Antinuclear

Albanese government pledges extra $4.6billion for AUKUS shipyard – but critics warn it will make Australia a nuclear target

‘Drone technology – particularly undersea drones – is advancing at such a rapid rate that the submarines will be out of date next year.“

By ALASDAIR BELLING and AUSTRALIAN ASSOCIATED PRESS, 24 July 2026 https://www.dailymail.com/news/article-16001457/aukus-submarines-funding-osborne-adelaide-labor-china-beeson.html

The Albanese government has promised an extra $4.6 billion for its AUKUS deal, but experts have raised concerns the funding is a waste of resources and could make Australia a nuclear target.

The package, announced on Friday, will go towards nuclear submarine construction at Osborne, 21km northwest of Adelaide‘s CBD.

The construction yard will be used to build the nuclear-powered vessels as part of the $368billion AUKUS security agreement with the US and UK.

The additional funding will bring total spending on the Osborne site to $8.5billion, supporting construction and development activities.

But Mark Beeson, an AUKUS critic and adjunct professor at the University of Technology Sydney‘s Australia-China Relations Institute, criticised the additional funding.

‘Defence has got an appalling record of acquisitions,’ he told the Daily Mail.

‘They’re always late, they’re always over budget and they never perform as they’re supposed to, and this is going to be no different, but on a larger scale.

‘Drone technology – particularly undersea drones – is advancing at such a rapid rate that the submarines will be out of date next year.’

Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese attend the Labor National Conference after announcing an extra $4.6billion in AUKUS-related spending

The funds will help construct a shipyard outside Adelaide to build nuclear-powered vessels

‘They’ll be easier to find and destroy, and the drones that destroy them will cost a fraction of the price of these submarines.’

Professor Beeson added that, more broadly, the pact may be intended to keep Australia safe but has the opposite effect when it comes to relations with China.

‘Something that’s meant to keep us safe is actually making us a nuclear target and making us less safe than ever,’ he said.

‘The prospect of nuclear-armed submarines being based in Perth and now Adelaide is a concern [for China].

‘That’s what makes them nuclear targets, as well as other American facilities in Australia, such as Pine Gap and North West Cape. They’d get nuked as well.

‘I think AUKUS is the most ill-conceived, misguided, strategically illiterate initiative you could possibly think of.’

According to current estimates, the second-hand submarines due under the AUKUS deal will arrive in Australia during the 2030s. The promised new vessels are not expected to be ready until the early 2040s.

SA Premier Peter Malinauskas was positive about the funding on Friday, telling reporters in Adelaide the shipyard – where there are currently about 1,100 workers employed – was a huge opportunity.

‘It is difficult to comprehend the scale of the billions of dollars of investment at Osborne to enable us to build the most complex machines on the planet,’ he said.

‘We are pleased to work in close partnership with the Albanese Government to deliver the crucial infrastructure needed and look forward to seeing young South Australians learning high value nuclear skills at Osborne within the next two years.’

But rank and file members of Labor have said they want to drop AUKUS from the party platform, with the funding announcement coinciding with the ALP’s national conference this week.

Marcus Strom from Labor Against War said the submarine deal needed to be axed to free up funds for reform measures.

‘If the Labor Party is serious about defeating the hot-air challenge from One Nation over lack of investment in infrastructure, it should be putting that sort of money into meaningful jobs, not jobs in the war industry,’ he told AAP on Friday.

This is a chimera of opportunity for jobs. The much better jobs, longer-term jobs [are] in renewables, advanced manufacturing, and the health industry.’

Under the AUKUS pact, Australia will buy used nuclear submarines from the US, before locally built vessels are brought online.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese discussed AUKUS with newly elected UK counterpart Andy Burnham during a call on Thursday to congratulate him on his appointment and invite him to visit Australia.

AUKUS is expected to be debated on the floor of Labor’s national conference on the final day, Saturday.

While delegates agreed on AUKUS at the party’s previous conference in 2023, members are optimistic about a change in stance.

Defence Minister Richard Marles said there was ‘definitely an opportunity’ for AUKUS to be publicly debated at the national conference, but pointed to the positive vote three years ago.

‘Seventy-five per cent of the floor supported AUKUS, so this was not close, and that’s the position of the party right now,’ he told ABC Radio.

‘I understand that this is a huge public expenditure, and so people are entitled to raise questions and have debates, and I stand ready to do those debates.

‘But at the same time, we are putting this in place.’

Dozens of anti-AUKUS protesters were out the front of the Adelaide Convention Centre in hazmat suits and blaring sirens, urging Labor to drop support for the pact.

Gambling reform measures will also be brought to the conference floor, with rank and file members urging the government to go further on the issue.

Amendments have called for a national regulator to better protect vulnerable people from gambling harms.

July 25, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | weapons and war | Leave a comment

UN refutes Jillian Segal’s Gaza death toll claim before Royal Commission

by Aleta Moriarty | Jul 17, 2026 https://michaelwest.com.au/un-refutes-jillian-segals-gaza-death-toll-claim-before-royal-commission/

Responding to Special Envoy Jillian Segal’s claim of a “grossly inflated” death toll in Gaza, UN spokesperson for Secretary-General António Guterres backed the Gaza Ministry of Health. Aleta Moriarty reports.

The integrity of Australia’s Royal Commission into Antisemitism and Social Cohesion depends on an accurate factual record. Public confidence in its findings relies on evidence being tested and claims being verified.

Too much is at stake. Hate is on the rise, and the safety of the Jewish community is rightly being examined in the wake of the Bondi Terror Attack. With distrust and polarisation at near-record levels, the process deserves to be respected.

Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism, Jillian Segal, told the Royal Commission on July 9 that Gaza death toll figures from the Gaza Health Ministry reported by SBS and the ABC were “grossly inflated,” and that this was “well known and even accepted by the United Nations”.

I’ve spent most of my career working for the UN and its agencies. I’m not an official UN employee right now, but I remain a firm believer in the institution and its integrity, which is why I sought clarification regarding the UN’s position on the Gaza death toll directly from the office of the Secretary-General.

The UN responds

Responding on behalf of Secretary-General António Guterres, UN spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric said:

“For us the Ministry of Health in Gaza is a source we, and many others, often cite. Independent validation of subsets of the data has found no significant discrepancies in their numbers.”

The Department of Home Affairs was asked if it would issue a clarification. A spokesperson provided the following response:

“The Special Envoy has been appointed as non-statutory Ministerial appointment. The Department does not comment on statements made by individuals.”

Misinformation broadcast nationally and left unchallenged doesn’t just cast aspersions on the UN. It cheapens the seriousness of the allegations Israel is facing, and it’s an insult to the scale of civilian life already lost. It also undermines the commission’s noble cause of promoting greater social cohesion.

Envoy Segal’s testimony before the Royal Commission was also rejected by the ABC Alumni whose Jonathan Holmes referred to as “propagating serious inaccuracies, and some outright untruths, in her sworn testimony to a Royal Commission”.

On the Gazan Health Ministry numbers referred to by Ms Segal as “grossly inaccurate”, Holmes wrote:

This is simply untrue. The UN has said repeatedly that the Gazan Ministry of Health estimate of 70,000 deaths in Gaza since October 2023 is probably too low because so many bodies are still buried under the rubble. And even the IDF admitted in January this year that those statistics were “broadly accurate”.

July 25, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | legal | Leave a comment

The Theocratic Trap – How Divine Claims Become Engines of Destruction

20 July 2026 Dr Andrew Klein, https://theaimn.net/the-theocratic-trap-how-divine-claims-become-engines-of-destruction/

I. The Definition: A Mask for Power

The word “theocracy” was coined by the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus in the first century CE to describe the polity of ancient Israel – a form of government in which God himself is recognized as the head of state, and divine law is the statute book. Taken literally, theocracy means “rule by God” and refers primarily to an internal “rule of the heart.”

But what begins as a claim to divine guidance inevitably becomes something else. As Josephus himself understood, theocracy is a form of government in which “the laws of the commonwealth are the commandments of God, and they are promulgated and expounded by the accredited representatives of the invisible Deity, real or supposed—generally a priesthood.”

This is the fatal flaw. The claim to speak for God is the ultimate abdication of personal accountability. When human beings claim divine authority, they place themselves beyond criticism, beyond question, beyond moral restraint. The hierarchy that forms around such claims – the priesthood, the clergy, the self-appointed guardians of divine will – becomes an engine of control that inevitably turns toward violence.

II. The Pre-Westphalian Pattern: Religious Wars as the Norm

For more than a century before the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, Europe was consumed by religious wars arising from the Protestant Reformations. The Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648), which the Peace of Westphalia finally concluded, was the last great religious war in Western Europe – a conflict that had “broken out as a result of confessional conflicts between Catholic and Protestant states” and “inflamed vast regions at the heart of Europe.”

The lesson of that era is clear: when religion becomes the justification for war, there is no limit to the violence. The theocratic impulse – the claim that God is on your side and that your enemies are God’s enemies – creates a permission structure for atrocity. As one scholar notes, the pre-Westphalian era was “riven by murderous ideological divisions” that produced wars fought not for faith alone, but for dominance.

The Peace of Westphalia introduced the radical idea that peace was more important than religious unity. It was a turning point—but not an endpoint. The theocratic impulse did not disappear. It merely found new forms.

III. The Jewish Bund: Human Rights, Democracy, and Universalism

In 1897, the same year that Theodor Herzl convened the First Zionist Congress, another Jewish movement was born in Tsarist Russia: the General Jewish Labour Bund.

The Bund was “a secular, socialist, defiantly Jewish, and uncompromisingly anti-Zionist revolutionary party.” Its members were “young Jewish Marxists who wanted to overthrow the tsar and establish democratic socialism, but also to liberate their own people.”

The Bund’s political project was built on:

Do’ikayt (“here-ness”) – the principle that Jews should build viable communities wherever they lived, rather than seeking an ethnostate in Palestine.
Internationalism – the belief that Jewish liberation was inseparable from the liberation of all peoples.
Universal human rights – the demand for “equal civil and political rights for the Jews in Russia” and for all oppressed peoples.
Anti-Zionism – the rejection of the idea that Jewish identity required a state of its own. The Bundists “fought for dignity and equality, not in an imagined homeland in Palestine but ‘here where we live.’”

As Bundist leader Henryk Erlich presciently warned in 1938: “Zionism, in point of fact, has always been a Siamese twin of antisemitism… The Zionists regard themselves as second-class citizens in Poland. Their aim is to be first-class citizens in Palestine and to make the Arabs second-class citizens.”

The Bund was “deeply committed to universal humanist values and to socialist politics.” It rejected “all ethnonationalism, including Zionism” and believed that “Jewish national problems arising within the countries where Jews reside can be solved on the basis of freedom and democracy.”

This was the alternative to theocracy: not divine rule, but human rights. Not exclusivity, but solidarity. Not conquest, but coexistence.

IV. Jabotinsky and Revisionist Zionism: The Theocratic Turn

Vladimir Jabotinsky, the founder of Revisionist Zionism, represented a fundamentally different vision. He advocated a “revision” of practical Zionism in favour of “political Zionism” – the idea that Zionism was essentially a political movement, not a cultural or spiritual one.

Jabotinsky’s ideology was built on:

Exclusivism – the belief that Jewish national identity must take precedence over all other considerations.
State sovereignty – the conviction that only a Jewish state could solve the “Jewish problem.”
Ethnonationalism – the elevation of Jewish national identity above universal human values.

By the late 1930s, Revisionist Zionism had become “a right-wing tendency” with branches that included the Irgun, which conducted campaigns of violence against British authorities in Palestine. After World War II, Revisionist ideology evolved into the political and religious movements that now dominate Israeli politics.

In 2018, the Israeli Knesset passed the “nation-state law,” which codified “Jewish supremacy” into law and “effectively mirror[ed] the Nazi-era legislation of ethnoreligious stratification of German citizenry.” As one analysis notes, the law stipulates that “actualisation of the right of national self-determination in the state of Israel is unique to the Jewish people” – meaning that the 1.7 million Palestinian citizens of Israel are “without sovereignty or agency, forever living at the mercy of Israeli Jews.”

The theocratic impulse had found its modern expression: not a priesthood ruling in God’s name, but an ethnostate ruling in the name of a chosen people.

V. The Modern Manifestation: Gaza and the Theology of Extermination

The invocation of divine mandate has been central to Israel’s conduct in Gaza. In a speech on March 2, 2026, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared: “In this week’s Torah portion, we read ‘Remember what Amalek did to you.’ We remember and we act.”

This reference to Amalek – the Biblical nation that God commanded King Saul to “destroy all they have, and do not let them live. Kill both man and woman, child and baby” – has become “an oft-used phrase at the highest levels of Israel’s government, a dog whistle well understood to call for the extermination of the Palestinians.”

UN institutions, international and Israeli human rights NGOs, and scholars of genocide studies have “classified the wide use of the Amalek rhetoric across Israeli politics and the military as a clear incitement to genocide.” Netanyahu’s invocation of Amalek was “explicitly cited as direct incitement to genocide.”

In June 2026, a UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry concluded that “Israeli authorities and security forces have deliberately targeted Palestinian children, resulting in genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes in the Gaza Strip.” The commission found that the “intense scale and systematic nature of the Israeli military operations have continued, causing unprecedented death, injury and trauma to Palestinian children.”

The theocratic claim – the assertion of divine mandate – has become the justification for atrocity. As one report notes, “Wipe out the memory of Amalek” has become a rallying cry for those who seek the extermination of the Palestinian people.

VI. The Two Threads: Universalism vs. Exclusivism

The divergence between the Bund and Revisionist Zionism represents two fundamentally different visions of Jewish identity:

The Bund (Universalism) Revisionist Zionism (Exclusivism)
Human rights for all Rights for Jews only
Democracy and socialism Ethnostate and supremacy
Coexistence where you live Conquest of Palestine
International solidarity National chauvinism
Anti-Zionist Zionist

As Molly Crabapple’s recent history of the Bund documents, “Bundists themselves foresaw the inevitable inversion of victim and perpetrator demanded by Zionist ideology.” The Bund’s philosophy of do’ikayt – “here-ness” – offered a vision of Jewish life that did not require the dispossession of another people.

Today, those who place “human values, human rights and universalities above themselves” – the heirs of the Bund’s internationalist tradition – face threats not only from the Israeli far-right but also from figures like Donald Trump, who has embraced the same ethnonationalist rhetoric that fuels theocracy.

VII. The Pattern: How Theocracy Becomes Killing

The pattern is consistent across history:

A claim to divine authority – human beings assert that they speak for God.
The creation of hierarchy – a priesthood or ruling class that interprets divine will.
The denial of accountability – those who claim divine authority place themselves beyond criticism.
The dehumanization of the “other” – those who are not part of the chosen community are cast as enemies of God.
The justification of violence – killing in the name of God becomes not only permissible, but sacred.

This pattern is visible in the pre-Westphalian religious wars of Europe, in the Nazi regime, and in the modern State of Israel. As one commentator notes, “the genocidal ideology the fans espouse” is rooted in “extremist religious nationalism, and the concentration of executive power.”

The claim to divine authority is always a mask for human power. The theocracy is always a hierarchy. And the hierarchy always protects itself – even at the cost of genocide.

VIII. Conclusion: The Choice Before Us

The theocratic impulse – the claim to speak for God – is the oldest and most persistent engine of human violence. It allows the powerful to place themselves beyond accountability. It allows the hierarchy to claim divine sanction for its crimes. It allows the killers to believe they are doing God’s work.
But there is another way.
The Bund offered it: a vision of Jewish identity rooted in universal human rights, democratic socialism, and international solidarity. A vision that rejected ethnonationalism and embraced do’ikayt – the commitment to build a just society wherever one lives.
That vision was nearly destroyed by the Holocaust and by Stalinism. But it survives – in the memory of those who fought for it, and in the example of those who continue to resist the theocratic impulse.

The choice is clear. We can continue to worship the theocracy – to bow before those who claim divine authority and commit atrocity in God’s name. Or we can choose the Bund’s path: human rights, democracy, and the recognition that no one speaks for God.

Theocracies are not built by the devout. They are built by the powerful, who use God’s name to mask their own ambitions. And they always, always lead to killing.

References

Theocracy. Wikipedia.
Theocracy. Catholic Encyclopedia.
Peace of Westphalia. World History Encyclopedia.
The Enduring Lessons of the Jewish Bund. The Nation, 10 April 2026.
‘For leftist Jews, the Bund is a model’. The Guardian, 8 April 2026.
Revisionist Zionism. Wikipedia.
Israel Is Using Its Genocidal Gaza Playbook on Iran. The Nation, 6 March 2026.
Israel’s ‘nation-state law’ parallels the Nazi Nuremberg Laws. Al Jazeera, 26 July 2018.
UN commission: Israel continues to commit genocide by targeting children. UN News, 23 June 2026.
Blot Out the Memory of Amalek from Under Heaven. De Gruyter Brill, 2025.
General Jewish Labour Bund. Wikipedia.
Bundism. Wikipedia.

July 25, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Crunch time for the nuclear lobby’s biggest lie (Small Modular Nuclear Reactors)?

22 July 2026, https://theaimn.net/crunch-time-for-the-nuclear-lobbys-biggest-lie-small-modular-nuclear-reactors/

There could be a big drama now, about Small Modular Nuclear Reactors sort of not really going to happen in the UK. But I don’t think so. The nuclear lobby is adept at twisting a negative outlook into a sorta positive one. And I’m sorry to say, but I think that Andy Burnham might just co-operate in this process.

At the moment, the UK, and the world, are waiting for the UK’s new progressive poster boy, Andy Burnham, to declare his policies on all sorts of things. His general theme is “left of centre”, socially progressive, with the emphasis on economic reform – “business-friendly socialism”. Most likely, Burnham’s approach to the big issues of climate and nuclear will be a cautious “business-as usual.” Those who are deeply concerned about climate and nuclear issues can hardly blame him. Unfortunately, the reality is that Burnham could never have got where he is now, if he bucked the prevailing system, with Labour now a kind of weaker Tory party.

What has this got to do with Small Modular Nuclear Reactors?

Well, as I have written before, the global nuclear lobby now depends on the UK to kick off the new nuclear renaissance, with a fleet of small nuclear reactors in the UK, as promised by the previous Prime Minister with his Great British Energy – Nuclear. The stated purpose is to provide the UK soon, with cheap, plentiful, clean, climate-friendly, proven technology, safe, community-welcomed, waste-free, peaceful electricity. In that statement there are already 10 lies. Of all those lies, I would say that “soon” is the biggest whopper of them all.

SOON

The most “exciting” SMR plan, that of Poland-based SGE (Synthos Green Energy), promises 14 SMRs in operation by 2034. That would provide about the same amount of electricity as one large nuclear reactor. However, SMRs that each provide 300 MW would provide very much more – but then they would have to be larger, and no longer qualify as “small”. Either way, that would be only a beginning – many, many more SMRs would be needed to meet the UK’s electricity needs. And, let’s not forget – the coming wave of data farms for artificial intelligence is going to probably double that need.

So, even in the most optimistic scenario, SMRs are not going to cut the mustard for showing the world that soon Small Modular Nuclear Reactors will power a nation. Of course the promise of “soon” also relates to the claim that SMRs are needed for action on climate change. Clearly, they are going to be irrelevant, too late for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, whereas we have renewable energy right now. And of course, but rarely mentioned – energy efficiency, energy conservation – the really effective way to reduce greenhouse emissions.

CHEAP

The next biggest whopper about Small Modular Nuclear Reactors is the statement that they would be cheap. Here we get into the minefield of deliberate obfuscation about the financial facts. The cost of building SMRs is likely to be astronomic, and the only practicable way is to build them en masse. That would mean that the company building them would need to have big orders, not just for one or two reactors. Big orders bring with them a heap of problems. Like an IKEA cupboard, these “modular” items are all the same – if you buy a whole lot of them they’d better all work out perfectly – no chance really to just try out one. Buyers are reluctant, and so are investors.

Of course, the argument will be that SMRs will provide cheap electricity. Well that absolutely would necessitate economies of scale. That was the reason that the idea of small reactors was abandoned in the past. Simply, a large reactor producing a huge amount of electricity has got to produce it more efficiently and cheaply. The proponents of SMRs never talk about the accompanying costs – insurance, the security staff required, the transport and disposal of toxic long-lasting wastes. The truth is, those proponents absolutely know that their product is in fact very expensive. And that is why the subservient corporate media consistently baffle us with convoluted arguments that minimise the cost to tax-payers. They know damn well that the only way that SMRs could possibly be developed is by government funding. Keir Starmer backed a Rolls Royce plan that would be blatantly funded by the tax-payer. The SGE plan purports to be privately funded, but it’s tangled up with various government-funded schemes.

These were 2 lies – but there are 8 more to go.

Plentiful? – well, apart from Russia and China’s 2 duds – SMR’s don’t actually exist – quite the reverse of plentiful.

Clean? They are still part of a dirty production system, starting from uranium mining, with its workers exposed to radiation, and its piles of radioactive tailings.

Climate-friendly? There is a whole chain of steps from mining through to waste disposal that involve fossil fuel energy.

Proven technology? Well, they don’t even exist.

Safe? SMRs can’t melt down in the same way as big reactors, but still contain radioactive material, a target for theft, terrorists or military attacks Can still have accidents releasing radiation.

Community-welcomed? This really is a big one, with a lack of proper consultation on plans – There’s strong resistance from some local groups, such as Radiation Free Lakeland.

Peaceful? The hidden military pressures behind the new push for small nuclear reactors.

Wastes? Stanford-led research finds small modular reactors will exacerbate challenges of highly radioactive nuclear waste.

Now that Starmer, with his big promises, has gone, it’s probably no longer up to the UK’s Prime Minister to lead the global charge on small nuclear reactors. Andy Burnham has to negotiate the whole troubled energy scene, try to be progressive, placate the fossil fuel lobbies, and the nuclear lobby. He has been very quiet on nuclear policy, but he is committed to the existing defence and AUKUS nuclear agreements. So for “peaceful” nuclear, he’s most likely to go for a compromise – SMRs, supporting just a few, rather than the much-touted “fleets” of them.

So, no doubt the USA will take up the torch – One Year After Executive Orders, U.S. Nuclear Energy Renaissance is in Full Swing.

The media is awash with the wonder of new nuclear reactors, in concert with the AI data farm boom. The few voices who call for restraint, and point out the problems, are drowned out by the cacophony of handouts from the companies promising SMRs, handouts faithfully regurgitated by the corporate media, and by those universities which have bought into the propaganda.

There are the many good, decent people, whose living depends on their work within the uranium-nuclear-defence industries. And communities that are caught up in the nuclear industry, and its associated government bonuses. And many professionals, especially journalists, who, if they paused to look at the whole picture, might see the folly and the danger and the lies, of this so much touted technology. And of course, politicians who would be out of a job if they opposed the sacred cows of new energy and nuclear defence. So the whole SMR juggernaut moves on, bit by bit, and has itself become one big lie.

July 24, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Christina reviews | Leave a comment

Senior naval officer facing court martial over naval contracts – breaking news from WA

Defence accused of trying to bury details of a high-level investigation into handling of lucrative naval defence contracts by a former senior naval figure

Michelle Fahy, Jul 21, 2026, https://undueinfluence.substack.com/p/senior-naval-officer-facing-court?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=297295&post_id=207838287&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

A secretive court martial process is under way in Western Australia involving a recently retired officer, The Nightly’s Andrew Greene has reported.

The Nightly said it understands the accused had left the Australian Defence Force in the past few years and will soon be subjected to a court martial on eight separate but unspecified charges.

Former senior Defence official Michael Shoebridge said he believes the entire process should be handled by a regular civil court, rather than kept inside the military justice system.

“The alleged offences are probably also offences under civilian law, so the better approach is a standard — open and public — prosecution in a civil court,” Shoebridge told The Nightly. “Instead, this just looks like the Defence leadership and ministers trying to keep this away from the public.”

Another defence industry figure familiar with details of the case backed the assessment, telling The Nightly they believed the military establishment was trying to “bury” the case from public view.

Figures familiar with the allegations have told The Nightly that due to the seniority of the accused ADF member it was initially difficult to find senior officers to take part in the court martial who were not conflicted.

Those figures told The Nightly the complex case will also examine interactions between the government weapons-buying group – Capability and Sustainment Group (CASG) – and several large companies who completed sustainment projects at Henderson shipyard.

The Nightly said it understands the activity under investigation occurred during the previous Coalition government and before the Albanese government took power in 2022.

It is unclear why the matter is being handled by a military disciplinary process rather than a civilian court.

Read The Nightly’s full story here.

July 24, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | secrets and lies | Leave a comment

The Forgotten Jewish Movement That Rejected Zionism.

By Nadege Bizimungu, The Tea with Myriam François, Jul 21, 2026

Jewish mass movement that rejected the idea of a Jewish state ever existing was, for much of its history, more popular than Zionism. Here’s why almost nobody has heard of it.

Poland in the 1930s had the largest Jewish population in Europe, and the single most popular party among Jewish voters there wasn’t Zionist. It didn’t want a Jewish state at all.

It ran schools, published newspapers and even organized armed militias to defend Jewish communities. According to an analysis of Bund election results published in the Yiddish studies journal In geveb, the party won roughly 38 percent of the vote for Jewish parties in the last Polish municipal elections before the war, more than any single Zionist party, though the combined Zionist lists narrowly edged it out overall. Its members were fiercely opposed to Zionism and thought it was a fantasy, and they said so bluntly and often.

That party was the Jewish Labour Bund. Today, few people know its name, but at its peak it was one of the most important Jewish political movements in Europe. Its existence challenges a common idea about Jewish history: that Zionism was the only response to antisemitism. For decades, millions of Jews supported a different vision. They believed the answer was not a new country, but fighting for equality where Jews already lived.

The Bund was founded in October 1897, when thirteen young Jewish Marxists met secretly in an attic in Vilna, then part of the Russian Empire. That’s the same year Theodor Herzl convened the first Zionist Congress in Basel. Zionism argued that Jewish safety required leaving Europe and building a state. The Bund argued the opposite: stay, and fight for equality where Jews already lived, in solidarity with non-Jewish workers and socialist movements. The Yiddish word for this was doikayt, “hereness,” and it rejected the idea that Jewish life needed a single homeland at all.

The party grew fast, and contemporaries noticed. The Menshevik theorist Georgi Plekhanov reportedly called Jewish workers “the vanguard of the labor army in Russia.” Historian Bertram Wolfe later described the Bund as the largest and best organized body of workingmen inside the Russian empire. By 1906 its membership had reportedly reached around 40,000, briefly making it the biggest socialist organization in the empire, and by interwar Poland it had built an entire subculture: youth movements, sports clubs, a network of secular Yiddish schools. Jack Jacobs’s research on the interwar Bund treats it as a genuine mass institution, not a fringe faction.

None of this was naive pacifism. Bund militias organized armed self-defense against pogroms and antisemitic gangs on the streets of interwar Warsaw, decades before “Jewish strength” became coded as an Israeli idea. When the Nazis invaded, Bundists fought in the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, the first urban revolt against Nazi occupation anywhere in Europe. One of its fighters, a Bundist teenager named Lusiek Blones, was thirteen years old.

The rivalry between Bundists and Zionists ran deep, and it was rooted in a real disagreement about what antisemitism demanded of Jews. Bundists argued that if European governments were insisting Jews were foreign and should leave, then Zionism, by proposing that Jews do exactly that, was conceding the antisemites’ premise rather than refuting it. Zionists saw it differently: as a response to the repeated failure of emancipation and assimilation to protect Jews anywhere in the diaspora. After the 1917 Balfour Declaration, in which Britain backed a Jewish “national home” in Palestine, Bundists increasingly viewed Zionism as bound up with imperial power rather than freed from it, a colonial project underwritten by the same empires that had failed to protect Jews in the first place.

The Bund wasn’t beaten in that argument, though. It was murdered. The Holocaust wiped out the working-class Jewish communities that had sustained the party for half a century. Historian David Slucki has documented how the postwar Bund never came close to rebuilding its prewar scale, plateauing at just a few thousand members worldwide by the late 1950s. Daniel Blatman’s research on the Bund’s final years in Poland, from 1939 to 1949, traces a parallel political defeat: Stalinist repression, including the 1942 murder of Bundist leaders Henryk Erlich and Victor Alter by Soviet secret police, finished what the Nazis had started.

Zionist institutions in Palestine, meanwhile, survived the war intact. In her new book, Here Where We Live Is Our Country, artist and journalist Molly Crabapple, whose account of the Bund this piece draws heavily on, argues that Zionist organizations controlled much of the rations, housing, and paperwork in the displaced-persons camps after the war, and used that leverage to funnel traumatized survivors toward Palestine. A movement with no population left to organize couldn’t compete with one that still had territory, infrastructure, and international backing behind it.

That imbalance is also why the Bund disappeared from memory rather than from relevance. It lost its people, not its argument, and a movement without survivors to carry its institutions forward simply stops being written about, no matter how large it once was.

The premise Zionism was built on, that Jewish safety requires a Jewish ethnostate, is now facing its sharpest public challenge in decades. Nearly three years into Israel’s war on Gaza, which the UN and earlier findings from Amnesty International and the International Association of Genocide Scholars, have described as genocide, support for Israel has fallen sharply, including among Jews themselves. Younger American Jews are significantly less likely than older generations to see support for Israel as central to Jewish identity, while nearly half of American Jews under 35 now say they would support a single binational state with equal rights for Israelis and Palestinians. In Britain, young Jews who identify as anti-Zionist or non-Zionist now roughly match those who identify as Zionist.Israeli historian Ilan Pappé, a longtime critic of his own government, has called this the “beginning of the end of the Zionist project,” pointing to internal political fracture, international isolation, and economic strain as evidence.

For Crabapple, this shift is also personal. She spent seven years writing Here Where We Live Is Our Country, much of it while Israel’s campaign in Gaza was underway. in an interview on Democracy Now!, she said there was something almost unbearable about reconstructing the destruction of Warsaw’s Jews while watching a country invoke the Holocaust to justify what was happening in Gaza. “It broke me,” she said, “in probably ways that I have difficulty expressing.”

What this history suggests, isn’t a clean answer to the hardest questions about what a just political future looks like after decades of occupation and violence. It’s something narrower, and maybe more useful: proof that at the exact moment Jewish nationalism was taking shape, a mass, organized, genuinely popular Jewish movement existed that rejected the idea that Jewish liberation had to come at another people’s dispossession. It didn’t lose that argument. It was destroyed by fascism, the Holocaust, and Stalinist repression, and its ideas went down with it, not because they were wrong, but because there was no one left alive to keep making the case.

July 23, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | history, religion and ethics | Leave a comment

Ceases to be a nuclear power’: The high-stakes deal the new UK PM inherits

SBS News, 21 July 2026 By Yasmine Alwakal

Andy Burnham has inherited a major AUKUS commitment with Australia. Whether Britain can deliver it is another question

IN BRIEF

On Monday, former Manchester mayor Andy Burnham succeeded Keir Starmer as the United Kingdom’s prime minister.
Experts say the change in leadership could impact the UK’s investment in defence but is unlikely to impact AUKUS.

Labour leader Andy Burnham has become the United Kingdom’s seventh prime minister in a decade — but experts say it remains unclear how the former mayor of Greater Manchester will approach the country’s most important strategic partnership with Australia.

Newly departed UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer suffered a high-profile split with his defence secretary, John Healey, over a perceived failure to properly fund the department.

Burnham now inherits Starmer’s £298bn ($573b) defence spending commitment over the next four years, £4.7b ($9b) of which is unfunded and will need to make up part of Burnham’s first budget.

Experts have said that, while Burnham is unlikely to renegotiate the AUKUS agreement, defence is likely to play a central position in the new UK leader’s job description, given the growing threat of Russia to NATO members.

Jennifer Parker, a non-resident fellow at the Lowy Institute, told SBS News that policymakers in Australia will be watching Burnham’s approach to foreign affairs closely.

“I think there are broader questions about the implications of Andy Burnham’s views on defence and the defence investment plan in the UK … [but] in many ways, AUKUS is critical for the UK,” Parker told SBS News.

The UK, alongside Australia and the United States, entered into trilateral AUKUS security agreement in 2021.

The deal is divided into two key pillars: Australia’s acquisition of conventionally-armed, nuclear-powered submarine capability and the development and delivery of advanced capabilities such as underwater drones.

In July 2025, Australia also entered into a bilateral agreement with the UK dubbed the Geelong Treaty. The 50-year agreement enables the cooperative design, building, operation, sustainment, and disposal of nuclear-powered submarines known as SSN.

Will Burnham deliver on the UK’s AUKUS commitments?

Since 1968, the UK has been a member of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and is recognised as one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council.

Parker said since the end of the Cold War the UK has operated ballistic missile submarines called SSBNs:

“Now, you need to have SSN’s — attack submarines — to be able to protect your ballistic missile submarines. AUKUS, for the UK makes designing, building and operating SSN’s cheaper. So, it makes it easier.”

That’s why she believes the UK, whether led by current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer or the incoming Burnham, will continue to uphold its AUKUS commitments.

“If the UK can’t achieve AUKUS … the long-term impact is quite significant in terms of the UK ceases to be a nuclear weapons power. Which really changes its global status.”

According to the Australian government, the UK will deliver its first SSN’s by the late 2030s. Defence Minister Richard Marles said the first class of Australian-built submarines is intended to enter service by the early 2040s…………………………………………………………………..

Parker from the Lowy Institute also believes the Australian government will watch to see if the UK takes “strides” to address what she described as capability constraints facing UK submarine industrial bases………….

“As much as I’m confident they’ll make it [AUKUS] work, whether they’ll make it work within the stated time frames is genuinely an open question.”

The UK’s defence committee has launched an inquiry into its military resilience and preparedness. It follows a July report by its defence ministry, which found that 47 out of 49 major defence projects in the UK were delayed or over budget.

In a statement, Dan Jarvis, the newly appointed defence secretary, said:

“Many projects had been announced with insufficient or no funding at all. The consequences were profound: limited availability of warships and aircraft, an army facing a recruitment crisis, morale weakened and renewal of our nuclear deterrent delayed.” https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/andy-burnham-aukus-submarine-deal-australia/j38e9qzzf

July 23, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics international | Leave a comment

‘Extreme risk’: AUKUS warnings as Garrett’s inquiry docks in Adelaide

16 July 26. https://www.indailysa.com.au/news/just-in/2026/07/16/extreme-risk-aukus-warnings-as-garretts-inquiry-docks-in-adelaide

“Extreme” economic risk and nuclear waste disposal concerns for the $368 billion AUKUS submarine project are being heard at an independent inquiry in Adelaide today.

The risk associated with the Federal Government’s $368 billion AUKUS nuclear submarine project are being criticised by former federal senator and self-described ‘transparency warrior’ Rex Patrick this morning at an independent inquiry held in Adelaide today.

And transparency warnings were raised over the government’s plans for nuclear waste from submarines built at Osborne in South Australia, Patrick saying he was fighting in the Federal Court for information to be made public.

Meanwhile, former South Australian Liberal MP Christopher Pyne, who was Minister for Defence from 2018 until his retirement in 2019, said he “thought twice about appearing” at the inquiry led by famed Australian musician and former federal Environment Minister Peter Garrett.

Pyne said he bit the bullet because he believed in the “battle of ideas”.

The independent inquiry into the defence agreement between Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States was established earlier this year to scrutinise the deal.

It is being led by former Labor MP and Midnight Oil front man Peter Garrett, with public hearings taking place across the country, including in Adelaide today and tomorrow.

Other commissioners included First Nations leader Karina Lester, former West Australian Premier Carmen Lawrence, former Chief of the Australian Defence Force Chris Barrie and co-CEO of the Australia Institute Leanne Minshull. A final report was expected on October 30.

“Adelaide is at the epicentre of the AUKUS project,” Garrett told reporters at a press conference before the inquiry started.

“Whether it’s questions on the safe, long-term storage of radioactive waste, whether it’s the impact on communities in Adelaide and around Osborne, whether it’s the question of opportunity cost for the Adelaide economy.

“It is a matter of some regret that the AUKUS decision – the biggest-ever decision by any Australian government to spend public money on submarines, some not even built – was made with minimal public debate.”

The inquiry has been supported by trade unions and non-profit organisations to address questions over whether risks – economic and political – were being managed appropriately, Patrick telling the inquiry the country was taking on a “hugely risky program”.

“From an absolute cost perspective, it is unaffordable and it is bankrupting,” he said.

“There’s also an opportunity cost. You know – $360 billion – if you think about what you can spend with that amount of money… we wouldn’t be worrying about fuel security, we wouldn’t be worrying about industrial resilience.”

He added that nuclear waste storage was “a problem that needs to be solved”, noting he was fighting in the Federal Court for the release of documents around where the government was planning to store waste from the nuclear submarines.

“I’m not asking for the release of documents that relate to how fast a submarine might go, how many weapons it might have… I’m asking for information that is incidental to this project but really important to it: Where are you going to put the waste associated with this?” Patrick said.

Pyne gave evidence ahead of Patrick, and emphasised the importance of the AUKUS project in terms of national defence against China, saying the uplift in defence capability would be imperative “if we find ourselves on our own in the worst case scenario”.

He described AUKUS as “unstoppable” and said it would deliver a permanent boost for defence spending, an upgrade to Australia’s bases and facilities, an investment in STEM and trade skills, and would be a permanent change to Australia’s national security.

The inquiry was set to continue until this evening, with other speakers including anti-nuclear campaigner David Noonan and SA Greens MLC Melanie Selwood.

The Greens today released new findings from a survey of 343 South Australians, showing 83.7 per cent of respondents were “mostly concerned” about AUKUS.

Seventy-one per cent said AUKUS would make Australia less secure, and 74.5 per cent said they did not see “clear benefits” from the defence pact.

AUKUS was set to be a boon for the South Australian economy and jobs creation, with the nuclear submarine shipbuilding yard set to be constructed at Osborne at a cost of at least $30 billion.

Both the state and federal governments said they hoped the project would create 10,000 jobs in design and construction as well as up to 1000 apprentices per year at an on-site training facility, with the first newly built submarines expected to be delivered to the Australian Navy in the 2040s.

Enough steel to make 17 Eiffel Towers as well as 710,000 cubic metres of structural concrete will be used in the construction of the 420-metre-long fabrication hall.

However it has already weathered several hiccups.

In June, Federal Defence Minister Richard Marles announced Australia would only buy three second-hand nuclear-powered submarines instead of the promised mix of new and used US vessels.

This plan was expected to happen before Australia eventually built its own submarines using US nuclear-propulsion technology and parts made in Britain.

The second-hand subs announcement comes after the US has struggled to make enough Virginia-class submarines for its own use, leading some American lawmakers to question how it could also build enough of the boats to meet Australia’s needs.

Australia faces a critical window to receive the submarines before its existing, 1980s-designed Collins-class vessels are retired from service.

July 22, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

AUKUS Safety plan?

Robyn Wood, 17 July 26

The Advertiser editor says that AUKUS must be embraced by all (Editorial Advertiser 17.7.26). This could possibly be easier if the state and federal government actually released emergency and safety plans should there be a nuclear accident or terrorist attack involving the AUKUS nuclear submarines. Instead we are told they will be developed at some stage down the track. Hardly reassuring.

July 22, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | safety | Leave a comment

‘Height of unfairness’: Former SA senator slams government over AUKUS nuclear waste move

Adrian Zorzut 15 July 26, https://www.news.com.au/technology/innovation/military/height-of-unfairness-former-sa-senator-slams-government-over-aukus-nuclear-waste-move/news-story/1cfe188f41d9b5530b81e065a4656ebc

The government has an AUKUS program, which they also have to justify to the Australian public but also that they have thought about and have a proper proposal to deal with the waste that will inevitably come from that program. And we know these sorts of topics are controversial. The government needs to gain a social licence and secrecy is not the way to do that,”

As plans to develop nuclear submarines under the AUKUS deal move ahead, the government is being coy about where they’re going to dump nuclear waste.

A former South Australian senator has slammed the federal government for refusing to release information about potential storage sites for nuclear waste that comes from AUKUS submarines.

Rex Patrick said the Australian public had a right to know where hazardous spent fuel from nuclear-powered submarines will be buried and shot down claims the information was a national security secret.

The former submariner turned politician is now considering taking the government to court after they refused three Freedom of Information (FoI) requests.

Mr Patrick wants Canberra to disclose the cost and potential locations for a storage facility as well as a cabinet report on this topic.

“Sensitive is not a ground for exemption. There is no military sensitivity in the storage of nuclear waste. Information about the submarines themselves will potentially attract a national security exemption, but the waste that comes from them has nothing to do with engaging in conflict or defending the country,” he told news.com.au.

“It’s incidental to the project but obviously a significant problem that needs to be addressed. It’s not like someone can build a facility in complete secrecy.”

Mr Patrick, who was an independent SA senator between 2017 and 2022, partially won a court order to cap maximum legal costs he’d have to pay if he lost an appeal against the government to $20,000. Without the cap, the former senator claims he’d face a legal bill of up to $150,000.

Handing down his finding on Monday, July 13, federal court judge O’Sullivan said the information Mr Rex’s was seeking was “a matter of significant public interest,” but stopped short of the senator’s request for a $5,000 cap on legal expenses, a copy of the judgement shows.

Mr Patrick wants to fundraise the cash but said there is no point unless he has a shot of winning his case in court and is consulting with a lawyer on what to do next.

“I’m not in the court to run litigation needlessly. I’m focused on the document and now I need to react,” he said.

‘There will be a cost’

Mr Patrick said he lodged a FoI request for a cabinet report on potential storage sites, which was knocked back by the government and the Administration Review Tribunal (ART) – a watchdog for administrative decisions made by government ministers.

The former parliamentarian plans to appeal and claims the sections of the report he is seeking are not exempt from Freedom of Information laws and are of tantamount interest to the public.

He is also separately challenging a successful appeal by the government to stop the release of other related paperwork he was due.

He claims the government wants him to cover up to $150,000 in its legal fees if he loses.

Mr Patrick won an ART decision in May to access the paperwork which helped develop the cabinet report. The government immediately appealed the decision. The parties are expected to battle it out in court.

“That’s an awful situation for me and for you as a journalist. To win an FoI in a tribunal and have the government appeal it and say if you don’t win this, you will be charged $150,000. I think that is the height of unfairness from the government,” he said.

“The whole point of the FoI regime is to allow people to get access to information, to participate in democracy, to scrutinise the government and what this does is signal that if you win, there will be a cost.”

A spokesperson from the Department of Industry, Science and Resources told news.com.au, “As this matter is before the court it would not be appropriate to comment.”

This month, Jacqui Lambie, Pauline Hanson and David Pocock were just some of 18 independent and minor-party members to pen a letter urging Attorney-General Michelle Rowland to intervene in the public interest.

“It is clear to us that this is an attack on our freedom-of-information regime, with the intent of deterring Australians from pursuing access to information,” they said, according to The Guardian.

“Dragging an ordinary citizen, self-represented and under threat of costs, to argue questions of law raised by the government is most unfair.”

Mr Patrick said a third FoI request is before the Information Commissioner. Mr Patrick submitted a request for the latest cost estimates for a facility with the Australian Submarine Agency but was told they couldn’t find them – a response he said was an “extraordinary situation” for an organisation that is supposed to cost projects from cradle to grave, a submission to an independent inquiry into AUKUS shows.

Mr Patrick said he believes an underground storage facility could cost “billions” to build and up to $30m a year to maintain.

‘Nothing stopping the PM’

Mr Patrick, who calls himself a transparency warrior, said the documents were a “significant public policy interest”.

“The government governs for us. The government has an AUKUS program, which they also have to justify to the Australian public but also that they have thought about and have a proper proposal to deal with the waste that will inevitably come from that program. And we know these sorts of topics are controversial. The government needs to gain a social licence and secrecy is not the way to do that,” he said.

The former submariner suggested because a storage facility isn’t needed until a nuclear-powered submarine is nearing decommissioning, the government is refusing to make a decision or release information. The average lifespan of a nuclear sub is 33 years, he said.

Mr Patrick added at least one site is needed to bury spent fuel and the decommissioned reactor inside the submarine. He said reactor components are generally buried in a shallow facility while spent fuel needs cooling before it is buried deep underground.

“These are politically-sensitive and emotional issues that the government is seeking to kick down the road, possibly to a time period where they’re not even in power,” he said.

“The government just really doesn’t want to deal with this publicly because it’s a politically controversial topic.”

Mr Patrick is calling on Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to release the cabinet report, which the government is claiming to be exempt from FoI laws.

“Even if the document is a cabinet document, there is nothing stopping the prime minister from releasing it and the prime minister is at liberty to do that and he hasn’t.”

The Department of Industry, Science and Resources, the Prime Minister’s Office and the Australian Submarine Agency have been contacted for comment.

July 21, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | secrets and lies | Leave a comment

500 march towards Pine Gap this morning demanding closure of the facility.

Monday 20 July 2026, Mparntwe Alice Springs, Arrernte Country

Hundreds from across the country have joined a rally on the road to Pine Gap this morning demanding the closure of the controversial military facility. The action closes out the Close Pine Gap Sacred Land Back Convergence 2026 organised by Mparntwe for Falastin and Anti Militarism Action Network, the biggest convergence of its kind since 1987.

The Hayes family – Traditional Owners of Kuyunba, the sacred land that Pine Gap occupies – lead the rally, with a list of four demands:

Return of Kuyunba
The closure of Pine Gap
Compensation for the years Kuyunba has been occupied
Compensation to the families in Gaza for the lives lost there

These actions have been echoed by rallies across the country.

The action follows two days of learning and discussion about militarism and colonialism. Experts from around the country addressed the violent reality and risks of Pine Gap.

“If ever there was a message to end the world, it would come through Pine Gap. We would be the handmaidens of that,” said Senator David Shoebridge on the weekend, adding, “US bases have never made us safe, but right now they are especially making us a target.”

Felicity, Wyonna and Jacquita Hayes, Arrernte Apmereke-artweye Traditional Custodians, said earlier to supporters:

“We want people to support us to close down Pine Gap. We want them to know it’s a sacred site. We don’t want to be feeling guilty all the time when bad things are happening overseas to little ones. We’re not the ones controlling that facility, but we feel guilty that it’s coming from our land.”

July 20, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Opposition to nuclear | Leave a comment

Royal Commission or Lobby Show? | The West Report.

The Royal Commission into anti-Semitism has a problem: it is not credible.

The evidence is not being tested. Instead, it has descended into a storytelling farce about hurt feelings, while the data shows Muslim and Arab hate is worse than Jewish hate in Australia — in many cases, not all.

July 20, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics | Leave a comment

This week in nuclear-related non corporate news

Theme of the week. The World Cup football is nearly over – perhaps now we’ll get some real news. Lots of media reassures us that the wondrous FIFA religious ceremony will not be affected by wildfire smoke. But nuclear facilities will be.

Some bits of good news –

The UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, treated like failures, have changed billions of lives.

The UK (finally) ratified the high seas treaty. Children are overwhelmingly positive for the future, says survey

TOP STORIES.

Ministry of Ddefence (MoD) finally admits ‘extensive’ human radiation experiments on nuclear test veterans.
The Killing Machines -Governments and Technology Obsessing Over Efficient Death.
Israel And The United States Are Merging Their Militaries. Here’s Why.
The Men Who Own the War Now Run It.
Warming Europe complicates France’s bet on nuclear power . Europe’s Nuclear Plants Can’t Beat the Heat .
Nuclear Power is Now Trump Power…What Could Go Wrong?

From the archives – A 90 million gallon nuclear tragedy

Climate. Norwegian rocks to protect Sizewell B on Suffolk coast. The European holiday destinations where 50ºC summers could become the norm. UK has ‘no future’ if it fails to act on ecosystem collapse threatening national security.

Noel’s notes. The global small nuclear reactor bandwagon is led by Britain- It ought to fail, but will it?

AUSTRALIA.

‘Extreme risk’: AUKUS warnings as Garrett’s inquiry docks in Adelaide. ‘Height of unfairness’: Former SA senator slams government over AUKUS nuclear waste move.
Starting from scratch on nuclear in Australia would take longer, cost more than first-time offshore wind.
Royal Commission or Lobby Show? | The West Report Antisemitic, really? Jewish leader speaks out on Royal Commission hypocrisy.
Why Australia’s new office marks a turning point for AI governance.

NUCLEAR-RELATED ITEMS

CLIMATE. France Cuts 6.4 GW of Nuclear Power as Heatwave Grips the Country.

Atomic rivers. The (Un)sustainability of nuclear power in an age of climate change

France temporarily shuts down three nuclear reactors over heatwave.

Nuclear power reactor forced to shut down due to extreme 28C heat.

Heatwave: EDF will once again shut down nuclear reactors – ALSO AT https://nuclear-news.net/2026/07/15/3-b1-heatwave-edf-will-once-again-shut-down-nuclear-reactors/

EDF will spend nearly 9 billion euros to adapt to climate change – ALSO AT https://nuclear-news.net/2026/07/16/3-b1-edf-will-spend-nearly-9-billion-euros-to-adapt-to-climate-change/

Climate Change – It’s only a matter of time…

ECONOMICS.

Nuclear Commercial Shipping Still Fails The Business Case.

‘Sip your coffee while watching the sunrise’: How Israel is colonizing the West Bank by selling Palestinian land to Jewish Americans.

Bangladesh’s Nuclear Power Play Is a Test for Emerging Economies.

Insuring Small Modular Nuclear Reactors.

Holtec bets big on small nuclear reactors in its IPO filing.

Grant to support expansion of TRISO-X nuclear fuel campus.

Nuclear costs crowd out key defence priorities in UK investment plan, say SDR authors.

Great British Energy appoints Amentum and Cavendish in £360M SMR deal.

Government U turn as Sizewell B is to get a fixed-price government contract -ALSO AT https://nuclear-news.net/2026/07/15/3-b1-government-u-turn-as-sizewell-b-is-to-get-a-fixed-price-government-contract/

Nuclear power costs billions- Here are seven better ways to use that money – Martin Roche- ALSO AT https://nuclear-news.net/2026/07/14/3-b1-nuclear-power-costs-billions-here-are-seven-better-ways-to-use-that-money-martin-roche/

EDUCATION. What do you need to know to run a nuclear power plant?

ENERGY. Two Geothermal Bets Are Starting to Undercut Nuclear on Cost.

ENVIRONMENT. Federal government proposes to lessen nuclear reactor environmental reviews. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Targets Faster Nuclear Licensing With National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA)Streamlining Proposal.

What is it like living near the site of a new nuclear power station?

ETHICS and RELIGION. The Killing Machines -Governments and Technology Obsessing Over Efficient Death.

What ceasefire? People still being killed and Gaza still under siege.

HISTORY ‘They used axes to spare the ammo’: How modern Ukraine’s Nazi heroes massacred Poles during WWII How Israel planned the Gaza genocide decades ago. 250 Years of a Country and What Have We Learned? – The nuclear industrial complex creation catastrophe.

INDIGENOUS ISSUES. Saugeen Ojibway Nation Says It Was Shut Out of Canada’s Nuclear Strategy

LEGAL. No, Israel Does Not Have ‘A Right To Exist’. Fearing Justice: Rubio Gets Bolshie About the International Criminal Court (ICC).

MEDIA Thirteen films that are essential to understanding the nuclear age. Iran aside, don’t ignore Trump’s war crimes in the Caribbean, Venezuela and Somalia. Walt Zlotow – Chicago Tribune misleads its readership with Bob Kustra’s imaginary commentary ‘What Ronald Reagan would do today for the people of Ukraine

OPPOSITION to NUCLEAR . TELL Nuclear Regulatory Commission: Don’t weaken radiation standards. How Fear of Nuclear Armageddon Leads Me to Protest. PICTURE Activists protest outside Pioneer Park nuclear event -ALSO AT https://nuclear-news.net/2026/07/19/1-b1-activists-protest-outside-pioneer-park-nuclear-event/

POLITICS.

Hamas’s Governance Exit Exposes Israel’s Real Objectives.
‘Seismic Shift’ as Over 100 House Democrats Vote to Cut Off US Military Aid to Israel.
JD Vance Says Israeli Officials Are Pressuring U.S. to Prolong Iran War.
Liberals Have Relaxed About Trump Because They Trust Him To Keep The Wars Going.
The risk of nuclear war is rising – This is what Burnham must do. ALSO AT https://nuclear-news.net/2026/07/17/6-the-risk-of-nuclear-war-is-rising-this-is-what-burnham-must-do/ Add stopping Sizewell C to Andy Burnham’s “to do” list. Labour MP Brian Leishman opposes new nuclear energy near Clacks
July 22 deadline to comment on downgrade of impact assessment for nuclear projects | Canada’s Federal government pushing for power with a “nuclear fist” | Dates and Deadlines.

POLITICS INTERNATIONAL and DIPLOMACY.

Europe is Teetering on the Brink. Support Without a Seat at the Table: Poland’s Costly Alignment with Ukraine. A Sustainable Peace in Ukraine: Diplomacy, Neutrality, and the Limits of the Current Order.

Jeffrey Sachs: We’re Led by the Most Incompetent Leaders Imaginable.

Walt Zlotow -All hail Marco Rubio, Potentate of Venezuela.

Trump Says Iran Deal Is “Over,” Signals More US Strikes Are Likely Coming,

RADIATION. Radiation Protection –analysis of NRC proposals. Challenging New York Time’s Suggestion That We Should Stop Worrying and Love Radiation Trump Administration Scrapping Nuclear Energy Rules Requiring Plants to Keep Radiation Levels “As Low as Reasonably Achievable”

SAFETY. ‘At risk of horrific contamination’: The Soviet nuclear submarine wreck that is a ‘ticking time bomb’. Incidents. Satellite images show damage inside Iran’s Bushehr nuclear power plant. World warned of ‘nuclear apocalypse’ after drone kills nuclear plant engineer in Ukraine Mysterious drones spotted flying over nuclear power plant. No radiation leak after ‘contamination’ events at Africa’s only nuclear plant, regulator says.

SECRETS and LIES. The West Won’t Punish The Settlements: its Two-State Solution Was Always a Sham. Trump claimed Iran’s nuclear sites were ‘obliterated’ – Now another is in his sights. Iran Accuses Kushner, Witkoff of Pursuing Profits Over Peace in Diplomatic Talks. 2009 quake may have prompted data rigging by central Japan nuclear operator

SPACE. EXPLORATION, WEAPONS. Eight NATO allies to create new satellite mega-constellation. Corporations Lead U.S. Militarization of Space.

SPINBUSTER
The false promise of nuclear power. It’s Not Terrorism When We Do It.

TECHNOLOGY. BEC showcases nuclear powered A.I data centre, Pioneer Park (and Radiation Free Lakeland protestors were there in opposition) AI and the absurdity of nuclear deterrence.

WASTES. Uranium-Chomping Bacteria Found In Bowels Of Mine That Once Supplied Soviet Nuclear Weapons. Cumbrian environmental groups quit GDF nuclear waste talks . Ed Milliband to decide on Cumbrian nuclear waste plan. Canada’s Federal Government in Disarray Over Nuclear Waste Project Assessment . Decommissioning. Ukraine draft law on Chernobyl decommissioning to 2036 approved.

WAR and CONFLICT.

Is London shifting from nuclear deterrence to war-fighting?
Trump Killed Those US Troops In Jordan.
Time for all US service personnel in Middle East to disobey illegal Trump orders to wage criminal war on Iran.
Trump’s New Iran Strikes Are Turning Failure Into a Wider Disaster.
Trump says US will ‘take out’ Iran’s Pickaxe Mountain nuclear facility.
Iran war takes terrifying turn, missiles bombard NUCLEAR plant.
CALLING THE ODDS ON DOOMSDAY.
The five countries that could go nuclear next – and how worried we should be.

WEAPONS and WEAPONS SALES . Autonomous Weapons: The Wave of the Future in Military Conflicts Worldwide.

Faslane set for £15bn upgrade to ‘future-proof it for war-fighting’.

Why is Britain spending huge amounts on nuclear militarism? . ALSO AT https://nuclear-news.net/2026/07/17/3-b1-why-is-britain-investing-huge-amounts-in-nuclear-militarism/

US industrial base is becoming stronger for wartime production, study finds.

A Budget of the Pentagon, By the Congress and For the War Profiteers.

Dennis Kucinich Warns Congress Is Quietly Merging the U.S. and Israeli War Machines.

America’s AI War Has No Civilian Stop Rule.

North Korea vows boost to nuclear buildup, military intelligence.

July 20, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Why Australia’s new office marks a turning point for AI governance

15 July 2026 , RMIT University, https://theaimn.net/why-australias-new-office-marks-a-turning-point-for-ai-governance/

The Federal Government has today announced a new Office of AI within the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, alongside plans for a national artificial intelligence framework. An RMIT expert says this stronger oversight of the rapidly evolving technology is a welcome step.

Lisa Given, Distinguished Professor of Information Sciences

“As technology companies increasingly look to build data centres in Australia, communities have expressed significant concerns about energy and water use, and placement near residential neighbourhoods.

“Australians are also worried about disruption from AI technologies, raising concerns about potential job losses, copyright infringements of material used to train AI models, and data privacy.

“Addressing such varied challenges, particularly when AI technologies are evolving at such a fast pace, warrants the coordinated approach this office will take.

“Given the known risks posed by generative AI technologies like deepfake images that mislead customers or hallucinated content that misinforms chatbot users – Australians need government intervention to protect them from harm.

“The creation of this office marks a significant shift in the government’s overall approach to governing AI, towards being more hands-on and proactive.

“In 2024, the government planned to regulate high-risk AI implementation, which was later abandoned. It also proposed – and then paused – digital duty of care legislation, to hold technology companies to account for harmful content and tool designs.

“By creating this office, and reintroducing digital duty of care legislation this year, the government has recognised the need for coordination and intervention to address the varied risks posed by AI, while also supporting its potential benefits.”

Lisa Given is a Distinguished Professor of Information Sciences at RMIT University. She is director of RMIT’s Centre for Human-AI Information Environments and the Social Change Enabling Impact Platform

July 18, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | technology | Leave a comment

Antisemitic, really? Jewish leader speaks out on Royal Commission hypocrisy

by Jeffrey Loewenstein | Jul 14, 2026, https://michaelwest.com.au/antisemitic-really-jewish-leader-speaks-out-on-royal-commission-hypocrisy/ |

Were the ‘attacks’ described really attacks of an antisemitic nature,The tide has turned a little at the Royal Commission into Antisemitism with a second Jewish witness breaking from the Israel narrative. Jeffrey Loewenstein reports.

Sarah Schwartz, co-founder of the Jewish Council of Australia (JCA), gave evidence at the Royal Commission into Anti-Semitism and Social Cohesion last week.

I venture to suggest that it will come to be seen that Schwartz gave seminal evidence which the Commissioner is going to find hard to ignore when she is writing her report; evidence supported yesterday by the compelling testimony of Jewish university peace activist Yasmine Johnson.

Until Schwartz gave her evidence, we had seen testimonies given by members of the Jewish community – some of which can only be described as very troubling in terms of evidence – which sometimes bordered on hysterical.

But, the elephant in the room?

Sarah Schwartz, co-founder of the Jewish Council of Australia (JCA), gave evidence at the Royal Commission into Anti-Semitism and Social Cohesion last week.

I venture to suggest that it will come to be seen that Schwartz gave seminal evidence which the Commissioner is going to find hard to ignore when she is writing her report; evidence supported yesterday by the compelling testimony of Jewish university peace activist Yasmine Johnson.

Until Schwartz gave her evidence, we had seen testimonies given by members of the Jewish community – some of which can only be described as very troubling in terms of evidence – which sometimes bordered on hysterical.

But, the elephant in the room?

“Were the ‘attacks’ described really attacks of an antisemitic nature,”

or were they people venting their anger and outrage at Jews seen to be rusted-on, unquestioning supporters of Israel’s egregious actions in Gaza?

Take the example of a uni student in Canberra who just yesterday was reported in the Nine media thus: ”Liat told the Commission she had felt “very physically unsafe” during the long encampment at her university campus … when people would laugh and leer at me and say, ‘Look at the baby killer, look at the genocide supporter’”.

No, that is not pleasant, but the fact is – a fact unchallenged aside from the state of Israel itself and the likes of the ECAJ in Australia – that more than 20,000 Palestinian children have been killed by the state of Israel and more than 44,000 injured since October 2023.

Why the rise in antisemitism?

What was more than significant, is that many of those who gave evidence of alleged antisemitism demonstrated absolutely no introspection. Why had there been a rise in anti-semitism sinceOctober 7?

Not because Hamas attacked Israel. No, it was, in many cases people showing their anger, yes, in some instances in a totally misguided way, at Israel’s actions in Gaza. Why did some 300,000 people from all walks of life and all ages, march across the Sydney Harbour Bridge on a foul, wet and windy day?

The palpable anger by a significant part of the Australian community, including many Jews, at what Israel did in Gaza, and continues to do to this day, is reflected in the sober evidence given at the Royal Commission yesterday by Yasmine Johnson, a co-convener for Students for Palestine and a protest organiser.

Following her evidence, Johnson, who is Jewish, told the media

“the idea that campus protests “create a dangerous atmosphere, fear for people, is farcical”.

Antisemitism, anti-genocide conflation

“What we’ve heard,” she said “so far is day after day after day of evidence which conflates legitimate anti-genocide, pro-Palestine activism with genuine antisemitism which exists in our society.”

The earlier mentioned witness Liat, and others like her, may feel uncomfortable about what is being shouted out at her as much as she probably sees posters like ‘Free Palestine’ as confronting and antisemitic, but has Liat – who acts as a spokesperson for the Australasian Union of Jewish Students – either personally or on behalf of her organisation ever publicly accused Israel of being responsible for war crimes in Gaza, even if not genocide? Almost certainly, not!

And that is the rub.

Might this alleged antisemitism just have had something to do with Jews so visibly parading around with Israeli flags draped acrosss their shoulders, waving Israelis flags at solidarity rallies for Israel, Jewish communal leaders excoriating those who called out Israel for engaging in genocide or starving children, and welcoming the Israeli President as their “national leader” ?

“Really? I thought we were Australians.”

The “average” person could be forgiven for concluding that members of the Jewish community were demonstrating that they identified with and supported Israel.

The question to be asked here is why it is that criticising Israel by Jews is said to make the speaker a self-hating Jew, a “kapo” a “Judenrat” or, as in the case of Schwartz, to even be accused on ABC Radio National as being ‘anti Jewish?”

They are shameful, offensive and disgraceful epithets. They are intended to be so.

Not be ignored in the above is that the likes of a Mark Leibler, the ECAJ, AIJAC, the Zionist Federation of Australia and similar groups see Jews who criticise Israel as a no-go area even if they, falsely, assert that Jews are free to openly express their views about Israel. It’s simply untrue!

There is the expectation from these quarters that all Jews will, as a matter of solidarity, support Israel as the Zionist/Jewish homeland. With this forked-tongue and double-speak it is no wonder that the sort of slurs and insults which Schwartz described at the Royal Commission are rife in the Jewish community.

A climate of fear

Conversely, those in the Jewish community who might otherwise speak out against Israel fear that they will be subjected to all manner of insults and even the break-down of family relationships.

Given the airing of Schwartz’s evidence, one has to also wonder why there has been total silence from the usually vocal Jewish organisations. Should they not be publicly calling out vilification of fellow-Jews, calling for vilification to be stopped and asking for respect for those Jews who are not Zionists, strident or not.

Proof of the “attitude” in the Jewish community to those who are not at one with supporting Israel is clearly demonstrated by the Australian Jewish News which, just last week, pulled a story attacking those in the Jewish community who attacked their fellow Jews with the the sort of offensive epithets directed at Sarah Schwartz.

My Israel question

I can speak personally to how the Jewish community reacts when Israel or the Israel Lobby comes under scrutiny. Back in 2006, Melbourne University Press published my son’s book “My Israel Question”. The book flew off the shelves.

The response from the so-called powers-that be in the Jewish community – including a Jewish Federal member of Parliament in Parliament, even exhorting people not to buy the book – bordered on feral.

Even putting aside the death threats to my son and his then partner, as an example of hate mail – which Schwartz has so clearly shown in her evidence – one early so-called correspondent wrote that he hoped that when the Nazis came to Australia that he and his parents would be the first to be marched into the gas chambers.

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The tide has turned a little at the Royal Commission into Antisemitism with a second Jewish witness breaking from the Israel narrative. Jeffrey Loewenstein reports.

Sarah Schwartz, co-founder of the Jewish Council of Australia (JCA), gave evidence at the Royal Commission into Anti-Semitism and Social Cohesion last week.

I venture to suggest that it will come to be seen that Schwartz gave seminal evidence which the Commissioner is going to find hard to ignore when she is writing her report; evidence supported yesterday by the compelling testimony of Jewish university peace activist Yasmine Johnson.

Until Schwartz gave her evidence, we had seen testimonies given by members of the Jewish community – some of which can only be described as very troubling in terms of evidence – which sometimes bordered on hysterical.

But, the elephant in the room?

Were the ‘attacks’ described really attacks of an antisemitic nature,

or were they people venting their anger and outrage at Jews seen to be rusted-on, unquestioning supporters of Israel’s egregious actions in Gaza?

Take the example of a uni student in Canberra who just yesterday was reported in the Nine media thus: ”Liat told the Commission she had felt “very physically unsafe” during the long encampment at her university campus … when people would laugh and leer at me and say, ‘Look at the baby killer, look at the genocide supporter’”.

No, that is not pleasant, but the fact is – a fact unchallenged aside from the state of Israel itself and the likes of the ECAJ in Australia – that more than 20,000 Palestinian children have been killed by the state of Israel and more than 44,000 injured since October 2023.

Why the rise in antisemitism?

What was more than significant, is that many of those who gave evidence of alleged antisemitism demonstrated absolutely no introspection. Why had there been a rise in anti-semitism sinceOctober 7?

Not because Hamas attacked Israel. No, it was, in many cases people showing their anger, yes, in some instances in a totally misguided way, at Israel’s actions in Gaza. Why did some 300,000 people from all walks of life and all ages, march across the Sydney Harbour Bridge on a foul, wet and windy day?

The palpable anger by a significant part of the Australian community, including many Jews, at what Israel did in Gaza, and continues to do to this day, is reflected in the sober evidence given at the Royal Commission yesterday by Yasmine Johnson, a co-convener for Students for Palestine and a protest organiser.

Following her evidence, Johnson, who is Jewish, told the media

the idea that campus protests “create a dangerous atmosphere, fear for people, is farcical”.

Antisemitism, anti-genocide conflation

“What we’ve heard,” she said “so far is day after day after day of evidence which conflates legitimate anti-genocide, pro-Palestine activism with genuine antisemitism which exists in our society.”

The earlier mentioned witness Liat, and others like her, may feel uncomfortable about what is being shouted out at her as much as she probably sees posters like ‘Free Palestine’ as confronting and antisemitic, but has Liat – who acts as a spokesperson for the Australasian Union of Jewish Students – either personally or on behalf of her organisation ever publicly accused Israel of being responsible for war crimes in Gaza, even if not genocide? Almost certainly, not!

And that is the rub.

Might this alleged antisemitism just have had something to do with Jews so visibly parading around with Israeli flags draped acrosss their shoulders, waving Israelis flags at solidarity rallies for Israel, Jewish communal leaders excoriating those who called out Israel for engaging in genocide or starving children, and welcoming the Israeli President as their “national leader” ?

Really? I thought we were Australians.

The “average” person could be forgiven for concluding that members of the Jewish community were demonstrating that they identified with and supported Israel.

The question to be asked here is why it is that criticising Israel by Jews is said to make the speaker a self-hating Jew, a “kapo” a “Judenrat” or, as in the case of Schwartz, to even be accused on ABC Radio National as being ‘anti Jewish?”

They are shameful, offensive and disgraceful epithets. They are intended to be so.

Not be ignored in the above is that the likes of a Mark Leibler, the ECAJ, AIJAC, the Zionist Federation of Australia and similar groups see Jews who criticise Israel as a no-go area even if they, falsely, assert that Jews are free to openly express their views about Israel. It’s simply untrue!

There is the expectation from these quarters that all Jews will, as a matter of solidarity, support Israel as the Zionist/Jewish homeland. With this forked-tongue and double-speak it is no wonder that the sort of slurs and insults which Schwartz described at the Royal Commission are rife in the Jewish community.

A climate of fear

Conversely, those in the Jewish community who might otherwise speak out against Israel fear that they will be subjected to all manner of insults and even the break-down of family relationships.

Given the airing of Schwartz’s evidence, one has to also wonder why there has been total silence from the usually vocal Jewish organisations. Should they not be publicly calling out vilification of fellow-Jews, calling for vilification to be stopped and asking for respect for those Jews who are not Zionists, strident or not.

Proof of the “attitude” in the Jewish community to those who are not at one with supporting Israel is clearly demonstrated by the Australian Jewish News which, just last week, pulled a story attacking those in the Jewish community who attacked their fellow Jews with the the sort of offensive epithets directed at Sarah Schwartz.

My Israel question

I can speak personally to how the Jewish community reacts when Israel or the Israel Lobby comes under scrutiny. Back in 2006, Melbourne University Press published my son’s book “My Israel Question”. The book flew off the shelves.

The response from the so-called powers-that be in the Jewish community – including a Jewish Federal member of Parliament in Parliament, even exhorting people not to buy the book – bordered on feral.

Even putting aside the death threats to my son and his then partner, as an example of hate mail – which Schwartz has so clearly shown in her evidence – one early so-called correspondent wrote that he hoped that when the Nazis came to Australia that he and his parents would be the first to be marched into the gas chambers.

Unhinged? Yes!

But as Schwartz spelt out in her evidence at the Royal Commission many in the Jewish community see attacking those who do not support Israel 100% as legitimate. And if that extends to thuggery, look no further than the Jewish group the Lions of Zion and their “activities” – an organisation supported by the powers that be in the Jewish community.

Thankfully the JCA has provided an ever-growing forum and voice for Jews who will not remain silent given Israel’s genocide in Gaza and breaches of multiple international laws and conventions.

Let’s not forget, while Israel denies what a slew of scholars, human rights organisations and aid and medical agencies have found – including those learned on genocide, some of whom even live in Israel itself – the facts on the ground speak volumes. We have all seen and read about it.

Israel clearly stands guilty as charged!

July 18, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | religion and ethics | Leave a comment

Australian news, and some related international items

The UN responds

I. The Definition: A Mask for Power

II. The Pre-Westphalian Pattern: Religious Wars as the Norm

III. The Jewish Bund: Human Rights, Democracy, and Universalism

IV. Jabotinsky and Revisionist Zionism: The Theocratic Turn

V. The Modern Manifestation: Gaza and the Theology of Extermination

VI. The Two Threads: Universalism vs. Exclusivism

VII. The Pattern: How Theocracy Becomes Killing

VIII. Conclusion: The Choice Before Us

What has this got to do with Small Modular Nuclear Reactors?

SOON

CHEAP

Defence accused of trying to bury details of a high-level investigation into handling of lucrative naval defence contracts by a former senior naval figure

By Nadege Bizimungu, The Tea with Myriam François, Jul 21, 2026

IN BRIEF

Will Burnham deliver on the UK’s AUKUS commitments?

Why the rise in antisemitism?

Antisemitism, anti-genocide conflation

A climate of fear

My Israel question

Why the rise in antisemitism?

Antisemitism, anti-genocide conflation

A climate of fear

My Israel question

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