised that every witness account was almost identical, no matter what their age, gender or location was. There’s no doubt. This kind of abuse is systematic.”
Palestinians abducted, imprisoned, starved, electrocuted, tortured, raped, and even subjected to simulated burial. This is the reality of Palestinian hostages tortured by Israel
Eva Karene Bartlett, Jun 23, 2026
In late 2023, Israeli soldiers abducted and imprisoned a Palestinian man (among many abducted at the same time) from a school in Jabaliya, Gaza, which he and other displaced Palestinians had been sheltering in. He was held hostage in Israeli prisons for nearly two years, during which time he was severely tortured by repeated and prolonged electrocution (including multiple times a day). His Israeli torturers at some point locked him in coffin-like box for two weeks in their attempt to psychologically break him.
According to Imad Nabhan, he refused to act as an informant for Israel. The Israeli soldiers first attempted to bribe him into collaboration, then defaulted to Israel’s (now well-documented) norm of brutal physical and psychological torture of Palestinian captives.
Nabhan’s release in October 2025 saw Imad so physically debilitated by the electric shock torture that he fell unconscious into violent seizures numerous times daily.
At the end of May, he spoke about the torture he endured in Israeli prisons, including his “coffin torture”. He reported that he had been held in “an iron container with a wooden box inside it,” where his hands and feet were tied, fed through a tube in a small hole, just enough to keep him alive.
“It seemed they wanted to make me feel like I was dead so they could get whatever information they wanted. I stayed inside that coffin for 15 days. I felt like I was alive in a dead body.”
In October 2025, while a journalist in Gaza was attempting to interview Nabhan after his release, Imad fell into one of his seizures, his whole body writhing and convulsing, his head repeatedly banging against the ground.
This lasted for 30 seconds, and started again a minute later as his father tried to shield his son’s head from hitting the ground. He spoke of Imad’s torture, showing the marks left on his legs from the repeated electric shocks.
His father had said until his release, he’d thought his son was dead. “We thought he’d been martyred, because there was information they shot people and were running over their bodies with tanks. So after two years, we were surprised that was alive in prison and was released.”
The Israeli torture and abuse meted out to Imad Nabhan is not unique, it is the norm, and in recent years there have been increasingly numerous accounts from former prisoners of the torture, rape, abuse, starvation, and denied medical care they endured in Israeli captivity, in violation of all international norms…………………………………………..
Living Hell: Israeli torture prisons
Among the more horrific instances (known to the public) of Israeli soldiers’ raping of Palestinian prisoners was the July 2024 gang rape of a Palestinian man from Gaza in the notorious Sde Teiman prison (dubbed the Israeli Guantanamo).
Hiding their faces with their shields, Israeli soldiers took turns raping the prisoner so severely he was hospitalized unable to walk, with “a torn rectum, damaged lungs, and broken ribs.” [Note: Many Palestinians who have testified about their severe torture in Israeli prisons were not given medical care afterward.]
Astonishingly (to normal people), after a video of the rape was leaked and aired on Israeli television, not only was the Israeli public reaction not disgust or horror, but Israelis, members of the Knesset, and Israeli ministers protested the detention of soldiers accused of the gang-rape. None of the soldiers were charged.
Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir called their brief detention “shameful”, saying the rapists were “our best heroes”.
In August 2024, Israeli human rights advocacy group, B’Tselem, published a report highlighting the systematic torture, abuse, and rape of Palestinian prisoners. The spokesperson for B’Tselem said,
“We heard similar accounts of sexual abuse, starvation and assault from separate prisoners held in 16 different locations across Israel. As we gathered the testimonies, we realised that every witness account was almost identical, no matter what their age, gender or location was. There’s no doubt. This kind of abuse is systematic.”
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. When the issue of Palestinian hostages tortured in Israeli prisons is reported these days, the focus is often only on Palestinians from Gaza. But on a near daily basis throughout the West Bank, Palestinian men, women and children are abducted, arrested and held imprisoned, without charges, many of them repeatedly so. It is clearly not about crimes committed but about trying to break Palestinians psychologically, by the same means of torture, starvation, sexual abuse, and physical abuse.
Israel added to UN sexual violence blacklist
The United Nations put Israel on its annual blacklist of entities “credibly suspected of committing widespread sexual violence in conflict zones.” Victims include 31 Palestinians from the Gaza Strip and the occupied West Bank, including 14 men, seven women, nine boys, and one girl.
Violations included, “rape, including with objects, gang rape, attempted rape, physical violence to the genitals, instances of targeted shooting of the genitals.” Nine in the report were raped, including gang rape, some repeatedly.
………………………………………………………………………………………………….. That Israel faces no consequences nor any pressure to stop such torture, what is described as a systematic top-down policy, highlights yet again the death of international law and the meaningless of UN designations. As I’ve argued many times over the years, what’s the point of listing Israel as a serial murdered and rapist if no international body will actually stop Israel from continuing to abduct, torture and rape Palestinians?…………………………………………………………………… https://evakarenebartlett.substack.com/p/israel-takes-perverse-pleasure-in?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=3046064&post_id=202287735&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
France tries to cope with second premature heatwave in less than a month
19/06/2026 – https://www.france24.com/en/france-tries-to-cope-with-second-premature-heatwave-in-less-than-a-month
France is in the grip of a heatwave, which Météo France expects to be “wisdespread, prolonged and intense”. The thermometer is set to climb even higher in the coming days, reaching or exceeding 40°C on June 21, leading to several municipalities to cancel Fete de la Musique celebrations. The state-owned utility EDF has also warned that three nuclear plants face production curbs next week because of high temperatures on the Rhone and Garonne rivers.
Republican, Democratic criticism of Trump’s Iran peace initiative promotes renewed war not peace
Walt Zlotow West Suburban Peace Coalition Glen Ellyn IL 20 June 26
Not one of America’s 535 Congresspersons is sensible enough to applaud Trump’s surrender on Iran’s sensible terms in his lost war on Iran.
The Memorandum of Understanding signed June 19 is hanging by a thread due to Israel’s continued grisly bombing of Lebanon. This violates an Iranian red line that cancelled the first day of negotiations in the new 60 day ceasefire to resolve remaining issues to officially end hostilities. The peace process appears stillborn.
But congressional critics totally ignore Israeli perfidy in Lebanon blowing up the peace process. They’re laser focused on lambasting Trump’s refusing to complete his Iran war aims of regime change, ending Iranian nuclear enrichment, destroying Iranian offensive missile stocks and maintaining life suffocating economic sanctions.
Their hair is on fire Trump is going to release stolen Iranian billions and pay billions in reparations for the damage his thousands of bombs inflicted. They’re astonished, indeed horrified he’s pledged to respect the Iranian regime going forward.
To hear these congresspersons masquerading as sensible public servants, Trump has certified America’s war loss, something they view infinitely worse than ending a war America had no chance of winning against a peaceful country, with no nuclear weapons program, posing no threat to America whatsoever.
Republicans and Democrats both demand Iran requires regime change and subservience to US dominance. They differ only on strategy and tactics. Democrats prefer endless economic sanctions warfare, retaining Iran’s stolen billions, choking off their oil sales thru banking restrictions combined with political intimidation and isolation.
Republicans prefer outright war. They were all in for Trump’s aerial assault to decapitate and collapse the Iranian leadership to achieve his multiple war objectives. Now they are apoplectic Trump has surrendered to avert the worldwide economic collapse his blunder will inevitably cause. Without stating explicitly, their withering criticism implies Tramp should complete his promise to totally destroy Iran.
Not one of these 535 congressional fools will be honest enough to admit Trump is doing the right thing surrendering to bring peace to the region and economic survival to the world. Not one of them will admit the obvious truth that Israel conned Trump to commit political and military suicide in attacking a thoroughly prepared Iran. Not one will confess that Israel is blowing up the peace process which will prevent reopening the Strait of Hormuz risking further worldwide economic catastrophe. Not one will demand Trump cut off all military aid to Israel till Israel pulls out of Lebanon, pulls out of Gaza, stops slaughtering Palestinians in the West Bank and honestly negotiates a Palestinian state.
All they see is an imaginary, nuclear ready Iran they demonize while ignoring a massively nuclear armed, endlessly waring Israel they idolize.
In the Middle East Trump appears to have learned a hard lesson. Congress has not.
AUKUS has a big waste issue – and not only money
The fundamental problem is that the AUKUS agreement was negotiated in secret in 2021 by the leaders of the three countries involved, Australia, Britain and the US.
Not one of those leaders is still in office. There has been no parliamentary scrutiny of the deal in Australia.
While they could operate away from base for longer periods and at greater depth than conventional submarines, their size would prevent them operating in the comparatively shallow waters around Australia’s northern coastline, making them less useful for defending our territory.
Hidden in the fine print of the AUKUS agreement is the need for Australia to manage the nuclear waste produced by new submarines, writes Ian Lowe.
The New Daily, Jun 22, 2026,
Many people are shocked by the price of the AUKUS agreement. The government has budgeted a staggering $368 billion, hundreds of times the cost of a new hospital.
But hidden in the fine print is a further huge cost. If the proposal goes ahead, we will have to manage the nuclear waste produced by the submarines.
Nobody knows what that will cost. The US and Britain have operated nuclear submarines for more than 50 years, but still have not worked out how to manage the intractable radioactive waste.
The decommissioned boats are sitting alongside docks, with British and American scientists trying to work out what to do.
We can get some idea of the possible extra cost from the work done 10 years ago by the South Australia Nuclear Royal Commission. I was a member of the expert advisory group for that inquiry.
It commissioned a study of what it would cost to build and operate a facility to store radioactive waste from nuclear power stations in Asian countries.
It came up with a figure of $145 billion, in 2016 values. Scaled up to 2026 dollars, it is equivalent to $190 billion – half as much again as the budget for the submarines.
That figure is almost certainly an underestimate because the royal commission was considering management of waste from nuclear power stations.
The proposed submarines use highly enriched uranium, weapons-grade material. The resulting waste is much nastier. It also poses serious security issues.
At the end of its life, the reactor in a Virginia class submarine still has enough enriched uranium for about 20 bombs. So the waste management facility will need military guarding to prevent misuse of the uranium.
It is also unclear how our government expects to find an acceptable site for waste storage.
There have been three attempts to find a place to store the comparatively benign low-level waste from nuclear medicine and industrial applications.
All have foundered because of opposition by the affected First Nations groups. They have not forgotten the harm done by British testing of nuclear weapons on their land.
The government has made vague suggestions about Defence property, but it is hard to see how it could obtain free prior informed consent from the Indigenous people whose land would be used.
There are also questions about whether acquiring nuclear submarines powered by highly-enriched weapons-grade uranium would be a breach of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Some Pacific Island leaders have expressed concern, arguing that it would certainly not be consistent with the spirit of our treaty obligations.
The fundamental problem is that the AUKUS agreement was negotiated in secret in 2021 by the leaders of the three countries involved, Australia, Britain and the US.
Not one of those leaders is still in office. There has been no parliamentary scrutiny of the deal in Australia.
It continues to be shrouded in secrecy, despite the high stakes and eye-watering projected cost. Retired major-general Michael Smith has described the arrangement as “the worst defence decision since we relied on Britain to defend us in World War II”.
A public inquiry into the agreement is being conducted under the auspices of the Australian Peace and Security forum.
It is considering the fundamental question – would AUKUS keep us safe? At what cost?
The inquiry is headed by five distinguished community leaders, headed by Peter Garrett, who was lead singer of Midnight Oil before becoming a Cabinet minister.
The critical question is whether owning and operating eight nuclear-powered submarines would actually enhance our security.
I participated in a one-day seminar run by the Submarine Institute of Australia well before the AUKUS agreement was negotiated. The submariners were clearly divided about the question of whether the next generation of submarines should be nuclear-powered.
While they could operate away from base for longer periods and at greater depth than conventional submarines, their size would prevent them operating in the comparatively shallow waters around Australia’s northern coastline, making them less useful for defending our territory.
That observation poses an obvious related question about sovereignty and independence.
Would the AUKUS arrangement move Australia away from being an independent middle-sized country like Japan or Indonesia, locking us into the US war machine and increasing the risk of being dragged into great-power conflict with China, our major trading partner?
Some observers fear that AUKUS could actually make Australia a nuclear target. Given that China is our major trading partner, it seems bizarre to imagine that we need to protect our ocean-going trade from the Chinese navy, but that has been proposed as a reason for acquiring nuclear-powered submarines.
All these questions are being considered by the public inquiry, which is receiving submissions from the community and holding a series of hearings in major cities.
Its October report should provide the basis for a serious re-examination of the AUKUS agreement.
Memory politics – a tragic military strategy in Ukraine
23 June 2026 Noel Wauchope, https://theaimn.net/memory-politics-a-tragic-military-strategy-in-ukraine/
I came across the views of Marta Havryshko in a YouTube video on June 15th, in a lengthy audio essay.
What struck me about this speech, was that it comes from a Jewish Ukrainian woman, who is describing her own observations, living in Ukraine today. I also found the title of her speech very interesting – The tragedy of Memory Politics in Ukraine, Israel & the West. That’s because I cannot help noticing that in the prevailing commentaries on Ukraine, the commentators seem to have forgotten the complexity in Ukraine’s recent modern history.
Marta Havryshko is aware of this complex history. She has been living through the most recent part of it. She sees it from a Jewish perspective, and she is no fan of Putin’s Russia. But – she also brings her awareness of history to current affairs in Ukraine, and she is no fan of Volodymyr Zelensky either.
I tried to transcribe the entire 95 minutes of her speech. It is too long for an article, but I will include excerpts here, to illustrate her themes. She discusses Ukraine’s troubled history of anti-semitism, and the Nazi period in Ukraine. She focusses on Zelensky and the current accepted views on Ukraine’s history – the apparent forgetting of the facts in that history, as Ukrainian extreme nationalism now flourishes.
Marta describes her childhood, and education in Ukraine. She learned at school the history of Soviet Russia’s oppression of Ukrainians, and of the heroic freedom fighters who resisted the Russians:
“I was was raised on this nationalistic myth about glorious fighters, members of the Ukraine underground movement the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) and the organisation of Ukraine nationalists. We learned all these patriotic songs. Our family gatherings involved histories about Soviet repressions and actually, the house that my parents built was on the territory on the land that was seized by Soviets in 1939. Some of my family were involved on the ground in the Ukrainian nationalist movement and they were oppressed. Some of them were booted in prison and some of them were sent to Siberia. So I was raised in this highly nationalistic environment.
When I became a student at Lviv National University actually I met almost the same atmosphere. Lviv is a very nationalistic city with the biggest monument to Stepan Bandera (leader of the UPA). My home was close to Bandera street, and many streets had these partisan names.”
Marta explains how the memories of wartime events have now become confused, enmeshed into present day views and anti-Russian fervour.
“After 2014 this very western Ukraine nationalistic historical myth started to move eastward. After 2022 it became really the national myth promoted on the very national level. That’s why for example under President Zelensky we nowadays have streets named Bandera and Shukhevych (another UPA leader) in Kirik, home town of our president Zelensky.
This myth is cultivated in Ukraine in war time. Another dimension of this very troubling development in is that Nazi apologism is flourishing because many members of the Ukraine nationalists on the ground during the second world war were members of auxiliary police under German occupation and some of them occupied chief positions, so they were not just ordinary rank and file policemen – they were chiefs of police. Vasyl Levkovych, for example, is a very glorious figure in this nationalist pantheon. Those people nowadays are celebrated as freedom fighters and their direct participation in the holocaust is obscured, is marginalised and silenced and even denied.
At the holocaust memorial I was really shocked. I saw these fancy souvenir magazines with Daddy Bandera socks and Daddy Bandera bags. In one day I spent almost three hours in the city center and I saw an amount of different hate symbols like SS bolts, like black sun like Nazi eagles, like swastikas. I never saw in my life. in Western Europe, this concentration of these Nazi hate symbols. and the amount of different hate symbols – SS bolts, black sun, Nazi eagle, different combinations of swastikas. In Ukraine it’s so normalised – why? Because it’s a part of military culture nowadays. Those symbols are adopted primarily by military actors and by soldiers. The trust in Ukraine military is so high in Ukraine society – approximately more than 90% of Ukrainians nowadays trust Ukraine military. That’s why they just accept this.
Ukraine military nowadays is full of different far right groups. They are sponsored and they are celebrated as freedom fighters. In the Ukraine military we have overt Nazi apologists. For example we have the Niga named after the Nachtigall Battalion formed by the Germans and this battalion participated in the Nazi Barbarossa plan against Russia in 1941. From the documents of some participants of this unit we know that they participated in anti-Jewish pogroms.
Especially after 2022 so many neo-Nazis and far right groups neo-Nazis and far right groups were empowered and they openly promote their agenda. They openly celebrate Nazi units. Why? Because their ideology is.” Those guys are lesser evil because they fought our eternal enemy, meaning Russia. And they compare themselves with Nazis.So it’s not only Putin who compares them with Nazis, but that they themselves compare themselves with Nazis, and it’s ridiculous, it’s just crazy.”
Marta explains “memory politics” as a strategy, a weapon of war:
Those who are against military mobilisation are not a minority any more, Those who want to have peace with Russia, those who want to build a relationship with Russia on good terms, who don’t want to be engaged in eternal war with Russia, they are “bad Ukrainians” – you need to view Russia as the eternal enemy. For our children, this means only permanent war. With the anti-Russian project and narrative we will be in constant war with the superior angry and very powerful aggressor., in constant destruction.
We don’t want to spend our lives, sacrificing our life for what? – for our political elites. Ukraine is now a colonial client of the West, The West is deciding what money will go where, what laws will be adopted. In our fight against the Russian imperial state we are becoming a colony of Western imperialism. No-one is talking about this, because it’s a “good” empire.
We still have enormous casualties, and those casualties are hidden.
Memory politics is the main issue. They make movies etc about Russian atrocities but never about Ukrainian atrocities. Ukraine killed Ukrainian students in occupied Donbass, in Spring 2022. It was painful to see how many people denied it, and then justified it, blaming those students for “collaboration with Russia,” some were trying to present this as collateral damage.
The state is pouring so much money into commemorating this war. It’s about producing, inflicting emotions. First of all it’s always in both Ukrainian and English language, It’s for Western audiences, to inflict emotion, to inflict empathy, to present Ukraine as poor victim, to present a black and white picture when Ukraine is of course presented as the forces of good, and Russia as the forces of evil. Nothing of course about what happened to the people of Donbass in 2014, 2015, 2016 – always about guilt of Russia, bad Russia, crazy Putin, imperialism in Russian blood, and angels Ukraine.
So memory politics is a part of Ukraine war propaganda. Many intellectuals are engaged in this propaganda, and many receive grants from abroad. And it supports the Western agenda: Many many Western people – who discovered Ukraine only in February 2022 – see Ukraine as this angel, who was unjustifiably attacked, and is bleeding, and needs support to continue resistance. Nobody is asking those people kidnapped in the vans. Nobody asking those women, their sisters, their mothers, their wives – “Do they want to fight, to be sent to the meat-grinder against their will?” This myth of resilience, of this nation, who would rather die than live under Russian occupation. But this myth is produced by Zelensky propaganda. I must admit they’re doing a very good job in this, because Zelensky is very good at entertainment – it’s his profession.
Rising to the challenge – building a global majority against war and nuclear weapons
20 June 2026, https://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/article/rising-challenge-building-global-majority-against-war-and-nuclear-weapons
Build peace, not a new nuclear Europe, says SOPHIE BOLT of CNDBuild peace, not a new nuclear Europe, says SOPHIE BOLT of CND
WE KNOW that the world is at a crossroads. Alongside huge increases in military spending, the threat of nuclear weapons being used in war is growing.
Attempts to turn whole countries’ economies towards war are being justified by the continued war on Ukraine, and perceived threats that this devastating conflict will spread across the continent. However, far from preventing war, this preparation for it risks dragging Europe into a war that could go nuclear.
Since Russia lowered its nuclear-use threshold and placed nuclear weapons outside its territory in Belarus, it has now carried out successful test flights of new nuclear delivery systems, including the long-range, nuclear-powered Burevestnik missile which flew 14,000 kilometres.
A whole new generation of US nuclear weapons is now stationed at Nato bases in Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Turkey and Britain.
This nuclear upgrade has taken place alongside further Nato expansion to incorporate Finland and Sweden. This has doubled the length of Nato’s borders with Russia.
In March, President Emmanuel Macron announced not only an increase in its nuclear weapons but also formalised his “nuclear sharing” arrangement, arguing that Russia was a threat to Europe.
The new nuclear doctrine will mean nine other European countries being integrated into French nuclear operations.
This starts with nuclear exercises in preparation for French nuclear jets or nuclear-armed submarines are deployed to these countries’ military bases.
This French nuclear expansion is not to substitute for a withdrawal of US nuclear weapons. While the Trump administration is considering reducing some of its military contribution to Nato’s rapid response force, it is not withdrawing its nuclear B61-12 bombs.
In fact, Trump is in talks with European Nato states about expanding the number of countries hosting the nuclear-capable F-35A fighter jets that can launch these bombs.
This means, that on top of this US nuclear expansion, French nuclear-armed jets could be deployed to at least another five European countries including Greece, Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Poland. This would mean US and French nuclear weapons being deployed across Europe right up to Russia’s borders.
Alongside this nuclear escalation, debates are taking place about whether Germany should develop its own nuclear weapons. Chancellor Friedrich Merz has so far ruled it out. However, the government is taking a much more aggressive, leading role in European rearmament and has pledged to build Europe’s strongest army.
Last July it signed a treaty to increase nuclear co-operation with Britain. That same month Keir Starmer committed to expand Britain’s nuclear capability with 12 nuclear-capable fighter jets to strengthen Nato’s nuclear mission.
This acceleration of plans for nuclear expansion are only increasing tensions with Russia. Far from offering security to the populations of all these European states and the people of Ukraine, the war is yet again escalating, with the UN reporting that civilian casualties in Ukraine were the highest they have been since Russia’s illegal invasion in 2022.
Reports that European countries are considering restarting dialogue with Russia to end the war are welcome and absolutely vital. Only a diplomatic and political approach can create a sustainable security architecture that can ensure the long-term peace and prosperity for Europe, Ukraine and Russia.
This cannot be achieved by deploying troops from Nato countries into Ukraine, backed by the constant, looming threat of nuclear war. On the contrary, this will only prolong and escalate the crisis, and risk drawing Nato states into direct confrontation with Russia.
Central to this must be the withdrawal of all nuclear weapons in the region: getting the US weapons out of Europe and Russian weapons out of Belarus. Instead of pushing for more nuclear weapons, Britain and Europe should be supporting serious programmes to get rid of the world’s nuclear weapons.
We need co-ordinated action to make this happen. Opposition to war and nuclear weapons is growing. We take inspiration from the incredible demonstrations and strike actions building across Europe against militarism.
WE KNOW that the world is at a crossroads. Alongside huge increases in military spending, the threat of nuclear weapons being used in war is growing.
Attempts to turn whole countries’ economies towards war are being justified by the continued war on Ukraine, and perceived threats that this devastating conflict will spread across the continent. However, far from preventing war, this preparation for it risks dragging Europe into a war that could go nuclear.
Since Russia lowered its nuclear-use threshold and placed nuclear weapons outside its territory in Belarus, it has now carried out successful test flights of new nuclear delivery systems, including the long-range, nuclear-powered Burevestnik missile which flew 14,000 kilometres.
A whole new generation of US nuclear weapons is now stationed at Nato bases in Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Turkey and Britain.
This nuclear upgrade has taken place alongside further Nato expansion to incorporate Finland and Sweden. This has doubled the length of Nato’s borders with Russia.
In March, President Emmanuel Macron announced not only an increase in its nuclear weapons but also formalised his “nuclear sharing” arrangement, arguing that Russia was a threat to Europe.
The new nuclear doctrine will mean nine other European countries being integrated into French nuclear operations.
This starts with nuclear exercises in preparation for French nuclear jets or nuclear-armed submarines are deployed to these countries’ military bases.
This French nuclear expansion is not to substitute for a withdrawal of US nuclear weapons. While the Trump administration is considering reducing some of its military contribution to Nato’s rapid response force, it is not withdrawing its nuclear B61-12 bombs.
In fact, Trump is in talks with European Nato states about expanding the number of countries hosting the nuclear-capable F-35A fighter jets that can launch these bombs.
This means, that on top of this US nuclear expansion, French nuclear-armed jets could be deployed to at least another five European countries including Greece, Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Poland. This would mean US and French nuclear weapons being deployed across Europe right up to Russia’s borders.
Alongside this nuclear escalation, debates are taking place about whether Germany should develop its own nuclear weapons. Chancellor Friedrich Merz has so far ruled it out. However, the government is taking a much more aggressive, leading role in European rearmament and has pledged to build Europe’s strongest army.
Last July it signed a treaty to increase nuclear co-operation with Britain. That same month Keir Starmer committed to expand Britain’s nuclear capability with 12 nuclear-capable fighter jets to strengthen Nato’s nuclear mission.
This acceleration of plans for nuclear expansion are only increasing tensions with Russia. Far from offering security to the populations of all these European states and the people of Ukraine, the war is yet again escalating, with the UN reporting that civilian casualties in Ukraine were the highest they have been since Russia’s illegal invasion in 2022.
Reports that European countries are considering restarting dialogue with Russia to end the war are welcome and absolutely vital. Only a diplomatic and political approach can create a sustainable security architecture that can ensure the long-term peace and prosperity for Europe, Ukraine and Russia.
This cannot be achieved by deploying troops from Nato countries into Ukraine, backed by the constant, looming threat of nuclear war. On the contrary, this will only prolong and escalate the crisis, and risk drawing Nato states into direct confrontation with Russia.
Central to this must be the withdrawal of all nuclear weapons in the region: getting the US weapons out of Europe and Russian weapons out of Belarus. Instead of pushing for more nuclear weapons, Britain and Europe should be supporting serious programmes to get rid of the world’s nuclear weapons.
We need co-ordinated action to make this happen. Opposition to war and nuclear weapons is growing. We take inspiration from the incredible demonstrations and strike actions building across Europe against militarism.
Here in Britain, opposition to Britain’s toxic military alliance with the US is growing. Seventy per cent oppose the war on Iran and over 60 per cent want US nuclear weapons out of this country.
Today, at this critical anti-war summit, we have a critical opportunity to redouble our efforts to halt this catastrophic drive to war. We all face the same interconnected crises of war, nuclear threats, climate breakdown, of worsening poverty and a rising far right.
Therefore, we must co-ordinate together to develop and win a majority in our countries for an alternative strategy to war and nuclear weapons. This must be rooted in human security and common security — prioritising diplomacy, global co-operation, conflict prevention, and investment in health, education, climate resilience, social care.
Co-ordinating and learning from our joint struggles, we can build a movement strong enough to halt the war drive and redirect these huge resources into securing the sustainable, peaceful future humanity so desperately needs.
Sophie Bolt is general secretary of CND. She is speaking at today’s Stop the War International Conference at Central Hall Westminster, Storey’s Gate, London SW1H 9NH on Saturday June 20. For more information visit stopwar.org.uk.
This Is Why Trump Was Necessary
it is entirely conceivable that Israel, just like South Africa, will be globally ostracised and abandoned.
Trump was necessary. Necessary to strip away the niceties and reveal the true face of empire, to reveal its naked impunity, to showcase the war crimes in all their immoral bloodlust.
Nate Bear, Jun 19, 2026, https://www.donotpanic.news/p/this-is-why-trump-was-necessary
Iran has forced the US into one of the biggest strategic defeats in its short, violent and bloody history.
The memorandum of understanding with Iran, signed (symbolically or not), at Versailles yesterday, signalled, as I wrote earlier this week, that we’re witnessing the collapse of American hard power.
After it was signed, Trump made some extraordinary comments that wouldn’t have looked out of place in the handbook of anti-imperial critique, including that it’s not fair to tell Iran it can’t have missiles if all it’s neighbours have them and that it’s “common sense” that the country should be able to enrich uranium for energy. Trump also admitted oil reserves were running out and the world was approaching a depression, which slays the idea (an idea I never bought), that the US attack was a genius move to control the world’s oil and gas.
Iran has suffered some serious damage to its infrastructure as well as burying over 3,000 civilians, but it has checkmated the US strategically. And Trump has had to accept that. Iran’s ability to hit key regional infrastructure from deeply-buried missile cities, along with its ability to control the Strait, won the day. The US also appears to be reluctantly accepting some other realities. A few hours after the MoU was signed, after it was put to him that Israel wasn’t happy with the tentative deal, JD Vance said that Israel “is a country of nine million people that can’t just kill its way out of every national security problem.”
They read the polls, they see the way the wind is blowing, and they’re moving with it.
Israel of course is still a vital strategic outpost for empire, and it will not be abandoned yet. But there is absolutely a future in which the value of Israel to empire becomes less useful than the economic value empire can gain from a wider peace in the region, even if that peace runs counter to Israeli interests. And if Israel, not Iran or the resistance, comes to be seen as the main obstacle to this future, a position Trump and Vance appear to be moving towards, it is entirely conceivable that Israel, just like South Africa, will be globally ostracised and abandoned.
If this were to happen, the range of outcomes is extremely broad. Tensions between orthodox and secular Jews are already high in Israel, and you could reasonably argue that under conditions of global abandonment, civil war would break out. Before or after such a war, you might get a government run by Ben-Gvir and Jewish end-times fanatics who decide to fight the world and trigger a nuclear holocaust. Or the fanatics might lose, and you get a government which enters into international negotiations towards one state with equal rights for all. A former prime minister of Israel has, after all, just labelled Israeli actions in the West Bank ethnic cleansing.
I think we’re a long way from Israel ever giving up its colonial privileges. Civil war is a lot more likely than the negotiated end of the state, but we’re certainly a big step closer than we’ve ever been to whatever comes next for the genocidal colonial outpost.
Maybe this all seems too optimistic to you. And I hate to blow my own trumpet. But I was among the minority who predicted the start of the war before it started, who said Iran wouldn’t lose, that there’d be no regime change and no US victory via an air war was possible. When the ceasefire was announced I was among even fewer who said it would hold because the US was out of real options, while the consensus anti-imperial opinion said it was a ruse to buy time for a land invasion or other escalation.
And now, despite the calling off of talks in Geneva over the next stage of the process, my prediction, for what it’s worth, is that this won’t mean a return to war, and that in fact it will further the process of US-Israel estrangement, with Trump and Vance likely to see it as further confirmation that Israel, not Iran, is the impediment to peace.
Which is all to say, Trump was a necessary evil.
Of course we’ll never know if a Democrat as president would have launched an attack on Iran, but it would have come eventually. And given that an attack on Iran was inevitable, it was the best case scenario that it happened under Trump, an ideologically drifting narcissist without any real loyalties or attachments. A man motivated to protect his own personal financial interests above anything else (a number of which sit within the range of Iranian missiles). A man who was always going to be outmanoeuvred by a country led, literally, by men and women with PhDs, by philosophers, mystics and engineers. There were reports that in the process of negotiations, Iran drafted in the country’s top psychologists to craft messages to appeal to Trump’s ego and vainglorious personality. It appears to have worked.
From only ever acting retaliatorily, from closing the Strait of Hormuz to striking American bases and the oil and gas infrastructure of US proxies, to employing psychologists to sweet talk a narcissist, Iran bossed the process from day one.
And Israel knows it.
Its attacks on Lebanon are a final attempt to derail the process and regain some leverage over the negotiations. I don’t think it’ll work. We’re too far down the track. The Strait opens, the oil and gas starts flowing, or, with oil reserves at critical levels, we’re looking at a global depression. And Trump now appears motivated to avoid that, not least to protect his own wealth, above and beyond the objections of Israel. I don’t believe, as many still do, that the MoU, Trump’s comments and Vance’s criticisms of Israel, are all part of some drawn out psy-op before another attack on Iran.
This isn’t to give Trump any credit. It’s just to say empire isn’t omnipotent or strategically untouchable. You can, with the right war strategy, alongside favourable geography and propitious timing, force it to make concessions it doesn’t want to make.
Trump was necessary. Necessary to strip away the niceties and reveal the true face of empire, to reveal its naked impunity, to showcase the war crimes in all their immoral bloodlust. Yes, from Vietnam to Iraq to the so-called War on Terror, what Trump has shown us is nothing new, but through careful stage-management and competent administration, the myth of benign American empire has managed to endure. I’m not sure that myth will survive Trump. He’s also been necessary to reveal the limits of empire, to show it can be beaten, to expose its vulnerabilities, to detail its weaknesses.
Iran should have tied Gaza more closely to the MoU, as it has with Lebanon, but it has delivered a valuable blueprint in how to fight empire.
Trump has also been necessary to expose the plastic progressives, the liberal anti-Trump imperialists who, in their opposition to Trump’s deal with Iran, can only look like warmongering imperial psychopaths. From all those sharing memes on social media about surrender, from the Democrats and CNN talking heads decrying the deal, to Jimmy Fallon dragging Trump for giving Iran back the money the US stole, there is no articulation of an alternative to endlessly bombing Iran. There’s no anger from liberals over dead Iranians, or at the imperial state, at Zionism or the embedded death machinery that made this violence possible. No, they’re just embarrassed for empire. And they don’t want to recognise the limits of that empire.
With Israel still bombing Lebanon and oil reserves at critical thresholds, however, this is all far from over.
Iran has sketched out two futures for the US and it now has a decision to make: stand behind the deal which Trump has loudly proclaimed as necessary to save the world, and force Israel to stand down, or let Israel dictate the process, return to war and drag the world into an economic depression. Anything is still possible, of course, but I judge the latter extremely unlikely.
And Trump, in his egotism, venality and conceited self-interest, might just be the man for the moment.
What I do know is that those Iranian psychologists have some more work to do.
Words Matter: What does “De-Confliction” Even Mean?
The blind acceptance of confusing words and terms we don’t understand also dulls our thinking, dulls our reporting and plays into the hands of the governments, who are involved in this negotiation process, and who want to limit and control scrutin
The blind acceptance of confusing words and terms we don’t understand also dulls our thinking, dulls our reporting and plays into the hands of the governments, who are involved in this negotiation process, and who want to limit and control scrutiny. .
June 22, 2026, Kathy Gannon Substack, https://scheerpost.com/2026/06/22/words-matter-what-does-de-confliction-even-mean/
The statement that came out of the first day of meetings in Switzerland between Iran and the United States announced a number of committees or cells, including the “de-confliction” cell.
What does that even mean?
Merriam-Webster offers up one definition: “The coordination of flights, maneuvers, etc. between groups especially in areas where overlapping operations are occurring in order to reduce the risk of accidents or incidents.” Or the same dictionary offered up as an example of how it would be used: “Deconfliction is how friendly forces keep out of each other’s way,” John Bolton.
Now that’s even more confusing because according to the statement, this cell is between the parties, presumably Iran and the United States, as well as the Lebanese republic. Yet the statement went on to say this Deconfliction cell will be “facilitated by the mediators to ensure the adherence of the termination of the military operations in Lebanon as per the MoU.”
Yet neither Israel nor Hezbollah is part of this “deconfliction” cell, even though they are the ones carrying out military operations and as a result would seem critical to any termination of those operations.
Presumably even as the statement avoids saying it, and until now the reporting hasn’t cleared up the confusion, Iran would represent Hezbollah and America, Israel.
Presumably Iran would rein in Hezbollah and the United States would rein in Israel. That seems a big ask, likely more for Washington, than Tehran. Until now the U.S. has failed to stop Israel’s bombing campaign. The question then is: How is this cell that neither includes Israel or Hezbollah, going to “ensure the adherence of the termination of the military operations in Lebanon as per the MoU.”
It is a bit of a mystery how the Merriam Webster dictionary use of “deconfliction” applies to this conflict. Neither Israel nor Hezbollah fit the definition of “friendly forces.”
It’s also disappointing that, until now, news reports covering the statement have offered little to no understanding of this “deconfliction” cell, which is tasked with ending regional conflicts, a key component of the MoU, which must be settled before any peace deal is reached.
Many of the news reports have put quotes around the word “deconfliction” presumably because its definition is difficult to explain, vague or not understood, yet its official so it is used __ without explanation, but with quotes.
But Words Matter.
Words have meaning and the increasing readiness to use words and terms without explanation, or without calling out distortions makes us all less informed. It also distorts our understanding of events, of progress or failure.
It is no longer even clear who is responsible for success or failure and that is problematic because it allows those who negotiate in poor faith to deflect or avoid blame.
The blind acceptance of confusing words and terms we don’t understand also dulls our thinking, dulls our reporting and plays into the hands of the governments, who are involved in this negotiation process, and who want to limit and control scrutiny.
This MoU itself has often been defined by misleading, vague or confusing terminology. In the initial stages it was referred to as a peace agreement by mediators, who announced the MoU and repeated in news reports. It is not. It is not even an agreement.
It is simply a 60-day pause in fighting, while the thorny issues that have, until now, prevented a peace agreement are discussed with the hopes that it will eventually lead to a peace agreement.
As the pause and negotiations begin, it seems a a new wave of confusing, self-serving terminology is being used to obscure what work is being done, who is doing it, and whether real progress is occurring.
High French river temperatures expected to limit nuclear power output next week
By Forrest Crellin and Tristan Veyet,
French state-owned utility EDF warned on Thursday that three nuclear
plants face production curbs next week because of high temperatures on the
Rhone and Garonne rivers as France grapples with its second heatwave this
spring. Nuclear output in France has been relatively consistent this year
as production has continued to recover from lows hit several years ago, but
exceptional heatwaves at the end of the northern hemisphere spring have
raised water temperatures to levels that put reactors at risk of output
curtailment.
Reuters 18th June 2026
Governments would have to foot the bill for nuclear shipping
‘Essentially, the government stands behind the operator with an open chequebook’No global liability framework in place, and getting one could take decadesFinance and insurance give nuclear a chicken-and-egg problem
Declan Bush, 19 Jun 2026,
Governments would have to foot the bill for nuclear shipping
- ‘Essentially, the government stands behind the operator with an open chequebook’No global liability framework in place, and getting one could take decadesFinance and insurance give nuclear a chicken-and-egg problem
Governments will be on the hook for the potentially unlimited liability created by a nuclear incident at sea, Core Power’s annual nuclear conference was told. There are doubts they are keen to take such a burden on…………………… (Subscribers only) https://www.lloydslist.com/LL1157569/Governments-would-have-to-foot-the-bill-for-nuclear-shipping
A Turning Point: What the Iran MoU Reveals About the Limits of US Power
June 19, 2026, By Iqbal Jassat, https://www.palestinechronicle.com/a-turning-point-what-the-iran-mou-reveals-about-the-limits-of-us-power/
The lessons from Iran, if incorporated in the study of international relations, will be that the era in which Washington could dictate terms without consequence is steadily eroding.
Events at the G7 Summit in Evian were overshadowed by news of the US-Iran Memorandum of Understanding (MoU). This was hardly surprising since the story broke about America’s dramatic turnaround and widespread speculation about the details of the MoU, as well as the reasons for it.
It would be fair to say, thus, that the most significant outcome of the G7 Summit in Évian was not the signing of the MoU. It was the public collapse of the illusion that military superiority automatically translates into political victory.
For months, Washington and Tel Aviv insisted that Iran would eventually be forced to surrender. The language was harsh, pointed and uncompromising. Iran’s missile program would be destroyed. Its nuclear capabilities would be dismantled. Its regional alliances would be broken. Its leadership would face collapse under the combined weight of military pressure, sanctions and international isolation.
None of those objectives were achieved.
The contradiction became impossible to conceal when President Donald Trump stood before the world at the G7 and defended Iran’s right to retain conventional ballistic missiles.
The same missiles that had been presented as an existential threat suddenly became acceptable. The same missile program that justified war was transformed into a reality that Washington was prepared to live with.
Contrary to the wishful thinking of some political pundits, this was not a minor adjustment in policy. It was a public admission that the original objectives could not be achieved.
Absent from much Western reporting is the extent of this reversal. The final agreement contains no dismantling of Iran’s missile deterrent. It contains no regime change. It contains no surrender of Iran’s political system. It contains no disarmament of Iran’s regional allies. Even the nuclear issue was largely deferred into future negotiations rather than resolved through force.
The shock registered on the gaping mouths of G7 leaders as well as Israel’s war criminals was obvious, for the outcome exposed the enormous gap between public rhetoric and strategic reality.
For years, American foreign policy has been built around the assumption that economic pressure, military dominance and international isolation can force adversaries to comply with Washington’s demands. Iraq was supposed to demonstrate that reality. Libya was supposed to reinforce it. The sanctions architecture imposed on Iran was designed around the same logic.
The MoU signed by Trump at the G7, demonstrates the limits of that model.
Iran’s leadership calculated that surrender would be more dangerous than resistance. Despite suffering enormous military and economic damage, Tehran retained enough leverage to make continued escalation prohibitively expensive for its adversaries.
The critical factor was not military strength alone.
The Strait of Hormuz exposed a vulnerability that military planners could not bomb away. As energy markets reacted and global supply chains faced disruption, the economic consequences of a prolonged conflict became increasingly unacceptable. Oil prices surged. Shipping costs escalated. Insurance markets were shaken. European governments demanded an end to the crisis. Gulf states that had quietly supported pressure on Iran suddenly became advocates for de-escalation.
The beneficiaries of the original confrontation were clear. Arms manufacturers secured contracts. Security establishments expanded their authority. Lobbying organizations intensified demands for escalation. Media institutions repeated assumptions about inevitable Iranian defeat. A vast ecosystem of political and economic interests promoted the belief that only one outcome was possible.
Though the MoU demolished that narrative, the reaction from Israel was even more revealing. The Israeli political establishment expected the conflict to fundamentally alter the regional balance of power in its favor.
Instead, Netanyahu and his criminal gang of genocidaires found themselves confronting an agreement negotiated largely without their input and one that preserved many of Iran’s capabilities Israel had spent years attempting to eliminate.
The frustration expressed by them and echoed across the regime’s media was not simply about the agreement itself.
It reflected the recognition that military escalation had failed to produce the strategic transformation that had been promised.
This is why the agreement carries implications far beyond Iran, particularly for governments across the Global South who are expected to study the outcome closely.
Indeed, so will Russia and China. The lesson they will draw is not that America lacks power. The lesson is that American power now operates within constraints that did not exist during the unipolar era.
The lessons from Iran, if incorporated in the study of international relations, will be that the era in which Washington could dictate terms without consequence is steadily eroding.
The MoU therefore marks something larger than the end of a conflict. It marks another stage in the transition from a unipolar order to a multipolar one. The significance of the MoU lies not in what was announced. It lies in what was conceded.
The campaign to impose American terms concluded with Washington accepting realities it once declared unacceptable.
Censored Lavrov article Politico refused to publish (FULL TEXT)
This state of affairs poses serious threats to global security. A direct confrontation between NATO and Russia could rapidly escalate into an exchange of nuclear strikes, with catastrophic consequences
The Russian foreign minister has shared his views on NATO expansion and EU militarization, including in the nuclear sphere, and the threat this poses to global security
18 Jun, 2026 , https://www.rt.com/russia/641806-lavrov-censored-politico-article/
The pro-establishment, Brussels-based publication Politico Europe, owned by Germany’s Axel Springer SE, has refused to publish an exclusive article written by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.
Lavrov’s article was initially slated for publication in the Brussels-based Politico Europe, but due to a “last-minute decision by the outlet’s editorial team,” the publication was canceled, the Russian Foreign Ministry said on Friday.
In the article, Russia’s highly experienced top diplomat outlined Moscow’s view of the Ukrainian conflict, Europe’s role in escalating the crisis, and the broader implications for global security. Lavrov accused European leaders of using diplomacy as a cover for NATO and EU expansion, while arguing that the West has sought to turn Ukraine into an anti-Russian foothold. He also warned that the EU’s growing militarization, including discussions about nuclear deterrence and “strategic autonomy,” could increase the risk of a direct confrontation between NATO and Russia.
Below is the full text of Lavrov’s article, as published on the Russian Foreign Ministry website:
Some reflections on resolving the Ukrainian crisis, Europe and global security
At a meeting in London on June 7, 2026, the leaders of Britain, France, and Germany, as well as Vladimir Zelensky, laid out five preconditions for Russia to secure a “just and lasting peace” in Ukraine. United Europe now presents this list of demands as the basis for dialogue with Moscow.
Background
More than two decades of negotiations with Europe, as part of the collective West, lead to only one conclusion: engaging Russia in dialogue has served as a diplomatic smokescreen for the geopolitical expansion of Western institutions, above all NATO and the European Union, eastwards, right up to Russia’s borders.
Europe’s complicity in fueling the Ukrainian crisis is undeniable. Together with the United States, European countries orchestrated the Orange Revolution in Kiev in 2004. To create an anti-Russian bridgehead in Ukraine, they spent years buying off politicians and entire parties, rewriting history and educational curricula, cultivating and nurturing Ukrainian nationalism, and going to great lengths to pull Ukraine away from Russia.
In 2013, the European Union outright rejected our proposal for a compromise on the association agreement – a deal Brussels had long been pressing Viktor Yanukovich to sign. It is worth recalling that Ukraine was offered unilateral market opening without reciprocal commitments – terms that would have proved incompatible with Kiev’s continued membership in the CIS free-trade zone. When Viktor Yanukovich requested a deferral, the Europeans incited street riots that swiftly escalated into a coup d’état in Kiev in February 2014.
Germany, France, and Poland then proved themselves to be equally treacherous. Having guaranteed that the agreement reached between the opposition and Viktor Yanukovich would be honored, they washed their hands of it the moment that same opposition, their own handiwork, took power. “Democracy,” they shrugged, “takes unexpected turns.”
Europe thereafter lent its backing to the new authorities. In Odessa on May 2, 2014, the burning alive of dozens of innocent supporters of closer ties with Russia did not draw a single word of condemnation from European capitals.
As co-guarantors of the 2015 Minsk Agreements, France and Germany effectively encouraged the Ukrainian regime to sabotage its own commitments. As Angela Merkel and François Hollande later conceded – after the special military operation had already begun – Kiev’s implementation of the Minsk Agreements, unanimously approved by the UN Security Council, was never genuinely intended. The objective, they admitted, was merely to buy time: to shore up the Armed Forces of Ukraine and flood them with Western weaponry.
Russia, for its part, explored every diplomatic avenue to defuse Europe’s security crisis. However, in January 2022, the United States and NATO rejected Russia’s proposal for legally binding mutual security guarantees. European NATO members actively endorsed that rebuff.
Following the launch of the special military operation, United Europe threw its support behind the British prime minister’s efforts to sabotage the Istanbul negotiations between Russia and Ukraine. Boris Johnson’s appeal to Kiev – “don’t sign anything, just fight” – slammed the door on genuine diplomacy for the foreseeable future.
Current situation
So what has prompted European leaders to suddenly shift their rhetoric and start talking about negotiations, and what are they aiming to achieve with these statements? For instance, EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas has stated that the purpose of any dialogue with Russia is to dictate Europe’s terms. These include paying “reparations” to Ukraine; withdrawing troops from Transnistria and the South Caucasus; abolishing the “foreign agents” law; and accepting strict limits on the size of the Russian Federation’s Armed Forces. In her framing, “there can be no just and lasting peace without accountability for Russia.” During the UN Security Council session on May 19, 2026, an EU representative made the point unequivocally: “Supporting Ukraine militarily does not contradict the pursuit of peace, but rather serves as a fundamental prerequisite for any credible, good-faith negotiations.”
Europe’s plan is to talk with Russia while simultaneously pressing ahead with a campaign of legal warfare orchestrated through the Council of Europe. Within this once-respected organization, an entire infrastructure is being assembled for the express purpose of “holding Russia accountable”: a Register of Damage, a Claims Commission, and a Special Tribunal.
The European Union has also given the green light to detaining merchant vessels on the high seas. Several incidents have already taken place in the Baltic and the Atlantic. At the same time, the West studiously averts its gaze from the terrorist acts of sabotage perpetrated by the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the Black and Mediterranean Seas.
The real objective of Europe’s leaders, then, is not to negotiate with Russia. It is to shore up the Zelensky regime and preserve it as a launchpad for continued confrontation against Russia. With this in mind, European leaders are scrambling to secure a ceasefire as quickly as possible and for one reason only: to prevent the collapse of the Armed Forces of Ukraine on the battlefield. The plan is to “freeze” the conflict without addressing its root causes, and then rapidly deploy military contingents from the Anglo-French “coalition of the willing” onto Ukrainian soil.
It is widely known that European elites have invested their “political capital” in the confrontation with Russia, pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into propping up the Kiev regime and ramping up the military budgets of EU member states and NATO. Europe now aims to achieve “defense readiness” against Russia by 2030. Until then, they mean to buy time by whatever means are available. In a strikingly candid remark this April, Belgium’s chief of staff put it bluntly: “We still have a few years. Thanks to the courage and blood of the Ukrainians, who are buying us that time.”
United Europe continues to dream of expansion. It intends to absorb Ukraine and Moldova while pulling Armenia into its sphere of influence. NATO has already expanded eastward, swallowing up Finland and Sweden. As for Ukraine, it is increasingly being eyed as the “striking fist” of a future European military force, independent of the United States and independent of NATO.
Risks to global security
This state of affairs poses serious threats to global security. A direct confrontation between NATO and Russia could rapidly escalate into an exchange of nuclear strikes, with catastrophic consequences
Under the banner of “strategic autonomy,” Europe is witnessing a significant build-up of its military capabilities, including in the nuclear sphere. Paris’s intention to extend its “nuclear umbrella” to several EU and NATO member states is a source of deep concern. This will do nothing to strengthen the security of France itself or of the recipients of its so-called protection.
For all that, Europe’s political and military establishment continues to attribute aggressive plans to Russia – plans that, they claim, reach far beyond Ukraine. The Russian president has stated on numerous occasions that all of this is nonsense, provocation, and disinformation, aimed solely at extracting budget funds for the fight against Russia. That is scarcely the climate for substantive dialogue.
Russia’s position
As for negotiations, Vladimir Putin reiterated at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum that Russia is not opposed to contacts with any party. We see Europe, however, as a party bent on Russia’s defeat – a stance the Europeans themselves openly avow. Dialogue with Europe, therefore, cannot be conducted as though it were an impartial third-party observer.
Russia would prefer to achieve the goals of the special military operation through diplomacy.
That requires reliably guaranteeing security along Russia’s western borders and ensuring respect and dignity for our citizens and compatriots, including the right to speak their native Russian language and practice the Orthodox Christian faith. Further military, political, and economic expansion by the West is unacceptable: it runs counter to the imperatives of a multipolar world.
European leaders should recognize that the model of regional security built in Europe over decades, ever since the adoption of the Helsinki Final Act in 1975, has been destroyed by their own hands. And it will never be restored. We must now move toward creating a continent-wide security architecture open to all Eurasian countries and reflective of today’s multipolar reality.
The principle of equal and indivisible security, trampled upon by the Euro-Atlanticists, can be embodied within a new Eurasian architecture. When the time is ripe, Europe too will be able to join this great effort.
The key point is that meaningful dialogue requires the restoration of trust, shattered by the anti-Russian actions of the West, and Europe as part of it, in the post-Cold War era. Trust can be recovered only through concrete steps that demonstrate a sincere commitment to moving away from using diplomacy as a cover for expansionist ambitions. Trust cannot be restored, nor can dialogue be resumed, through ultimatums such as the one issued to Russia in London on June 7, 2026.
P.S. It is noteworthy that the London ultimatum was unequivocally reaffirmed by the ambassadors of Britain, France, and Germany at the meeting at the Russian Foreign Ministry on June 11, 2026 – a meeting they had so insistently requested. That was the sole purpose of their visit to the ministry.
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