Europe Economic Panic
Lorenzo Maria Pacini, January 18, 2026, https://strategic-culture.su/news/2026/01/18/europe-economic-panic/
Europeans are tired. They want peace, stability, and the quiet dignity of prosperity.
When a prime minister advises his staff to rest because the coming year will be much more difficult, it is neither black humor nor fatigue. It is a moment of sincerity, the kind that only emerges when internal projections no longer support the public narrative.
Giorgia Meloni was not addressing the electorate. She was addressing the machinery of the state itself, the administrative core charged with implementing decisions whose effects can no longer be hidden. Her observation was not about a normal increase in workload. She was talking about constraints, about limits being reached, about a Europe that has moved from crisis response to a phase of controlled contraction, fully aware that 2026 is the year when deferred costs will eventually converge.
What has leaked out is what European ruling circles have already understood: the Western strategy in Ukraine has run up against material limits. Not with Russian messages, not with disinformation, not with populist dissent, but with steel, ammunition, energy, manpower, and time. Once these realities assert themselves, political legitimacy begins to erode.
The EU cannot sustain this war economically. Europe can strike poses of readiness. It cannot manufacture war.
After years of high-intensity conflict, both the US and Europe are rediscovering a long-forgotten truth: wars of this nature cannot be sustained with speeches, sanctions, or the abandonment of diplomacy. They require bullets, missiles, trained personnel, maintenance cycles, and industrial production that consistently exceeds battlefield losses. None of this exists, not in sufficient quantities, and it is not feasible in the timeframe preached in Brussels.
Russia is producing artillery ammunition in quantities that Western officials now openly admit exceed NATO’s total production. Its industrial base has shifted to near-continuous wartime production, with centralized procurement, streamlined logistics, and state-led manufacturing, without even total mobilization. Estimates place Russian production at several million artillery shells per year, already delivered, not just projected.
Europe, meanwhile, spent 2025 congratulating itself on targets it is structurally incapable of achieving. The EU’s stated commitment of two million shells per year depends on facilities, contracts, and labor that will not be available by the decisive period of the war, if ever. Even if achieved, the figure would still be less than Russian production. The US, despite emergency expansion, expects about one million shells per year once full ramp-up is complete, and only if that happens. Even on paper, combined Western production struggles to match what Russia is already producing in practice. The imbalance is clear.
This is not just a deficit, but a misalignment of timing. Russia is producing now. Europe is planning for the future. And time is the only factor immune to sanctions.
Washington, in fact, cannot indefinitely compensate for Europe’s eroded capacity because it faces its own industrial difficulties. Patriot interceptor production remains in the order of a few hundred per year, while demand simultaneously concerns Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan, and the replenishment of US stocks: an imbalance that, as Pentagon officials admit, cannot be resolved quickly. Shipbuilding tells a similar story: submarines and surface ships are years behind schedule due to labor shortages, aging infrastructure, and skyrocketing costs, pushing significant expansion toward 2030. The assumption that America can indefinitely support Europe is no longer in line with reality. This is a systemic Western problem.
Unfounded war rhetoric
European leaders talk about a “state of war” as if it were a rhetorical position, but in reality, it is an industrial condition that Europe does not meet.
New artillery lines take years to reach stable production. Air defense interceptors are produced in long, batch-based cycles, not in sudden spikes. Even basic components such as explosives remain a critical issue, with plants that closed decades ago only now reopening and some not expected to reach full capacity until the late 2020s. This timeline is in itself an admission.
Europe’s weakness is not intellectual, but institutional: huge sums have been authorized, but procurement inertia, fragmented contracts, and a depleted supplier base have meant that deliveries are years behind schedule. France, often described as Europe’s most capable arms manufacturer, is capable of building advanced systems, but only in limited quantities, counted in dozens, while a war of attrition requires thousands. EU ammunition initiatives have expanded capacity on paper, while the front has exhausted ammunition in a matter of weeks.
These are not ideological shortcomings, but administrative and industrial failures, which are exacerbated in stressful situations. It is yet another example of the failure of European Community policy, so much so that the structural contrast is stark. Western industry has been optimized for shareholder returns and peacetime efficiency, while Russian industry has been reoriented to withstand pressure. NATO announces aid packages. Russia counts deliveries. You can already guess what the outcome of this situation will be, right?
This industrial reality explains why the debate on asset freezing was so important and why it failed. Europe did not pursue the seizure of Russian sovereign assets out of legal ingenuity or moral determination, but because it needed time: time to avoid admitting that the war was unsustainable in Western industrial terms, time to replace production with financial maneuvers.
When the effort to confiscate some €210 billion in Russian assets failed on December 20, blocked by legal risks, market repercussions, and opposition led by Belgium, with Italy, Malta, Slovakia, and Hungary opposing total confiscation, the Brussels technocracy settled for a reduced alternative: a €90 billion loan to Ukraine for 2026-27, with interest payments of around €3 billion per year. This further mortgages Europe’s future. This is not a strategy, but emergency triage. A collapsing political hospital. Pure panic.
Narrative, crisis, disaster
The deeper reality is that Ukraine is no longer primarily a military dilemma, it is a question of solvency. Washington recognizes this, because it cannot absorb the reputational discomfort, but they cannot take on unlimited responsibility forever. A way out is being explored, discreetly, inconsistently, and shrouded in rhetorical cover.
Europe cannot admit the same necessity, because it has ultimately adopted ‘Putin’s version’, i.e. it has framed the war as existential, civilising, moral – but do you remember when European politicians enjoyed calling Putin crazy for talking about a clash of civilisations?
Compromise has become appeasement, negotiation surrender. In doing so, Europe has eliminated its own escape routes. Well done, ladies and gentlemen!
On the narrative front, greetings to all. The aggressive enforcement of the EU’s Digital Services Act has less to do with security than with containment: building an information perimeter around a consensus that cannot survive open scrutiny. Translated: censorship as a solution. The truth of the matter must not be made known, and those who try to do so must be suppressed in an exemplary manner. This also explains why regulatory pressure now extends beyond European borders, generating transatlantic friction over freedom of expression and jurisdiction. Confident systems welcome debate. Fragile ones suppress it. In this case, censorship is not ideology, but a form of insurance.
The information crisis, rest assured, will very soon become… a social crisis ready to detonate into domestic conflict.
And the crisis is also one of resources and energy. We are witnessing the securitization of decline, whereby obligations are postponed while the productive base needed to sustain them continues to shrink. It’s a cat chasing its tail. Here too, you know how it will end, don’t you?
Europe has not only sanctioned Russia. It has sanctioned itself. European industry will continue to pay energy prices well above those of its competitors in the United States or Russia throughout 2026. Take a trip around Europe, read the headlines in local newspapers, look at people’s faces: the fabric of small and medium-sized enterprises, the true beating heart of entire EU countries, is quietly disappearing. And this is logically reflected in large companies too. This is why Europe cannot increase its production of ammunition and why rearmament remains an aspiration rather than a concrete operation.
Energy, we said. Low-cost energy was not a convenience, it was essential. If it is eliminated through self-inflicted damage, the entire structure is emptied. Even the most ambitious plans preached for years, such as the IMEC corridor, are still a mirage. There is a stampede towards Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Georgia to try to scrape together a few kilowatts. A ridiculous attempt to save what is now tragically unsalvageable.
China, observing all this, represents the other half of Europe’s strategic nightmare. It controls the world’s deepest manufacturing base without having entered into a position of war. Russia does not need China’s full capacity, only its strategic depth in reserve. Europe has neither.
A frightening 2026
2026 therefore looks set to be a terrible year, I’m sorry to say. The European elites find themselves losing control on three fronts at once. On finance, because the budget will be bitter and the money for the insane support to Kiev will no longer be the same. On narrative, because the question citizens will ask themselves will be ‘what was the point of all this?’. On the cohesion of the Alliance, both NATO and the EU, because Washington’s disengagement will force a review of the balance of power on the European continent to the point of no return and, perhaps, a break between the two sides divided by the ocean.
Panic, again. Not a sudden defeat, but the slow erosion of legitimacy as reality creeps in through gas that costs as much as gold, closed plants, empty stockpiles, obsolete rifles, and a future that is turning away.
This is not just a difficult situation for Europe, but a matter of civilization. A system incapable of producing, supplying, speaking honestly, or retreating without collapsing in credibility has reached its limit. When leaders begin to prepare their institutions for worse years, they are not anticipating inconveniences, but recognizing structural failure.
Empires proclaim victory loudly. Declining systems quietly lower expectations or, in this case, momentarily say the quiet part out loud. But the truth is that nothing is the same as before, and it is obvious.
For most Europeans, the reckoning will not come as an abstract debate about strategy or supply chains, but as a simple realization: this was never a war they consented to. It did not defend their homes, their prosperity, or their future. And so, again, how do you think it will end?
An ideological war has been fought in the name of imperial ambition and financed through declining living standards, industrial decline, and the prospects of their children. In the name of big pro-European capital, of the privileged few with robes, stars, and crowns.
For months, even years, it was said that “there was no alternative” and that this was the only course of action. And now?
Europeans are tired. They want peace, stability, and the quiet dignity of prosperity: affordable energy, a functioning industry, and a future unencumbered by conflicts they NEVER chose and, above all, they do not want the decline of millennia-old civilizations.
And when this awareness has taken hold, when the fear has faded and the spell has been broken, the question Europeans will ask themselves will not be technical or ideological. It will be existential. And all existential questions lead to radical choices, even terrible ones.
May this dramatic fear keep the mad leaders of this Europe awake at night.
15 years after Fukushima, Japan prepares to restart the world’s biggest nuclear plant.
Tepco is set to defy local public opinion and restart one of Kashiwazaki-Kariwa’s seven reactors.
for many of the 420,000 people living within a 30km (19-mile) radius of Kashiwazaki-Kariwa who would have to evacuate in the event of a Fukushima-style incident, Tepco’s imminent return to nuclear power generation is fraught with danger.
A return to nuclear power is at the heart of Japan’s energy policy but, in the wake of the 2011 disaster, residents’ fears about tsunamis, earthquakes and evacuation plans remain
Justin McCurry Guardian, in KashiwazakiMon 19 Jan 2026
The activity around the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant is reaching its peak: workers remove earth to expand the width of a main road, while lorries arrive at its heavily guarded entrance. A long perimeter fence is lined with countless coils of razor wire, and in a layby, a police patrol car monitors visitors to the beach – one of the few locations with a clear view of the reactors, framed by a snowy Mount Yoneyama.
When all seven of its reactors are working, Kashiwazaki-Kariwa generates 8.2 gigawatts of electricity, enough to power millions of households. Occupying 4.2 sq km of land in Niigata prefecture on the Japan Sea coast, it is the biggest nuclear power plant in the world.
Since 2012, however, the plant has not generated a single watt of electricity, after being shut down, along with dozens of other reactors, in the wake of the March 2011 triple meltdown at Fukushima Daiichi, the world’s worst nuclear accident since Chornobyl.
Located about 220km (136 miles) north-west of Tokyo, the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant is run by Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco), the same utility in charge of the Fukushima facility when a powerful tsunami crashed through its defences, triggering a power outage that sent three of its reactors into meltdown and forcing 160,000 people to evacuate.
Weeks before the 15th anniversary of the accident, and the wider tsunami disaster that killed an estimated 20,000 people along Japan’s north-east coast, Tepco is set to defy local public opinion and restart one of Kashiwazaki-Kariwa’s seven reactors.
On Monday, Tepco said it would delay the restart, originally scheduled for the following day, after an alarm malfunctioned during a test of equipment over the weekend, according to public broadcaster NHK. The reactor is now expected to go back online in the coming days, NHK added.
Restarting reactor No 6, which could boost the electricity supply to the Tokyo area by about 2%, will be a milestone in Japan’s slow return to nuclear energy, a strategy its government says will help the country reach its emissions targets and strengthen its energy security.
But for many of the 420,000 people living within a 30km (19-mile) radius of Kashiwazaki-Kariwa who would have to evacuate in the event of a Fukushima-style incident, Tepco’s imminent return to nuclear power generation is fraught with danger.
They include Ryusuke Yoshida, whose home is less than a mile and a half from the plant in the sleepy village of Kariwa. Asked what worries him most about the restart, the 76-year-old has a simple answer. “Everything,” he says, as waves crash on to the shore, the reactors looming in the background.
“The evacuation plans are obviously ineffective,” adds Yoshida, a potter and member of an association of people living closest to the facility. “When it snows in winter the roads are blocked, and a lot of people who live here are old. What about them, and other people who can’t move freely? This is a human rights issue.”……………………………..
“The core of the nuclear power business is ensuring safety above all else, and the understanding of local residents is a prerequisite,” says Tatsuya Matoba, a Tepco spokesperson.
That is the one hurdle residents say Tepco has failed to overcome after local authorities ignored calls for a prefectural referendum to determine the plant’s future. In the absence of a vote, anti-restart campaigners point to surveys showing clear opposition to putting the reactor back online.
They include a prefectural government poll conducted late last year in which more than 60% of people living within 30km of the plant said they did not believe the conditions for restarting the facility had been met…………
Kazuyuki Takemoto, a member of the Kariwa village council, says seismic activity in this region of north-west Japan means it is impossible to guarantee the plant’s safety.
“But there has been no proper discussion of that,” says Takemoto, 76. “They say that safety improvements have been made since the Fukushima disaster, but I don’t think there is any valid reason to restart the reactor. It’s beyond my comprehension.”
‘The priority should be to protect people’s lives’
Just weeks before the planned restart, the nuclear industry attracted fresh criticism after it emerged that Chubu Electric Power, a utility in central Japan, had fabricated seismic risk data during a regulatory review, conducted before a possible restart, of two reactors at its idle Hamaoka plant.
“When you look at what’s happened with Hamaoka, do you seriously think it’s possible to trust Japan’s nuclear industry?” Takemoto says. “It used to be said that nuclear power was necessary, safe and cheap … We now know that was an illusion.”
Adding to local concerns are the presence of seismic faults in and around the site, which sustained damage during a 6.8-magnitude offshore earthquake in July 2007, including a fire that broke out in a transformer. Three reactors that were in operation at the time shut down automatically.
The Kashiwazaki-Kariwa restart is a gamble for Japan’s government, which has put an ambitious return to nuclear power generation at the centre of its new energy policy as it struggles to reach its emissions targets and bolster its energy security.
Before the Fukushima disaster, 54 reactors were in operation, supplying about 30% of the country’s power. Now, of 33 operable reactors, just 14 are in service, while attempts to restart others have faced strong local opposition.
Now, 15 years after the Fukushima meltdown, criticism of the country’s “nuclear village” of operators, regulators and politicians has shifted to this snowy coastal town.
Pointing out one of the many security cameras near the plant, Yoshida says the restart has been forced on residents by the nuclear industry and its political allies. “The local authorities have folded in the face of immense pressure from the central government,” he says.
“The priority of any government should be to protect people’s lives, but we feel like we have been deceived. Japan’s nuclear village is alive and well. You only have to look at what’s happening here to know that.” https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jan/19/japan-nuclear-plant-restart-kashiwazaki-kariwa-fukushima
Britain to extend life of ageing nuclear plants to keep the lights on
Hartlepool and Heysham 1 licenses prolonged to 2030 due to ‘dangerous gap’ in power supplies.
Jonathan Leake, Energy Editor, 21 January 2026
Two of Britain’s oldest nuclear power plants
could be kept running for an extra two years because of an acute
electricity shortage in the UK. Hartlepool and Heysham 1, owned by EDF,
were due to shut down in 2028, but ministers want to extend the operating
licences to at least 2030 because the UK faces “a dangerous gap” in
power supplies if they shut.
Both have already been operating for 42 years
despite being scheduled to close for safety reasons in 2008. EDF,
France’s state-owned power utility, which operates all five UK nuclear
stations, said it was working to keep the stations operational without
compromising safety. Mark Hartley, from EDF, said: “In November, the UK
Government said that the retirement of these Advanced Gas-Cooled Reactors
(AGRs) risks leaving a dangerous gap in Britain’s low-carbon energy
supply. “It is our ambition to generate from the remaining AGR stations
for as long as it is safe and commercially viable to do so, and we will
keep their lifetimes under review to assess whether further life extensions
can be achieved.”
Sizewell B, the UK’s largest nuclear plant, is
already due to operate until 2035, and EDF hopes to extend this to 2055.
Two other stations, Torness and Heysham 2, were originally scheduled to
close in 2023 and have been cleared to generate until March 2030 after EDF
invested £8.6bn in the fleet.
The fate of Heysham 1 and Hartlepool is less
certain and will depend on the results of safety assessments. AGR reactors
contain radioactive uranium fuel pellets surrounded by massive graphite
blocks that absorb the high-energy neutrons emitted by the fuel, thereby
controlling the nuclear reaction.
However, over time, these blocks tend to
crack due to the intense radiation and heat to which they are exposed. Such
cracks have already forced the closure of several other UK power stations.
EDF’s safety assessment will need to be ratified by the Office for
Nuclear Regulation, which will need to approve the extensions as safe.
Telegraph 21st Jan 2026, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2026/01/21/britain-extend-life-ageing-nuclear-plants-keep-lights-on/
Welcome to the Peace IPO: Gaza, Rebranded as a Prospectus
In a February 2024 bull-session at Harvard, Kushner gazed at Gaza and saw—not a besieged enclave packed with families and memory – but “very valuable” waterfront property, and he floated the idea of moving civilians out so Israel could “clean it up.” As you do.
21 January 2026 David Tyler, https://theaimn.net/welcome-to-the-peace-ipo-gaza-rebranded-as-a-prospectus/
Trump’s so‑called “Board of Peace” looks less like a new deal than Jared Kushner’s “Peace to Prosperity” 2019 plan re-branded. It’s as flash as a rat with a gold tooth in a new suit and a limited‑edition Speedmaster, but woefully vapid. It’s a real‑estate pitch pimped as an opportunity to the canny. Palestinians appear merely as background labour: extras, porters, shoeshine boys and waiters in a production where they’re expected to serve, not share.
While Israel’s Likud‑led far‑right coalition continues its military actions, attacks and land grabs that UN experts and human‑rights organisations describe as genocidal in effect.
The difference is not the logic. The difference is the volume. And a crass vulgarity meter off the scale. But nothing can distract from the monumental inhumanity and asinine stupidity of the whole project.
Not to mention calculated cruelty. In 2019, the sales pitch was polite. It spoke in the soothing language of workshops and investment frameworks; a $50 billion vision to “unlock” Palestinian potential, as if the West Bank and Gaza were a start-up stuck in beta because it hadn’t embraced enough deregulation. Palestinians boycotted it because the plan put money in the driver’s seat and rights in the boot.
In 2026, the pitch is blunt: join the Board, bring capital, buy a seat at the table, said to be a US$1 billion buy-in for “permanent” membership, while the souls whose land is now an upscale reno, get “technocratic committees,” “transition governance,” and the home comforts of Israeli management.
Peace, in other words, has gone subscription-tier.
How we got this Frankenstein
The Frankenstein story begins with another colour-coded Excel spreadsheet. As so many other, modern horrors do.
Kushner’s original “Peace to Prosperity” treated Palestine as an underperforming asset. The cure was foreign capital, investment corridors, industrial parks, tax-free zones, economic carrots without a match-stick of political liberation. The occupation, the siege, the “asymmetry” or inequality of power was left intact, politely ignored, like rust and dried blood, under a quick new paint-job.
Of course, the plan didn’t just sideline Palestinians’ political agency, the elephant in the room. It shut them out. Local and global fat cats would use Palestinians as a labour pool and a “stability problem,” while sovereignty, restitution and justice sat outside, like poor, uninvited relatives at a wedding.
Then came the moment where the whole philosophy slipped its tie and revealed the raw instinct underneath it.
In a February 2024 bull-session at Harvard, Kushner gazed at Gaza and saw—not a besieged enclave packed with families and memory – but “very valuable” waterfront property, and he floated the idea of moving civilians out so Israel could “clean it up.” As you do. That is not a diplomatic remark. It is a hard-nosed developer’s call. It is the real-estate gaze: people only get in the way, land is your opportunity.
Fast-forward to Trump’s “Board of Peace,” and you can see the same gaze. Formulated.
The language is a sales brochure parody. The White House frames the Board as part of a “Comprehensive Plan” and celebrates the creation of a Gaza administrative committee as a “vital step” in a multi-phase roadmap for “peace, stability, reconstruction, and prosperity.” Al Jazeera notes a three-tier structure that puts Trump and pro-Israel officials at the top while Palestinians get to take out the garbage. The landowners are relegated to municipal duties. ABC says invitation mail-outs are thick and fast. It worries that Trump is setting up as an alternative, $uperior, model to UN mechanisms.
Satire is writing itself by the time we get to the seat price. Bloomberg reports Trump wants nations to pay $1 billion for permanent membership, with renewable term options for non-paying participants.
This is not diplomacy. This is a club. It is peace by buy-in. A moral authority with an admission fee?
Why it could be proposed at all
Something this offensive to Gaza’s actual inhabitants only makes sense once Palestine is reclassified, from homeland to high-yield opportunity zone.
That reclassification didn’t happen overnight. It took decades of a broader architecture of policy and language to reduce Palestinian rights to “final status issues”; treat their political claims as a negotiating inconvenience, and normalise de facto control on the ground as an unchangeable reality.
Once you perform that trick; once you turn rights into “issues,” and a people into an “administrative challenge”, then the next step becomes conceivable: the coastline becomes an asset; the survivors become “human resources”; and peace becomes a portfolio strategy.
Trump’s political brand fits perfectly. He fuses branding with foreign policy. He doesn’t ask, “What is just?” He asks, “What sells?” He doesn’t ask, “What do people consent to?” He asks, “Who’s paying?”
CounterPunch repeatedly frames the Trump approach to “peace” as chaotic, self-interested statecraft where the prize is not justice but leverage, contracts, and strategic positioning; the kind of diplomacy that behaves like a market raid.
So the Board of Peace is not an aberration. It is the system, finally saying the quiet part out loud.
Satire interlude: Peace, now with equity options
There is, apparently, a new path to peace in Gaza: an Initial Public Offering.
The prospectus is glossy. The board is illustrious. Only one thing missing from the term sheet is the consent of the people who actually live there.
Trump, now moonlighting as Chair of Global Serenity LLC, has got up a committee that includes himself, Kushner, and Tony Blair: a trio whose track record is a museum of modern hubris. It’s less a diplomatic team than a support group for men who believe history is a distressed asset they were born to privatise.
The sales pitch is an elegantly simple Levantine Walz:
One. Label Gaza “valuable waterfront property”; a phrase typically intoned just before someone proposes a golf course over a mass grave.
Two. Announce that peace comes with tiers. A “permanent seat”? $1 billion, thank you. Peace, but make it premium.
Three. Invite governments and investors to bid for moral authority while Palestinians are quietly sidelined into the business plan as “local capacity.”
Kushner, once tasked with making peace by people who confused “son-in-law” with “diplomat,” returns as the visionary architect. The same man who dismissed political claims as obstacles and mused that Gazans could be moved out so someone could finally do something tasteful with the shoreline.
Having failed at “Peace to Prosperity,” he has now moved on to “Peace to Portfolio Diversification.”
What it really represents
Strip away the PR turd-polish and the Board of Peace represents three deeper trends:
Neoliberal occupation
Economic-first “solutions” that treat Palestinians as an economic population to be “developed” rather than a political people to be free. This was the Bahrain model: investment theatre without dismantling the structures that make normal economic life impossible.
Financialisation of justice
A $1 billion buy-in doesn’t just raise governance questions; it changes the moral architecture. It says legitimacy can be bought. It says peace is an asset class. It says the right to influence the future of Gaza belongs to whoever can wire the funds.
Erasure by technocracy
National claims, refugees, restitution, the right of return are all swept aside and replaced with “governance development,” “capacity building,” “administrative transition.” The jargon fog in which an occupied people are recoded as an admin problem consultants can solve.
The real genius is euphemism density. Layer upon layer. Occupation becomes “security architecture.” Siege becomes “border management.” External control becomes “oversight.” And the bombed-out landscape becomes “an opportunity corridor.”
What’s likely to happen next
Here the satire ends and the stakes bite. Legitimacy will be radioactive so long as Palestinians remain excluded from real sovereignty while the conditions of coercion persist. A structure unveiled about them, without them, is not peace, it’s administration.
Those positioned to profit will circle early. Reconstruction is always where politics, contracts, and influence meet. A pay-to-play architecture is an engraved invitation to opportunists and aligned states seeking leverage.
Civil society backlash will grow precisely because the moral inversion is so blatant: catastrophe monetised; rights treated as optional add-ons.
And the core problem, the one no amount of branding can fix, remains brutally simple:
If you build “peace” on the denial of self-determination, on the absence of accountability, and on the conversion of a people’s catastrophe into a capital project, you won’t get peace.
You’ll get a prospectus. You’ll get a boardroom. You’ll get a beachfront brochure printed on the ashes.
The Debt That Cannot Be Traded
The “Board of Peace” is a gamble that history can be treated as a distressed asset, and that a people’s identity can be diluted into a dividend. It assumes that if you make the brochure glossy enough, the ghosts of the past and the demands of the present will simply vanish into the “transition committees.”
But there is a flaw in the real-estate gaze: it mistakes silence for consent and rubble for a blank slate.
True peace is not a subscription service, and it certainly isn’t a premium tier accessible only to those with a billion dollars to burn. If we have learned anything from the century that birthed this Frankenstein, it is that human dignity is the one currency that cannot be devalued by an Excel spreadsheet. The “Board” may try to privatise the future, but they cannot buy the air, the memory, or the sheer, stubborn persistence of fifteen million people who refuse to be “extras” in their own story.
The old truth remains: you can build a boardroom on a shoreline, and you can print a prospectus on the ashes, but you cannot govern a people who haven’t been seen, only managed. In the end, the most “valuable property” in Gaza isn’t the waterfront; it is the unyielding agency of those who live there.
That is the debt that eventually comes due, and it is the only one that can’t be settled at a discount and the only one we keep turning away from at incalculable cost to our collective humanity.
This article was originally published on URBAN WRONSKI WRITES
Government funding for Saskatchewan SMR test facility
World Nuclear News 20th Jan 2026
Western Canada’s first Small Modular Reactor Safety, Licensing, and Testing Centre at the University of Regina is to receive nearly CAD6 million (USD4.3 million) in funding from the federal and provincial governments.
The facility – the SMR-SLT – will be located at the Innovation Saskatchewan Research and Technology Park. It will house two test loops that simulate a part of a small modular reactor (SMR), modelling water-cooled systems using electrical heat, allowing researchers to test components under conditions similar to those in operating reactors.
The funding was announced by Buckley Belanger, Canada’s Secretary of State (Rural Development), on behalf of Minister of Emergency Management and Community Resilience and Minister responsible for Prairies Economic Development Canada Eleanor Olszewski. The federal government is investing CAD1.96 million (USD1.4 million) in the SMR-SLT through Olszewski’s department, PrairiesCan – a federal government department supporting business growth, innovation and community economic development across Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba.
Provincial government support for the project is through SaskPower, the principal supplier of electricity in Saskatchewan, and a Crown Corporation – a commercial entity owned by the Government of Saskatchewan. It will be investing CAD4 million in the SMR-LT……………………..
Innovation Saskatchewan is contributing CAD1 million plus an in-kind contribution of the leased space at the Innovation Saskatchewan R+T Park for the first three years of operation. Canadian Nuclear Laboratories (CNL) will also provide in-kind design support. The centre will be led by University of Regina researchers, with the Global Institute for Energy, Minerals and Society (GIEMS) partnership between the University of Regina, University of Saskatchewan, and Saskatchewan Polytechnic playing a key role to ensure all three institutions have access to the test loops for training and research, SaskPower said.
The government of Saskatchewan signalled its commitment to incorporating nuclear capacity into its provincial electricity system in a long-term policy document released last year. SaskPower has previously selected GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy’s BWRX-300 SMR for potential deployment in the province in the mid-2030s and has identified two potential sites for SMR deployment, both in the Estevan area in the south-east of the province…………………
Arthur Situm, Canada Research Chair in SMR Safety and Licensing at the University of Regina, said the facility will help train the next generation of nuclear professionals by providing hands-on experience with safety systems and processes that define modern nuclear technology.
“Together, this work positions the University of Regina and Saskatchewan as a leader in safe, responsible, small modular reactor research with a global impact,” he said on YouTube…….
https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/articles/government-funding-for-saskatchewan-smr-test-facility
IAEA chief warns Iran nuclear standoff ‘cannot go on forever’
The UN nuclear watchdog’s chief warned Tuesday that a standoff with Iran over inspections and its near-bomb-grade uranium stockpiles cannot continue indefinitely, raising the prospect that Tehran could be declared in non-compliance with its obligations.
“This cannot go on forever because at some point I will have to say, ‘I don’t have any idea where this material is,’” International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Rafael Grossi said.
“This cannot go on like this for a long time without me having to declare them in non-compliance.”
Grossi said he was exercising diplomatic restraint but stressed that Iran, as a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, does not have the option to pick and choose which obligations to meet.
Iran said in December last year it will not yield to international pressure to allow renewed inspections of nuclear sites hit by the United States in June.
Grossi also acknowledged parallel diplomatic efforts aimed at easing tensions between Iran and the United States, saying he hoped they would avert renewed military confrontation.
The IAEA has long sought answers from Iran over past nuclear activities and the whereabouts of undeclared nuclear material, issues Grossi has said cannot be resolved without access to relevant sites.
Iran International 21st Jan 2026, https://www.iranintl.com/en/202601205064
Chernobyl cooling systems have lost power but meltdown risk is low
An electrical outage at Chernobyl nuclear power plant risks dangerous fuel overheating, but experts say that the chances are extremely slim due to the age of the reactors, which were shut down over two decades ago
New Scientist, By Matthew Sparkes, 20 January 2026
An electrical outage at Ukraine’s Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant has taken spent fuel cooling systems offline, leading to a potential risk of overheating and the release of dangerous levels of radiation – but due to the age of the fuel, it should be safe until power is restored.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reports that several Ukrainian electrical substations have been hit by Russian military strikes, causing power outages at Chernobyl. “The IAEA is actively following developments in order to assess impact on nuclear safety,” wrote IAEA director general Rafael Grossi in a post on X.
Spent nuclear fuel from reactors continues to emit radiation for years, creating heat that must be shed, or else the fuel can melt and emit a spike of dangerous radiation. The fuel from Chernobyl’s former reactors is stored in a large cooling pond that is constantly replenished with fresh, cold water to keep its temperature down.
But without an electricity supply – which the IAEA says the site now lacks – this cooling has stopped, which will allow the water temperature to rise and increase the rate of evaporation.
“When the fuel comes out of a reactor, it will be hot for a while, because there will be fission products and there will be radioactive and giving off gammas and betas and alphas – just emitting energy, which needs to be removed, otherwise it will eventually melt,” says Paul Cosgrove at the University of Cambridge.
Working in Chernobyl’s favour, however, is that its stored fuel is older and therefore has already had time to emit much of its radioactive energy and cool down. The risk now is lower than the risk was in 2022, for example, when New Scientist reported on similar power outages at Chernobyl.
“It is always a worry when a nuclear site loses power, but worry about nuclear risks is often several orders of magnitude above the risks associated with other events with similar consequences,” says Ian Farnan, also at Cambridge.
Chernobyl’s reactor 4 exploded in 1986, but reactor 2 was shut down in 1991, reactor 1 ceased generating power in 1996 and reactor 3 – the final one at the site – was decommissioned in 2000.
The exact specifications of the storage pools that contain the fuel left over from those reactors at Chernobyl are kept classified, says Cosgrove. But he is aware of an inspection by regulators in 2022, which found that the risk of spent fuel overheating in the case of a power outage was low. “This fuel has been sat in there for 20 years, so it will have decayed. More and more of that energy will be gone,” he says………………. https://www.newscientist.com/article/2512468-chernobyl-cooling-systems-have-lost-power-but-meltdown-risk-is-low/
Make Nuclear Weapons the Target
Five years of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons., https://www.redcross.org.au/stories/ihl/five-years-of-the-treaty/
Nuclear weapons pose an existential threat to humanity and to the planet itself. Their catastrophic humanitarian consequences are undeniable: immediate mass casualties, long-term radiation effects, and unthinkable environmental devastation. Yet, despite these risks, thousands of nuclear weapons still exist today.
On 22 January 2021, the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) entered into force, transforming the legal landscape by outlawing the use, threat, development, possession, and deployment of nuclear weapons.
There are currently 95 signatories and 74 States parties to the TPNW. These numbers represent a strong global majority and demonstrate a growing momentum towards banning nuclear weapons altogether.
Today, on the fifth anniversary of the TPNW, Australian Red Cross reiterates its call for all remaining States, including Australia, to sign and ratify the TPNW and join the global movement to eliminate the threat of nuclear weapons once and for all.
Position of Australian Red Cross
Read the Australian Red Cross Position Statement.
Australian Red Cross has a clear and simple stance: nuclear weapons must never be used again, and they must be eliminated completely.
In addition to the obvious humanitarian imperative of eliminating nuclear weapons, Australian Red Cross is driven by our unique humanitarian mandate to promote international humanitarian law (IHL), also known as the laws of war. This body of law is designed to limit unnecessary human suffering during times of armed conflict.
The use of nuclear weapons is inherently incompatible with the core principles of IHL, which include humanity, distinction, and proportionality.
In general, IHL prohibits the use of weapons that are indiscriminate, meaning they cannot distinguish between military targets and civilians or civilian objects. Weapons that cause unnecessary suffering or superfluous injury are also banned, as are those that cause widespread, long-term, and severe damage to the natural environment.
It is impossible to imagine any scenario of nuclear weapon use that could comply with these principles.
Why elimination is urgent
- Nuclear weapons pose an unacceptable human cost: A single nuclear detonation would cause indiscriminate destruction, overwhelming health systems and leaving survivors with lifelong suffering.
- Devastating environmental impact: Fallout and radiation contamination could cause extreme environmental damage, including the destruction of habitats, and the irreparable pollution of water, soil, and air. This could lead to famine and displacement on a global scale.
- A clear legal responsibility: Under IHL, States must not use weapons that cause superfluous injury or unnecessary suffering. Nuclear weapons clearly fall into this category.
A stark reminder from history
The atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 caused unprecedented and unimaginable devastation, killing hundreds of thousands and leaving survivors to suffer life-long health impacts. Yet, the bombs that were used in 1945 were relatively small by today’s standards. Modern nuclear weapons are many times more powerful, capable of obliterating entire cities in an instant and triggering cascading humanitarian and environmental consequences across borders. This reality reinforces the urgent need to eliminate these weapons before they are ever used again.
What can you do?
- Raise awareness: Share information about the humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons.
- Support the TPNW: Encourage your government to join and implement the treaty.
- Engage in dialogue: Promote conversations about disarmament and the role of IHL in protecting humanity.
The elimination of nuclear weapons is not just a legal obligation. It is a moral imperative.
Find out how to take action to support the elimination of nuclear weapons by downloading our discussion cards and toolkit. You can also read our Position Statement for more information.
HIGH LEVEL NUCLEAR WASTE REMAINS UNAPPROACHABLE AND EXTREMELY TOXIC FOR HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF YEARS
Gordon Edwards, 20 Jan 26
Q: When is irradiated nuclear fuel less radioactive than uranium ore?
A: Never!
Mark Twain once wrote, “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.” I would add to that short list many of the reassurances promulgated by nuclear enthusiasts. Take high-level nuclear waste for example.
Nuclear proponents often reassure the public and decision-makers that, after 10 million years or so, the high-level radioactive waste from nuclear reactors is more-or-less on a par with the original uranium ore found in nature from which the uranium fuel was extracted. Sounds reassuring, no doubt, but it is not true.
First of all, the language itself can be misleading. Many people may not realize that uranium ore is much more dangerously radioactive than uranium itself.
That’s because the ore is a mélange of uranium and its two dozen radioactive progeny, including isotopes of radium, polonium, and radon, as well as radioactive varieties of bismuth and lead. See www.ccnr.org/U-238_decay_chain.png & www.ccnr.org/U-235_decay_chain.png
Each one of these byproducts of uranium is much more radiotoxic (i.e.following ingestion or inhalation) than uranium itself. Indeed these pernicious radioactive poisons have already killed countless hundreds of thousands of humans exposed to them in one way or another.
Due to the presence of the radioactive progeny, uranium ore gives off a lot of highly penetrating gamma radiation (the principal cause of external whole-body irradiation) – far more than uranium itself. Pure uranium gives off very little gamma radiation.
Secondly, not all uranium ore is the same. Some ores are a lot more dangerous than others.
The potential health hazard of uranium ore depends on the “grade” of the ore. The grade is the concentration of uranium per gram of ore. The grade dictates the concentration of all of the radioactive progeny as well. So, the higher the grade, the more radioactive and the more radiotoxic the ore is.
At Cigar Lake in Northern Saskatchewan, for example, we have “high-grade” ore averaging about 17 percent uranium, which makes that ore more than 150 times more radioactive (and radiotoxic) than uranium ore from Elliot Lake Ontario (having a grade of about 0.1 percent).
The Cigar Lake ore is the richest (i.e. the highest grade) ever found. The ore is so radioactive that it cannot be safely mined by human beings, but must be mined using robotic equipment. See https://saskpolytech.ca/news/posts/2021/Cigar-Lake-project-collaboration-a-high-tech-home-grown-win.aspx .
But hold on a minute. Even after ten million years, the concentration of uranium left in spent fuel is about 98.5 percent. That is a MUCH higher grade than any ore ever found in nature.
So even after ten million years, used nuclear fuel is about 480 percent MORE radioactive and radiotoxic than the uranium ore at Cigar Lake – which is in turn more than 100 times more radioactive and radiotoxic than most other uranium deposits that have been mined in other countries. And that estimate is based ONLY on the uranium progeny mentioned above.
But that’s not all. In addition to uranium and its progeny, the ten-million-year-old CANDU used fuel bundles contain other radioactive poisons not found in uranium ore at all, such as caesium-135 (half-life 2.3 million years), iodine-129 (half-life 16 million years), palladium-107 (half-life 6.5 million years), and zirconium-93 (half-life 1.6 million years).
So when Canadian nuclear establishment people tell you that after 10 million years CANDU spent fuel is about as dangerous as naturally-occurring uranium ore, they are bending the truth by a significant amount. They are also misleading people by not explaining the difference between uranium ore and uranium in a refined form.
Incidentally, the Ontario Royal Commission on Electric Power Planning (commonly called the Porter Commission) published a graph in their 1978 Report “A Race Against Time” showing that the overall radiotoxicity of used CANDU fuel (the blue line in the graph) decreases for the first 50,000 years or so, and then increases to a higher level as the result of inbreeding of uranium progeny. Although it is not stated in the report, the radiotoxicity level of used nuclear fuel after ten million years does not change for a very long time – it remains relatively constant for the next several hundred millions of years.
Zionist Billionaires Openly Acknowledge Manipulating The US Government.
Caitlin Johnstone, Jan 19, 2026, https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/zionist-billionaires-openly-acknowledge?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=185023681&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
Speaking together at the Israeli-American Council Summit on Saturday, billionaire Zionist megadonors Miriam Adelson and Haim Saban strongly implied that they are engaged in some extremely shady activities to manipulate the US government in advancement of Israeli interests.
There’s a guy I follow on Twitter named Chris Menahan who’s always posting clips from Zionist events which might otherwise go unnoticed, frequently turning up jarring admissions from pro-Israel operatives who tend to loosen their lips a bit when addressing an audience of like-minded individuals. I recently cited a clip he spotted featuring former Obama speechwriter Sarah Hurwitz decrying the way social media has allowed the public to view evidence of Israeli atrocities in Gaza.
Menahan has spotlighted some very revealing moments from Adelson and Saban, both of whom are dual US-Israeli citizens, and both of whom have provided funding to the Israeli-American Council (IAC). In 2014, The Nation’s MJ Rosenberg wrote that Saban and Miriam Adelson’s late husband Sheldon were using influence operations like the IAC to become “the Koch brothers on Israel.”
Here’s a transcript of a very revealing interaction between Adelson and event host Shawn Evenhaim:
Evenhaim: Miri, you and Sheldon created a lot of relationships over the years with politicians, at the state level, and especially at the federal level. I want you to share with everyone why is it so important and how you do it, and again, writing cheques is a part of it, but there is more than writing just cheques so, how do you do it?
Adelson: Shawn, can you allow me not to answer?
Evenhaim (shrugs): You choose!
Adelson: I want to be truthful and there are so many things that I don’t want to talk about.
Evenhaim: Yeah, I mean we don’t want specifics but that’s okay.
Miriam Adelson is here admitting that in addition to the hundreds of millions of dollars that she and Sheldon are known to have poured into the political campaigns of Donald Trump and other Republican politicians, they have also been manipulating US politics behind the scenes in ways that she would prefer to keep secret from the public. Presumably because it would cause a significant scandal if the public ever found out.
Trump, for the record, has repeatedly admitted that he provided political favors to Israel at the urging of the Adelsons during his first term, saying he moved the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and legitimized the Israeli annexation of the Golan Heights in order to please them.
And please them he did. He must have, because Miriam Adelson donated another $100 million to Trump’s 2024 campaign to help him become president again. And now he’s spent the first year of his administration bombing Iran and Yemen, working to take control of Gaza, and aggressively stomping out criticism of Israel in the United States.
Back in 2020, before all these blatant admissions, musician Roger Waters was smeared as an antisemite by the Anti-Defamation League and other Zionist groups for saying that Sheldon Adelson was using his wealth to exert influence over US politics.
Saban was even more guarded about his political operations than Adelson in his response to the same question from Evenhaim:
“I want to be cautious how I’m saying… (Pause) It’s a system that we did not create. It’s a system that’s in place. It’s a legal system and we just play within the system. And that’s it! I mean it’s really quite simple. If you support a politician, you, under normal circumstances, should have access to be able to share opinions and try to help them see your point of view. That’s what access grants you, and the contribution and the financial support grants you the access, sooooo… I mean…. (shrugs) those that give more have more access and those that give less have less access. It’s a simple math. Trust me.”
Haim Saban, whose campaign donations focus on the other side of the aisle with Democratic Party funding, has famously said “I’m a one-issue guy, and my issue is Israel.” In 2022 AIPAC’s superpac cited Saban’s financial clout to argue that deviating from support for Israel would cost the Democrats critical funding, saying “Our activist donors, who include one of the largest donors to the Democratic Party, are focused on ensuring that we have a U.S. Congress that, like President Biden, supports a vibrant and robust relationship with our democratic ally, Israel.”
As with Adelson, we can surmise that Saban said he wanted to be “cautious” how he described his influence operations because it would cause a major scandal if the American people understood what he’s been up to.
Some people will look at these clips and claim it’s antisemitic to even share them. Others will look at them and cite them as evidence that the world is ruled by Jews. For me they’re just evidence that the world is ruled by wealthy sociopaths, and that western democracy is an illusion.
I mean, you really couldn’t ask for a better illustration of the sham of American democracy than this. Two billionaires from supposedly opposite political parties publicly admitting that they use their obscene wealth to manipulate US politics to advance the military and geopolitical agendas of a foreign state on the other side of the planet.
And as Saban said, it’s all legal. Corruption is legal in the United States of America. Plutocrats are allowed to leverage their fortunes to manipulate the US government using campaign funding and lobbying for the advancement of their personal, financial, and ideological agendas. If you have a few million dollars to spare you can use them to make criminal charges go away, to roll back environmental regulations or worker protections which hurt the profit margins of your business, or even to get military explosives shipped to a foreign government for use in an ongoing genocide.
And it’s all being done with complete disregard for the will of the electorate. The American people have no control over what their government does under the current political system. They vote for one oligarchic puppet, then they vote for the oligarchic puppet in the other party when that doesn’t work out, going back and forth without realizing that at no point are they changing the actual power structure under which they live.
That power structure is called plutocracy. That’s only real political system the United States has.
Guterres warns of ‘powerful forces’ undermining ‘global cooperation’.
The secretary general, who will step down at the end of 2026, will say: “Last year, global military spending reached $2.7tn – over 200 times the UK’s current aid budget, or equivalent to over 70% of Britain’s entire economy.”
The deepening investment in weaponry runs alongside his concerns that the drivers of climate breakdown are being wilfully ignored and online content is undermining democracy.
Mark Townsend, 17 January, 26 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jan/17/antonio-guterres-warns-forces-undermining-global-cooperation-un-80th-anniversary-secretary-general-multilateralism-international-law
In historic speech to mark UN’s 80th anniversary, secretary general makes impassioned plea for multilateralism and international law amid drastic US funding cuts.
The United Nations secretary general, António Guterres, will warn on Saturday of the peril posed by “powerful forces lining up to undermine global cooperation” in an address to mark the 80th anniversary of the UN’s first major meeting.
Speaking in London’s Methodist Central Hall – the site where eight decades earlier delegates from 51 countries came together for the inaugural session of the general assembly – the UN head will make an impassioned plea for the virtues of multilateralism and international law to prevail during a period of deepening global uncertainty.
In January 1946, the general assembly’s first resolution focused on disarmament and the elimination of atomic weapons as a global goal.
Now, Guterres warns of a planet facing myriad threats that were then unthinkable, citing the climate crisis and threat from “cyberspace” at a time many countries are locked into a new arms race, though he will hold off from naming offending states.
The secretary general, who will step down at the end of 2026, will say: “Last year, global military spending reached $2.7tn – over 200 times the UK’s current aid budget, or equivalent to over 70% of Britain’s entire economy.”
The deepening investment in weaponry runs alongside his concerns that the drivers of climate breakdown are being wilfully ignored and online content is undermining democracy.
“As the planet broke heat records, fossil fuel profits continued to surge. And in cyberspace, algorithms rewarded falsehoods, fuelled hatred, and provided authoritarians with powerful tools of control,” he will tell the London audience.
Comments from the 76-year-old come at a time of chronic funding difficulties for the UN, largely driven by the decisions of the US president, Donald Trump.
The US has announced it would be allocating just $2bn (£1.5bn) to UN humanitarian assistance, a fraction of its previous contributions as the leading funder. The announcement came with a warning from the US state department that the global body must “adapt, shrink or die”, and that demands would be imposed on countries receiving the money.
Just over a week later, Trump announced the US withdrawal from multiple UN agencies as well as its key climate treaty.
Experts say the funding cut will lead to a shrunken, less effective international aid system, with the UN already saying a funding shortfall threatens to cripple its global peacekeeping operations.
Guterres, however, says reforms will ensure the “United Nations is more agile, more coordinated and more responsive”.
IAEA chief says nuclear accident risk in Ukraine outweighs fear of atomic weapons.
Rafael Grossi says fighting around Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant has left Europe’s largest facility in ‘extremely fragile, volatile condition’ –
Beyza Binnur Donmez |16.01.2026 GENEVA, https://www.aa.com.tr/en/russia-ukraine-war/iaea-chief-says-nuclear-accident-risk-in-ukraine-outweighs-fear-of-atomic-weapons/3801135
The head of the UN nuclear watchdog said he is more worried about the risk of a nuclear accident in Ukraine than the potential use of atomic weapons, stressing the fragile situation at Europe’s largest nuclear power plant.
In an interview published on Friday, International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Rafael Grossi told RTVE that while the possibility of nuclear weapons being used in the Ukraine war cannot be fully ruled out, it remains unlikely.
“I believe that the possibility of the use of nuclear weapons in the context of this conflict is not very high,” Grossi said. “Therefore, we are immediately more concerned about the possibility of a nuclear accident than about the use of the nuclear weapon itself.”
Grossi underlined the dangers surrounding the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, which he described as “the most important nuclear power plant in Europe,” noting that it once supplied 20% of Ukraine’s electricity. The plant, located in a combat zone and occupied by Russia, remains highly vulnerable to military activity and power outages that could disrupt cooling systems.
“The situation today is extremely fragile. It is a combat zone,” he said, adding: “We are exercising this function of permanent observation and mediating between both belligerents to achieve, for example, specific ceasefires. We have already successfully negotiated four that allow us to carry out, for example, repairs on the high voltage lines that surround the plant, in order to precisely avoid radiological emergency situations.”
“It is an extremely fragile and volatile situation that we follow day by day,” he stressed.
Iran holds ‘significant amount’ of enriched uranium
Turning to Iran, Grossi said the country continues to hold a “significant amount” of highly enriched uranium, amid tensions and suspended inspections following attacks on nuclear facilities.
“There is still a significant amount of uranium enriched to 60% isotopic purity in Iran, which is practically the level required for the manufacture of nuclear weapons,” he said.
Grossi also warned against any Iranian move to withdraw from the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, saying: “This would only aggravate the situation of tension that is already being experienced.”
To a question, the IAEA chief said the agency remains engaged in dialogue with Tehran and other key actors, including the US, to restore monitoring and prevent further escalation.
Labeling Kidnapping a ‘Capture,’ Media Legitimate Violation of International Law.
The word “abduct” was never used in the voice of a reporter from any of these papers to describe what the US had done.
These linguistic choices matter. “Capture” and “arrest” paint Trump, Delta Force and the CIA as righteous heroes protecting their country—as well as Venezuela and the rest of the world—from the villainous Maduros. “Abduct” and “kidnap” morally invert the good guy and bad guy roles, and would portray US actors as the wrongdoers
Gregory Shupak, January 20, 2026, https://fair.org/home/labeling-kidnapping-a-capture-media-legitimate-violation-of-international-law/
Corporate media have deployed a lexicon of legitimation in their coverage of the deadly US invasion of Venezuela and the abduction of President Nicolás Maduro, along with his wife and fellow politician Cilia Flores. Major news outlets have routinely described these events using words like “capture” (New York Times, 1/3/26) or “arrest” (BBC, 1/3/26), which presents them as a matter of enforcing the law against fugitives or criminals, and carries the built-in but false assumption that the US had the right or even duty to conduct its operation in the first place.
The ludicrous premise is that any time an arrest warrant is issued somewhere in the United States, the US has the right to do anything, anywhere in the world, in pursuit of the subject—including bombing another country, invading it, killing its citizens, and spiriting away its president and first lady. Cornell Law School professor Maggie Gardner (Transnational Litigation Blog, 1/5/26) rebuked the idea that the US merely enforced the law in Venezuela, pointing out (emphasis in original):
The ludicrous premise is that any time an arrest warrant is issued somewhere in the United States, the US has the right to do anything, anywhere in the world, in pursuit of the subject—including bombing another country, invading it, killing its citizens, and spiriting away its president and first lady. Cornell Law School professor Maggie Gardner (Transnational Litigation Blog, 1/5/26) rebuked the idea that the US merely enforced the law in Venezuela, pointing out (emphasis in original):
I used the news aggregator Factiva to examine New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post coverage from January 3 through January 5, the day of the US’s attack on Venezuela and the first two days after these developments. The papers published a combined 223 pieces that featured Maduro’s name, and 166 of these (74%) used the term “capture” or a form of it, such as “captured” or “capturing.” Sixty of these pieces, or 27%, included the word “arrest” or variations on the term, like “arrested” or “arresting.”
“Abduction” or “kidnapping”—synonyms that mean to take someone away unlawfully and by force—are far more suitable words for what the US did to Maduro and Flores. Only two pieces in the Post and one in the Journal used any form of “abduct” (such as “abduction”) in any of the articles that refer to Maduro—1% of the combined total articles. In each case, the term appears in quotation marks. The Times ran no pieces in which the word appeared.
The Post (1/3/26) shared a perplexing perspective from Geoffrey Corn—head of the Center for Military Law and Policy at Texas Tech University, and a former top legal adviser to the US Army—who said that the US Supreme Court has been clear since the late 19th century that “you can’t claim that you were abducted and therefore the court should not be allowed to assert authority over you.” The article went on:
“Maduro is not going to be able to avoid being brought to trial because he was abducted, so to speak, even if he can establish it violated international law,” Corn said, adding that in his view, the administration’s overnight military operation lacked any “plausible legal basis.”
So, despite Corn’s view that the US attack was illegal, he couldn’t bring himself to present Maduro’s abduction as literal rather than figurative.
That article, as well another in the Post (1/3/26) and one in the Wall Street Journal (1/5/26), quoted Democratic Senator Mark R. Warner:
If the United States asserts the right to use military force to invade and capture foreign leaders it accuses of criminal conduct, what prevents China from claiming the same authority over Taiwan’s leadership? What stops Vladimir Putin from asserting a similar justification to abduct Ukraine’s president?
Even as Warner is skeptical about the US’s actions in Venezuela, he still uses the language of “capture” for Maduro, while using “abduct” for a hypothetical scenario in which the official enemy Putin carries out a parallel crime. None of the articles that included Warner’s quote commented on this linguistic inconsistency.
The word “abduct” was never used in the voice of a reporter from any of these papers to describe what the US had done.
‘It’s not a bad term’
Venezuelan officials, including Maduro himself (New York Times, 1/5/26), say that he was “kidnapped” by the US. They’re not the only ones. On Democracy Now! (1/3/26), Venezuelan journalist Andreína Chávez and US-based Venezuelan historian Miguel Tinker Salas both used that word to characterize what the US did to Maduro and Flores.
Canada’s national broadcaster, the CBC (1/5/26), regarded the idea that Maduro was “kidnapped” as at least meriting serious discussion. Co-anchor Andrew Chang asked:
Did the US military just kidnap Nicholas Maduro?… “Kidnap” is a loaded word because it implies illegality. Maybe a more neutral way of describing Maduro’s capture is as an “abduction,” but the US government calls it an “arrest.”…
This isn’t some nerdy question about semantics. It’s a question about law, and whether the US has the legal right to extract world leaders from their homes, and maybe even whether other countries might have that right, too.
Notably, when Trump was told that Venezuela’s acting President Delcy Rodríguez said it was a “kidnapping,” he didn’t push back, saying, “It’s not a bad term.”
However, the only times “kidnap” appeared in the Times, Journal or Post in relation to Maduro and Flores—in 10 pieces, or 4% of the coverage—came when that term was attributed to representatives of the Venezuelan state. Suggesting to readers that a government that has been demonized in US media for decades is the only source that regards Maduro and Flores as having been “kidnapped” is tantamount to suggesting that no credible sources take that position.
The three papers combined to run zero articles treating as an objective fact the view that America “abducted” or “kidnapped” a sitting head of state in defiance of international law, while they regularly used “captured” and “arrested” outside of quotation marks, as if those word choices are merely flat descriptions of reality.
ICE also ‘arrests’
These linguistic choices matter. “Capture” and “arrest” paint Trump, Delta Force and the CIA as righteous heroes protecting their country—as well as Venezuela and the rest of the world—from the villainous Maduros. “Abduct” and “kidnap” morally invert the good guy and bad guy roles, and would portray US actors as the wrongdoers.
This particular form of word play is part of a pattern for corporate media under this Trump administration. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) round-ups of migrants in the United States have featured what can most accurately be described as abductions or kidnappings of people—off the streets, at courts, in workplaces and elsewhere—by armed, masked and unaccountable agents, into unmarked vehicles. It’s little surprise, then, that immigration lawyers, members of Congress, and law professors (LA Times, 10/21/25), among others, routinely use the word “abduct” to describe these events.
And describing ICE’s practices as “kidnappings” isn’t some fringe view. Rep. Jesus “Chuy” Garcia (D-Ill.) uses the word (Independent, 12/5/25), as does Rolling Stone editor Tim Dickinson (7/2/25), and the academic and author Natasha Lennard of the New School for Social Research in New York (Intercept, 7/1/25). ICE’s victims (Mother Jones, 7/18/27; NPR, 7/27/25) and their families (Guardian, 4/15/25, 6/10/25, 6/26/25) frequently describe their ordeal in such terms.
Yet corporate media eschew such language for the same sanitized “arrest” or “capture” language they employed for Maduro and Flores. When I used Factiva to pair “ICE” with the words “abduct” or “kidnap,” just two articles turned up that included the perspective that ICE “abducts” people (New York Times, 7/13/25; Washington Post, 12/3/25), both attributed to critical sources. Five (2%) included a version of the word “kidnap,” all in quotation marks.
Three of these quotes were from the much-maligned Venezuelan government (New York Times, 3/18/25, 11/25/25; Washington Post, 5/4/25), one came from a man whose father and daughter-in-law had been detained by ICE (Washington Post, 3/21/25), and another from a member of the Chicago Board of Education (New York Times, 10/22/25).
The language is freighted in the same way, whether it is migrants under attack from US jackboots, or those same forces unleashed against socialist politicians in Global South countries seeking to escape imperial domination.
The word “abduct” was never used in the voice of a reporter from any of these papers to describe what the US had done.
d “kidnap” morally invert the good guy and bad guy roles, and would portray US actors as the wrongdoers.
Gregory Shupak, January 20, 2026
Corporate media have deployed a lexicon of legitimation in their coverage of the deadly US invasion of Venezuela and the abduction of President Nicolás Maduro, along with his wife and fellow politician Cilia Flores. Major news outlets have routinely described these events using words like “capture” (New York Times, 1/3/26) or “arrest” (BBC, 1/3/26), which presents them as a matter of enforcing the law against fugitives or criminals, and carries the built-in but false assumption that the US had the right or even duty to conduct its operation in the first place.
The ludicrous premise is that any time an arrest warrant is issued somewhere in the United States, the US has the right to do anything, anywhere in the world, in pursuit of the subject—including bombing another country, invading it, killing its citizens, and spiriting away its president and first lady. Cornell Law School professor Maggie Gardner (Transnational Litigation Blog, 1/5/26) rebuked the idea that the US merely enforced the law in Venezuela, pointing out (emphasis in original):
Under customary international law, a sovereign can only exercise enforcement jurisdiction in the territory of another sovereign if it has that sovereign’s consent. This hard line limiting enforcement powers to a sovereign’s own territory is clear and well-established.
Venezuela, of course, didn’t consent to being bombed, or to having Maduro and Flores taken from the country at gunpoint. Accordingly, what happened in Caracas is best understood not as the US enforcing the law, but as the US breaking international law. It’s misleading, therefore, to use language like “capture” and “arrest,” which evoke the US upholding the law, to describe blowtorch-wielding, heavily armed US forces taking Maduro and Flores prisoner in the middle of the night (BBC, 1/4/26).
‘Abducted, so to speak’
I used the news aggregator Factiva to examine New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post coverage from January 3 through January 5, the day of the US’s attack on Venezuela and the first two days after these developments. The papers published a combined 223 pieces that featured Maduro’s name, and 166 of these (74%) used the term “capture” or a form of it, such as “captured” or “capturing.” Sixty of these pieces, or 27%, included the word “arrest” or variations on the term, like “arrested” or “arresting.”
“Abduction” or “kidnapping”—synonyms that mean to take someone away unlawfully and by force—are far more suitable words for what the US did to Maduro and Flores. Only two pieces in the Post and one in the Journal used any form of “abduct” (such as “abduction”) in any of the articles that refer to Maduro—1% of the combined total articles. In each case, the term appears in quotation marks. The Times ran no pieces in which the word appeared.
The Post (1/3/26) shared a perplexing perspective from Geoffrey Corn—head of the Center for Military Law and Policy at Texas Tech University, and a former top legal adviser to the US Army—who said that the US Supreme Court has been clear since the late 19th century that “you can’t claim that you were abducted and therefore the court should not be allowed to assert authority over you.” The article went on:
“Maduro is not going to be able to avoid being brought to trial because he was abducted, so to speak, even if he can establish it violated international law,” Corn said, adding that in his view, the administration’s overnight military operation lacked any “plausible legal basis.”
So, despite Corn’s view that the US attack was illegal, he couldn’t bring himself to present Maduro’s abduction as literal rather than figurative.
That article, as well another in the Post (1/3/26) and one in the Wall Street Journal (1/5/26), quoted Democratic Senator Mark R. Warner:
If the United States asserts the right to use military force to invade and capture foreign leaders it accuses of criminal conduct, what prevents China from claiming the same authority over Taiwan’s leadership? What stops Vladimir Putin from asserting a similar justification to abduct Ukraine’s president?
Even as Warner is skeptical about the US’s actions in Venezuela, he still uses the language of “capture” for Maduro, while using “abduct” for a hypothetical scenario in which the official enemy Putin carries out a parallel crime. None of the articles that included Warner’s quote commented on this linguistic inconsistency.
The word “abduct” was never used in the voice of a reporter from any of these papers to describe what the US had done.
‘It’s not a bad term’
Venezuelan officials, including Maduro himself (New York Times, 1/5/26), say that he was “kidnapped” by the US. They’re not the only ones. On Democracy Now! (1/3/26), Venezuelan journalist Andreína Chávez and US-based Venezuelan historian Miguel Tinker Salas both used that word to characterize what the US did to Maduro and Flores.
Canada’s national broadcaster, the CBC (1/5/26), regarded the idea that Maduro was “kidnapped” as at least meriting serious discussion. Co-anchor Andrew Chang asked:
Did the US military just kidnap Nicholas Maduro?… “Kidnap” is a loaded word because it implies illegality. Maybe a more neutral way of describing Maduro’s capture is as an “abduction,” but the US government calls it an “arrest.”…
This isn’t some nerdy question about semantics. It’s a question about law, and whether the US has the legal right to extract world leaders from their homes, and maybe even whether other countries might have that right, too.
Notably, when Trump was told that Venezuela’s acting President Delcy Rodríguez said it was a “kidnapping,” he didn’t push back, saying, “It’s not a bad term.”
However, the only times “kidnap” appeared in the Times, Journal or Post in relation to Maduro and Flores—in 10 pieces, or 4% of the coverage—came when that term was attributed to representatives of the Venezuelan state. Suggesting to readers that a government that has been demonized in US media for decades is the only source that regards Maduro and Flores as having been “kidnapped” is tantamount to suggesting that no credible sources take that position.
The three papers combined to run zero articles treating as an objective fact the view that America “abducted” or “kidnapped” a sitting head of state in defiance of international law, while they regularly used “captured” and “arrested” outside of quotation marks, as if those word choices are merely flat descriptions of reality.
ICE also ‘arrests’
These linguistic choices matter. “Capture” and “arrest” paint Trump, Delta Force and the CIA as righteous heroes protecting their country—as well as Venezuela and the rest of the world—from the villainous Maduros. “Abduct” and “kidnap” morally invert the good guy and bad guy roles, and would portray US actors as the wrongdoers.
This particular form of word play is part of a pattern for corporate media under this Trump administration. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) round-ups of migrants in the United States have featured what can most accurately be described as abductions or kidnappings of people—off the streets, at courts, in workplaces and elsewhere—by armed, masked and unaccountable agents, into unmarked vehicles. It’s little surprise, then, that immigration lawyers, members of Congress, and law professors (LA Times, 10/21/25), among others, routinely use the word “abduct” to describe these events.
And describing ICE’s practices as “kidnappings” isn’t some fringe view. Rep. Jesus “Chuy” Garcia (D-Ill.) uses the word (Independent, 12/5/25), as does Rolling Stone editor Tim Dickinson (7/2/25), and the academic and author Natasha Lennard of the New School for Social Research in New York (Intercept, 7/1/25). ICE’s victims (Mother Jones, 7/18/27; NPR, 7/27/25) and their families (Guardian, 4/15/25, 6/10/25, 6/26/25) frequently describe their ordeal in such terms.
Yet corporate media eschew such language for the same sanitized “arrest” or “capture” language they employed for Maduro and Flores. When I used Factiva to pair “ICE” with the words “abduct” or “kidnap,” just two articles turned up that included the perspective that ICE “abducts” people (New York Times, 7/13/25; Washington Post, 12/3/25), both attributed to critical sources. Five (2%) included a version of the word “kidnap,” all in quotation marks.
Three of these quotes were from the much-maligned Venezuelan government (New York Times, 3/18/25, 11/25/25; Washington Post, 5/4/25), one came from a man whose father and daughter-in-law had been detained by ICE (Washington Post, 3/21/25), and another from a member of the Chicago Board of Education (New York Times, 10/22/25).
The language is freighted in the same way, whether it is migrants under attack from US jackboots, or those same forces unleashed against socialist politicians in Global South countries seeking to escape imperial domination.
60 years since the Palomares incident “The residents were constantly misinformed”.
On the Palomares nuclear accident, symbolic decontamination actions, and the lasting damage to people and the environment. A conversation with José Herrera Plaza.Interview: Norbert Suchanek
Sixty years ago, on January 17, 1966, one of the most serious nuclear accidents of the Cold War occurred over southern Spain. A US Air Force tanker collided with a B-52 bomber carrying four hydrogen bombs. Both aircraft exploded; the debris and the dangerous cargo fell from the sky over the small coastal village of Palomares in Andalusia. The parachutes on two of the four bombs failed to deploy. They shattered on impact, contaminating the air and soil around Palomares with plutonium and uranium. The fourth bomb fell into the Mediterranean Sea and was not recovered for 80 days. Where were you in January 1966 when the hydrogen bombs fell from the sky?
I was just starting school in Almería at the time. That’s about 90 kilometers from Palomares. Like most people in Andalusia, I had no idea about the hydrogen bombs hanging over our heads.
When and why did you begin your research on the Palomares accident and make it your main topic?
On January 13, 1986, I attended a meeting of the residents of Palomares. It was three days before the 20th anniversary of the accident, and their claims for compensation for health damages were about to expire. I wanted to make a documentary about this little-known, almost unbelievable story, but at the time, the source material relevant for a documentary was classified. I waited 21 years, gathering all available documents, until I was finally able to complete the documentary “Operation Broken Arrow: The Palomares Nuclear Accident.”
What does “Operation Broken Arrow” stand for?
“Broken arrow” is a code word used by the US military. It refers to an incident involving nuclear weapons, such as an accidental or unexplained nuclear explosion, or the loss or theft of nuclear weapons.
How did the local Spanish authorities react in January 1966? Were they aware of the plutonium danger?
The local authorities reacted according to the standard protocol for an aircraft accident and were without information for several days regarding the involvement of nuclear weapons and consequently also regarding the widespread contamination.
How and when did the Madrid government react?
Spanish authorities learned of the crash almost immediately, thanks to warnings transmitted by a Spanish Navy helicopter via emergency channels. Also on the same day, they learned from the US ambassador that the aircraft was carrying four hydrogen bombs. However, both governments remained silent until the media informed the public three days later.
How was it possible that the media reported on it so quickly during the Franco dictatorship?
Two days after the accident, the Spanish-American journalist André del Amo, working for United Press, was in Palomares and confirmed the involvement of nuclear weapons as well as the ground measurements taken with Geiger counters. His report appeared in major media outlets worldwide the following day. The dictatorship reacted in its usual manner: it confiscated newspapers from kiosks and at the airports in Madrid and Barcelona as soon as international flights landed.
What were the direct consequences of the hydrogen bombs bursting? Was there a risk of a nuclear explosion?
The two Mk-28-FI bombs had 68 times the explosive power of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Upon impact in Palomares, the bombs exploded because the conventional explosive charge detonated in the fuse. An area of 635 hectares was subsequently contaminated with fissile fuel: approximately ten kilograms of plutonium-239 and -241, as well as slightly more than ten kilograms of uranium-235 and depleted uranium-238. While the risk of an accidental nuclear detonation was very low, it did exist. These hydrogen bombs were among the most technologically advanced in the US arsenal at the time. Their safety systems were quite good—with the exception of the conventional explosive, which was sensitive to shocks. Due to this accident and a similar one two years later in Greenland, the US military replaced this explosive with a shock- and fire-resistant alternative.
Was the population warned about the plutonium contamination and the consumption of potentially contaminated food such as tomatoes?
The inhabitants of Palomares were continually and insidiously misinformed for fifty years, both under the Franco dictatorship and in democratic Spain. They learned about their precarious situation largely through banned shortwave radio stations such as the communist Radio España Independiente , as well as through the BBC and Radio Paris with their nightly Spanish-language programs. A prominent member of the Spanish nobility, the Duchess of Medina Sidonia, also contributed to informing the local population about their situation and their rights, for which she was imprisoned by the fascist dictatorship.
Are there any data or estimates on the number of people who became ill or died as a result of the radioactive contamination?
No, because a comprehensive epidemiological study was never permitted. Independent attempts failed miserably. At the same time, the governments in Madrid and Washington maintain the official narrative that there has never been a single case of cancer caused by plutonium. In reality, however, Palomares is an environmental disaster zone with significant health risks for its inhabitants. Yet Palomares is not an exception compared to similar incidents elsewhere in the world: an invisible minority, invisible consequences.
Did the nuclear incident have any impact on tourism in southern Spain, which was then becoming an important economic factor?
In 1966, tourists visited other parts of Spain, but not this region. The province of Almería was very poor at the time and virtually isolated due to its poor transport infrastructure. However, there were fears that the accident could negatively impact tourism in the rest of the country, as the international press—especially the British and Italian press in Europe—reported on it. In Australia, a newspaper owned by the young Rupert Murdoch claimed there had been a nuclear explosion, that thousands of people were fleeing, and that the entire Spanish Mediterranean coast was contaminated. This led to the Spanish Minister of Information and the American ambassador swimming in the sea at Palomares beach in front of the media.
The US military conducted a large-scale search and cleanup operation after the crash in Palomares. How did the local population react?
The main priority of the extensive military operation was the search for the missing bomb on land and underwater. The search on land lasted over 45 days, the search at sea 80 days. Second priority was the recovery of the flight recorder and the classified B-52 components, primarily the radio equipment used for the combat log. Thirdly, over 125 tons of wreckage from the bomber and the tanker aircraft were to be recovered and sunk off the coast in the Mediterranean Sea. Finally, a symbolic decontamination operation was carried out for the international community. After the disaster, some people likely suffered from a kind of post-traumatic stress. Subsequently, a collective paranoia gripped the city, exacerbated by the contradictions between the statements of the authorities of both countries. The population was suddenly catapulted into the nuclear age and had to grapple with a new concept: radioactivity.
Was the military able to remove all the plutonium from the region?
After lengthy and asymmetrical negotiations between the hegemonic power, the USA, and the Franco dictatorship, they agreed to remove the plutonium, which had been scattered to the winds, and return it to the USA. However, they transported only 650 cubic meters of contaminated soil and 350 cubic meters of contaminated crop residue to the USA. The agreement was not honored because the excavated soil, stored in metal drums, was not the most heavily contaminated. It is estimated that less than one percent of the plutonium, just under 100 grams, returned to the USA in the 4,810 metal drums, each holding 208 liters. The remaining contaminated fields were plowed to inject the plutonium 30 centimeters into the soil. Forty years later, two secretly constructed pits containing approximately 4,000 cubic meters of radioactive waste were discovered in the region.
What happened to the contaminated material from Palomares in the USA?
Two metal drums were sent to the Los Alamos National Laboratory for plant experiments. 4,808 metal drums were transported to Aiken, South Carolina, to the Savannah River Nuclear Complex of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission and buried at a depth of six meters. This was accompanied by a comprehensive, worldwide propaganda campaign. The fact that 99 percent of the plutonium and uranium remained in the soil of Palomares was kept secret from the public, and especially from the residents and farmers who cultivated these radioactively contaminated areas. The U.S. Air Force and the Spanish government assured them that the land was completely decontaminated and that there was no danger. Meanwhile, the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission and the Junta de Energía Nuclear in Spain used the situation to conduct a secret experiment program on the local population. The aim was to investigate the uptake and storage of plutonium and uranium in the human body by a representative number of individuals from a population potentially exposed to inhaling plutonium oxide aerosol. This was the secret program codenamed “Indalo Project,” which was carried out without the informed consent of the local population.
What is the current situation in Palomares? Are there still contaminated areas and radioactive hazards in the region?
Despite assurances from Spain and the US that there was no longer any danger to farmers and their families, the plowing of the soil with plutonium in 1966 led to the stirring up and release of numerous aerosols containing radioactive elements. For forty years, the residents of Palomares were exposed to radioactive nuclides. It wasn’t until 2006 that the first radiation protection measures were implemented for the population, restricting access to and agricultural use of a 40-hectare area through fencing and marking. Now, sixty years later, we are still waiting for the central government in Madrid to carry out the decontamination. It has never prioritized the issue, even though it is documented that more than 210 residents exhibited symptoms of internal lung contamination. The actual number of those affected, however, remains unknown. After all, the political elites of the central government live over 520 kilometers away in Madrid.
Why did the B-52 bomber fly over southern Spain with nuclear weapons back then?
This occurred as part of Operation Chrome Dome, which began on January 18, 1961. From then on, four to six strategic bombers flew round-trip missions over Spain every day, year after year. During the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, 42 bombers were in the air daily. They came from the East Coast of the United States, crossed Spanish airspace, approached southern Italy, and returned to their bases over Spain. Each B-52 carried four thermonuclear bombs. In an attack scenario, they could reach and attack their targets within one to two hours, depending on whether the target was in the USSR or another Warsaw Pact state. For five years, more than 17,000 bombers flew over Spain and were refueled 26,000 times. No other country in Europe permitted such dangerous maneuvers in its airspace. Almost 35,000 hydrogen bombs flew over our heads. The collisions over Palomares and two years later over Thule in Greenland occurred because the law of probability came into play.
How will you commemorate the 60th anniversary of this never-ending Palomares disaster?
I am planning a photo exhibition and a panel discussion at the Villaespesa Library in Almería entitled “Palomares – 60 Years of Government Failure.” I also expect to present my new book at the end of January. It is titled “The Year of the Bombs: Stories from Palomares.” The book brings together the testimonies of 27 Spaniards and Americans who were involuntarily involved in the Palomares disaster. It is written in the style of a documentary narrative, similar to Svetlan Alexievich’s “Voices from Chernobyl,” a work to which it thus pays homage. It is about counteracting oblivion. The story of Palomares is not yet over. It continues to be written.
Ukraine and Russia agree temporary ceasefire to allow repairs to Zaporizhzhia nuclear power line.
The IAEA director warned that attacks on Ukraine’s power infrastructure have “direct implications on the nuclear safety of its nuclear facilities”.
Mirror UK, Emma O’Neill Content Editor, 16 Jan 2026
Ukraine and Russia have agreed a temporary ceasefire to allow urgent repair work on a damaged power line at Europe’s largest nuclear plant, the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP), IAEA officials confirmed today……….
The 330 kV backup line was disconnected on 2 January during military activity, leaving the plant reliant on a single 750 kV main power line. Technicians from Ukraine’s electrical grid operator are expected to begin repairs under the short-term truce in the coming days.
An IAEA team has departed Vienna to travel to the frontline and monitor the work, ensuring that safety measures are strictly followed during the repairs.
The agency confirmed that winter protection measures are in place at the plant, including temperature controls to prevent freezing in groundwater wells that supply cooling systems for reactors and spent fuel pools. Emergency diesel generators are also fully operational should the plant lose off-site power again.
The situation highlights the ongoing risks to Ukraine’s nuclear facilities, with military activity recently damaging a substation at the Chernobyl plant and forcing temporary power reductions at other sites.
Grossi warned that attacks on Ukraine’s power infrastructure have “direct implications on the nuclear safety of its nuclear facilities” and announced plans for another IAEA mission to assess 10 critical substations supplying electricity for reactor cooling systems and safety equipment.
Over the past week, IAEA teams reported air raid alarms and military activity near all five nuclear sites in Ukraine, including explosions and flying objects close to Zaporizhzhia, Khmelnitsky, South Ukraine, and Chernobyl plants.
The temporary ceasefire now allows repairs to the ZNPP backup line to go ahead, providing a vital safeguard for Europe’s largest nuclear facility and reducing the risk of a serious nuclear incident. https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/ukraine-russia-agree-temporary-ceasefire-36566368
1 This Month
of the week – Shut Down Drone Warfare!
Tell the Ukrainian Government to Drop Prosecution of Peace Activist Yurii Sheliazhenko
Petition to revoke the licensing of the Near Surface Nuclear Disposal Facility (NSDF) at Chalk River. https://www.ourcommons.ca/petitions/en/Petition/Details?Petition=e-7247
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com
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