Australian nuclear news – week to 6th June

• Can one optimal pathway have two lanes? When it comes to AUKUS submarines, apparently yes.
• ‘Capability that matters’: submarine switch played down
• Australian flotilla survivors describe ordeal after Gaza mission.
• A brief history of Australia eating shit on AUKUS.
• This is how billionaires buy the news.
• The Hand-Me-Down Alliance: Australia, AUKUS and Op-Shop Submarines. 
• Will AUKUS keep us safe – at what cost? AUKUS- From ‘best’ we’ll never get to second hand subs. 
• Peter Garrett to head independent inquiry into the Aukus submarine pact. 
• Husic breaks ranks to demand rethink of Labor’s support for AUKUS. 
• Labor MP Ed Husic challenges Albanese to reconsider AUKUS submarine deal. 
• Richard Marles accepts used submarines in AUKUS setback. 
• US to send only used nuclear subs to Australia in amended defence deal. 
• Former Ambassador Joe Hockey says he is nervous about AUKUS – and wants Albanese to cold-call Trump. 
• AUKUS is falling apart before our eyes. The government and alliance shills are silent. 
• Royal Commission under fire for excluding Palestinian perspectives.

June 5, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Why Trump should be indicted

Crispin Hull, June 1, 2026

The details of the 2016 agreement that the Obama Administration and European allies made with Iran show why President Donald Trump should be indicted for the war crime of waging an aggressive war.

That agreement, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action between the nuclear-armed US, UK, France, China, and Russia, and Germany and Iran, which Iran abided by for two years until Trump tore it up, made it impossible for Iran to make a nuclear bomb.

Last week, the US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent denied that the Obama-era agreement ever happened.

“This administration, President Trump, has done something that no other administration was able to do,” he said. “We have gotten the Iranians to talk about their nuclear program and perhaps commit to not having one. That has never happened before. It had been off the table.”

This is utterly untrue. Obama not only got Iranians to talk about their nuclear program but to agree to detailed restrictions on uranium and plutonium enrichment with verifiable inspections that would make construction of a bomb impossible.

In January 2016, under the headline, “The Historic Deal that Will Prevent Iran from Acquiring a Nuclear Weapon”, the White House stated: “On January 16, 2016, the International Atomic Energy Agency verified that Iran has completed the necessary steps under the Iran deal that will ensure Iran’s nuclear program is and remains exclusively peaceful.”

This is the verification of the International Atomic Energy Agency – the independent international body that has been doing nuclear verification since 1957.

Trump and his Cabinet toadies are in complete denial that it ever happened.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said, “Only one president was willing to lay it out on the line and ensure after 47 years that Iran is not capable of having a nuclear weapon.”

Again, not true.

There are a couple of reasons for the denial. One, they work on the basis that anything Obama did must be bad or if good, deny it happened. And, secondly, that if in the past the US had the security of a nuclear-bomb-incapable Iran it would not be possible to argue that Trump’s 2026 attack on Iran was justified as self-defence.

There are only two legally valid reasons to go to war: self-defence and UN authorisation. Trump’s attack on Iran met neither of the criteria. It was the criminal waging of an aggressive war, and he is responsible for all the death and destruction that followed. The International Criminal Court should start an investigation into Trump.

This does not excuse the violence, aggression, and human-rights breaches by the Iranian regime. But they in turn do not excuse illegal Trump’s and the US conduct either. 

Iranian scepticism of US bona fides is, however, justified, given US engineering of the 1953 coup against a democratic Iranian Government; the US arming and empowerment of the Shah of Iran’s 26-year brutal repression, torture and murder; the US’s unapologetic 1988 shooting down of Iran Flight 655 killing 290 innocent people; and the US’s reneging on the 2016 nuclear agreement after Iran had verifiably abided by it for two years.

Yes, international law is difficult or near impossible to enforce, but if both sides in any international conflict resort to right-is-might the consequence is always unnecessary death and destruction. More importantly, if a great number of nations adhere to international law, it isolates and pressures those countries and their leaders who do not. With economic and physical consequences.

At least, European and other democratic allies realised Trump’s Iran illegality and refused to take part. Once burned by US President George W Bush’s illegal invasion of Iraq, twice shy. At least Bush tried to get UN sanction for his invasion. Not Trump.

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..And the lessons for Australia? Stick to the rule of law and keep appropriate distance from the US. And the lessons for Australian voters, who on current polls seem set to give One Nation more votes than any other party? Pay attention. Look at history.

Look at Hanson cosying up to Trump and their similarities – joining forces with billionaires; accepting gifts of aircraft in questionable circumstances; and more.

British voters surely wouldn’t vote to leave the EU and trash their economy? US voters surely would not vote for Trump – twice – likely handing over world economic and political leadership to China?

Australians surely would not vote to put One Nation’s Pauline Hanson in the Prime Minister’s Lodge with who knows what consequences.

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… https://www.crispinhull.com.au/2026/06/01/why-trump-should-be-indicted/?utm_source=mailpoet&utm_medium=email&utm_source_platform=mailpoet&utm_campaign=crispin-hull-column

June 5, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Around the world, global solidarity and cooperation are remarkably popular

June 1, 2026, by Lawrence Wittner, https://peaceandhealthblog.com/2026/06/01/around-the-world-global-solidarity-and-cooperation-are-remarkably-popular/

One of the curious ironies of our time is that, although many politicians spout heated nationalist rhetoric, rail against foreign nations, and belittle international cooperation, this approach to international affairs is not at all what most people want.

The climate of aggressive nationalism is clear enough.  In nations around the globe, demagogues (usually of a rightwing variety) whip up xenophobia, preach superpatriotism, demand vast military buildups, and―if holding public office―often launch invasions of other nations under the banner of restoring an allegedly glorious national past.

But what is often overlooked is that, across the planet, most people favor a very different way of engaging with the world.  

In late 2025, Focaldata, a major research company commissioned by the Rockefeller Foundation, conducted a landmark survey of 36,405 people across 34 countries.  The resulting report, Demanding Results: Global Views on International Cooperation, revealed that 55 percent of people worldwide “believe their country should cooperate on global challenges even if it means compromising on national interests.”  If international cooperation was proven to solve global problems, public support jumped to 75 percent.  Respondents viewed such cooperation as essential for food and water security, jobs, health, trade, and climate.

Other opinion surveys confirm the widespread nature of internationalist sentiment.  An Ipsos poll conducted between February and April 2026 found a substantial increase over the previous year in support for global solidarity and cooperation, with net disagreement shifting to net agreement.  Among the more than 22,000 adults in the 31 countries surveyed, nearly two-thirds now supported the claim that, “for certain problems, like environmental pollution, international bodies should have the right to enforce solutions.”  Some 42 percent (a plurality) agreed with the idea that “my taxes should go towards solving global problems.”  And nearly four out of ten respondents (a plurality) endorsed the statement:  “I consider myself more a world citizen than a citizen of the country I live in.”

Another measure of the worldwide support for international cooperation is provided by polling on public attitudes toward international organizations.  The Rockefeller Foundation-Focaldata study reported that public trust was strong for the United Nations (58 percent) and the World Health Organization (60 percent), although weaker for international financial institutions.  The global popularity of the United Nations was also attested to by a Pew Research Center survey that appeared in September 2025.  Covering 31,938 adults in 25 countries, it found that a median of 61 percent of adults had a favorable view of the world organization, while only 32 percent had an unfavorable one.

Even proposals for new, avant garde global institutions have attracted more public support than opposition.  Commissioned by Democracy Without Borders, Nira Data conducted a global survey in September 2025 of public attitudes toward the election of a citizen-elected world parliament to handle global issues.  The survey, released in January 2026, drew upon 117,000 people in 101 countries that held 90 percent of the world’s population.  The finding was that 40 percent of respondents approved of the world parliament idea, while only 27 percent opposed it.

But what about the United States?  Surely in this flag-waving nation, engulfed in the rabid “America First” rhetoric of the Trump administration and its MAGA acolytes, we might expect that the ideals of global solidarity and cooperation would be supported by no more than a small minority.

But that’s not the case at all.

One of the most striking findings of the Rockefeller Foundation-Focaldata survey is that 61 percent of U.S. respondents believed that the United States should cooperate on global challenges even it meant compromising on some national interests.

When it came to the United Nations, the Pew Research Center report revealed that 57 percent of Americans held a positive view of the world organization, as compared to 41 percent with a negative one.  Moreover, it found that positive views of the United Nations had increased by 5 percent over the preceding year.

A study by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, issued in September 2025, reported an even more favorable public attitude toward the United Nations.  Two-thirds of the Americans surveyed, it noted, said that the United States should be more willing to make decisions within the framework of the United Nations, even if this meant that the country would sometimes have to go along with a policy that was not its first choice.

Admittedly, opinion surveys found that the level of support for international cooperation varied significantly from country to country.  Thus, for example, the backing for international cooperation when that meant compromising on some national interests was greater in India (81 percent) and South Korea (73 percent), the countries highest on the scale, than in Argentina (41 percent) and Japan (34 percent), the countries at the bottom of the scale.

Furthermore, there was often a political dimension to worldwide public attitudes toward foreign affairs.  According to the Pew Research Center, “people who place themselves on the left of the ideological spectrum are more likely than those on the right to have a positive view of the UN.”

This political division was particularly wide in the United States, where, as the Pew report maintained, “81% of liberals―versus 34% of conservatives―have a favorable opinion” of the United Nations.  When it came to the issue of support for cooperation with other nations, the surveys by Rockefeller-Focaldata and the Chicago Council on Global Affairs both found substantial differences between the attitudes of Democrats (quite positive) and Republicans (far more negative).

Even so, in most countries, including the United States, support for international solidarity and cooperation is very substantial, and growing.  Consequently, political activists and politicians shouldn’t be reluctant to speak out for them.  Indeed, given the popularity of this internationalist approach to global affairs, it might even prove a winning political issue.

Lawrence S. Wittner (https://www.lawrenceswittner.com/ ) is Professor of History Emeritus at SUNY/Albany and the author of Confronting the Bomb (Stanford University Press).

June 5, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Wildfires devastating richer areas but fewer hectares burned globally – study

Ajit Niranjan, June 26, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jun/01/wildfires-devastating-richer-areas-but-fewer-hectares-burned-globally-study

‘Megafires’ in California, Canada, South Korea and Europe in 2025, but changes to farming slowed spread in parts of Africa.

“Devastating” wildfires ripped across the wealthier parts of the world in 2025, a study has found, even as globally, the area ravaged by flames fell.

Catastrophic blazes claimed lives, homes and jobs last year in California, Canada, Europe and South Korea. But the 335m hectares burned was the second-lowest since 2002, the review found, largely owing to the expansion of African farms that have fragmented landscapes and hampered the spread of large savannah fires.

The disasters in 2025 included a Scottish “megafire” that torched more than 100,000 hectares – contributing to the UK breaking its record for burned area – and the Palisades and Eaton fires in Los Angeles, which were among the most destructive in US history.

Record-breaking blazes in Spain and Portugal burned more than half a million hectares, while South Korea had its biggest and deadliest wildfire season on record.

Fires accounted for more than 38% of insured losses from weather disasters in 2025, the study found.

“2025 shows that a ‘quiet’ fire year globally can still be devastating,” said Matthew Jones, a climate scientist at the University of East Anglia and lead author of the study. “We are seeing a growing disconnect between total area burned and real-world impacts.”

Changes in land use mean wildfires burn less of the planet than they have historically done, but global heating is creating conditions allowing them to spread, increasing the danger at what researchers call the wildland-urban interface, where people are most at risk.

Adverse weather, inflamed by carbon pollution, turned some of last year’s fires into explosive infernos.

In southern California and South Korea, the researchers found, high winds and dry vegetation pushed fires through densely populated areas, causing “exceptional mortality, mass evacuations, and major infrastructure losses”. In the Mediterranean, meanwhile, drought and extreme heat drove severe blazes, from Portugal to Turkey.

“These conditions do not cause the fires, but in the event of a fire, we have material that is more flammable than usual – because it is drier – and wind conditions that fan the flames,” said David Garcia, an applied mathematician at the University of Alicante, who was not involved in the study. “This makes large fires more likely to occur.”

An attribution study Garcia co-authored last year found the extreme weather fuelling the flames in Portugal and Spain last year was made 39 times more likely by climate breakdown. “If we continue to warm the planet, large-scale fires will continue to increase,” he said.

The overall reduction in global burned area led to a drop in carbon dioxide emissions to their third-lowest level on record.

In Canada, though, extreme wildfire emissions were recorded for the third year in a row. Since 2023, boreal forests in North America have emitted close to 4bn tonnes of CO₂, exceeding the total emissions of the preceding 15-year period.

As well as heating the planet, the pollutants in wildfire smoke lead to huge numbers of people dying from breathing dirty air. The toxic particles spewed by Canadian wildfires in 2023 killed 82,000 people, according to a study published in September, with smoke even choking cities in the US, Europe and Africa.

Adrián Regos, a landscape ecologist at the Biological Mission of Galicia, Spain, who was not involved in the study, said last year’s events illustrated how a relatively small number of extreme fires could dominate the ecological, social and economic consequences of an entire fire season.

“The broader pattern highlighted by this study is consistent with what we are observing across southern Europe: while total burned area may fluctuate from year to year, climate change is increasing the likelihood of extreme fire-weather conditions, and fuel accumulation associated with rural abandonment is making many landscapes more vulnerable to large, fast-moving fires,” he said.

“The challenge is therefore not only reducing the number of fires, but increasing the resilience of landscapes and communities to extreme events.”

June 5, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment