Newsletter, 9/29/25

Charlie Kirk Event, Biomedical, 4IR

Charlie Kirk Event. Eric Francis Coppolino, editor of Planet Waves, the only page i know which is methodically pursuing the question of the physical evidence involved in the alleged Charlie Kirk assassination, posted this today at his Facebook page. i edited the post and comments for clarity and misspellings.

What matters is that his “body” was in possession of a private funeral director within 36 hours of “being shot” in an “assassination” under state and federal jurisdiction. What matters is that there was no autopsy in the midst of claimed state and federal investigations for a capital crime.

What matters is the claim that [Erika] Frantzve “declined an autopsy” which is not an option in a criminal investigation. Do we not think the defense is going to want the autopsy entered into the record? There cannot be a trial for this reason.

What matters is that somehow “the body” was released by the Utah Cty. M.E. to Vance or the Air Force (under what authority exactly, and who exactly signed off on full military honors fit for a general?).

What matters is that AF2 was wheels up 28 hours after alleged shooting, at about 4:30 pm on Sept. 11, and that it was likely “at the funeral home” within two hours.

That is the fact pattern. I am always looking at the whole pattern. That is why timelines are so critical. The timeline contains the fact pattern.

The claim as I understand it is that “the body” went to a combination memorial park and funeral home. Is there a casket in the ground? Did they bury fake ashes so no DNA could be run? These things I do not know.

I am already of record that there was no body to autopsy or bury; I have no reason to believe that is not true. There is no contradictory evidence of record; no evidence of the existence of a body. No death certificate has been released.

No M.E. [Medical Examiner] report — that alone is stunning. And btw such an autopsy could take a week (tox takes a month) and there would probably be three of them. The reason they are not releasing fake coroner report or fake D.C. is that they would be immediately dismantled and attacked, and there may not be sufficient intel apparatus within the county to sustain the fraud.

This is all an amateur act. But convcing enough, under full digital/deepfake conditions. Everything is already presumed fake; people tend to believe what drives them emotionally or what seems to be consistent with the plot of their chosen TV show. And it seems for those who love him the most, there is no Charle Kirk like a dead Charlie Kirk. [Likewise for anyone who thinks they can capitalize upon Kirk’s alleged murder for one reason or another]

Someone raised the question of motives for this operation. I responded:

“My own guess is a planned coronation of Erika Kirk as the first US female president.“

Eric responded to the same question: “there is not a motive as in someone was jealous or the guy took my tools. This is part of a complex, long-planned and many-staged series of events of which will get a certain result. You cannot look at these things one incident at a time and understand them; you must see the series of scenes as a movie that’s going somewhere. In the immediate sense, this galvanized “the right” and also was an attempt by a bunch of Dominionists to elevate their guy to messiah status. I am fairly certain that much greater things are in the cards for Erika Frantzve, and that could be soon. Venus in Leo in the 10th house indeed.”

Someone commented that the blood spurt out of Kirk’s next *looking* convincing, vs the blood coming out of Trump’s ear after he was “shot” in July ’24., Eric responded:” It was not the blood but trump’s face that was convincing. and the nature of that stage show as to demonstrate that anyone under SS “protection” can have their bloody head held up for all the world to see like it was the doing of Kali Ma. The SS [Secret Service] can violate every procedure from the securing the perimeter to displaying the principal to line of fire when the scene had not been cleared of second shooters. that was the perfect operation IMO. It got the desired result and was questioned by only a few people.”

And a comment by Eric about the shooter and other problems in the story.:”Poor planning, lack of experience, young people who are over immersed in digital/cyber as “existence” and I think an element of these chumps will believe anything; this is a dancing nurses act. Tyler is neither a good patsy nor assailant. I have not even touched the shooter side of the issue; the .30-’06 story of an elephant gun is absurd and yet people are believing it, including those with firearms experience. In many people’s minds, there is the vision of an AR-15 coming apart and going back togheter in 90 seconds. But digital blurs reality into fantasy and back, acquied knowledge is swallowed and vanishes, and belief is true by virtue of being belived. This is much more about the background field than it is about the figure, the tale, the story… not the cred of the tale but the credulity of those to whom it is being told. That’s the part that irks me the most.”

Biomedical. MAHA news. Got this via my friend and colleague Jesse Zurawell. A16Z is Andreessen Horowitz, a Silicon Valley firm which is the largest social impact investment outfit around. Both founding partners, Mark Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, are prominent in the group called The Tech Bros which is the current behind the scenes government, and played the same role under Biden. Jay Battacharia, a principal of the 2020 Great Barrington Declaration, and is now the director of the National Institute of Health. pushes AI, talks about 2020 as if it were a mismanaged “pandemic” (hence keeping alive the “Pandemic”/”COVID-19”/”SARS-CoV-2” disinformation narrative, and firmly supports MMR [Measles, Mumps, Rubella] shots.

Taking Bold Bets: NIH and the Future of Biomedical Science, a16z, a week ago, 59 minutes. starts at 28:47,

“Dr. Jay Bhattacharya is one of the country’s top medical experts and a 24-year professor of medicine at Stanford. After being censored and deplatformed during COVID for his role in opposing harsh lockdowns, he was appointed Director of the National Institutes of Health by President Trump in 2025.

a16z General Partners Erik Torenberg, Vineeta Agarwala, and Jorge Conde join Dr. Bhattacharya to discuss the administration’s role in tackling the autism crisis, how to restore public trust in health authorities, how to make the NIH more dynamic and efficient, and how to streamline publishing and restore academic freedom.

And, my friend and colleague Michael Bryant looks back at 2020 and the roots of the Mega Fraud.

Revisiting the Covid Theatrics of 2020 - Part 1 of 3: “Patient Zero.” Michael Bryant.

Who were they? Where are they now? Was it even real?

Looking back on the covid spectacle we remember its innumerable anomalies, its bizarre stagecraft, and its strange characters—all situated in the center of a declared global emergency. Most of these oddities have yet to be explained, leaving many to wonder if the events can be believed. Three in particular stand out: “Patient Zero,” which we will study in Part 1 (below); “A Man Falls Dead on the Streets of Wuhan,” which we will study in Part 2; and “The Dancing Nurses,” our topic in Part 3.

PART ONE: “Patient Zero”

According to early media reports, a deadly coronavirus came to the United States in January of 2020. It made its first landing just north of Seattle, Washington, in Snohomish County. An individual who would become known as “Snohomish Man” (or S-Man, for short) was identified as a confirmed “COVID-19 case” on January 22, 2020. The media would claim that this was the first confirmed case of a mysterious respiratory infection in the US.

S-Man was identified as a 35-year-old Chinese-born legal permanent resident of America who lived alone. He traveled to “his original home” in Wuhan, China, in November 2019. The details of his activities while in Wuhan have never been released. It has been posited that he was visiting family, but it has also been suggested that he was there for work.

Allegedly S-Man returned to the US from China on January 15, 2020. Four days later, after a physician’s consultation, he was sent to the Providence Regional urgent care clinic in Snohomish County. The Providence Medical Center happened to have a special pathogens unit in which S-Man was placed. This was at the very time that the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was warning against alarmism and assuring us that “the risk to the American public” of being infected with this mysterious virus “is low.”

S-Man’s illness upon admission was described as:
A “persistent dry cough”
A “two-day history of nausea and vomiting”
“No shortness of breath or chest pain”
“Vital signs within normal ranges”
“Dry mucous membranes” (per the initial physical exam)
“The remainder of the examination was generally unremarkable.” [Emphasis added.]

In other words, S-Man was not hospitalized because of abnormal symptoms or because ill health compelled it, but only for observation.

Despite arriving at the hospital in this “unremarkable” condition, S-Man was taken in an “isolation pod” directly to a special pathogens unit. It was the first time that this special room—set up during the Ebola crisis of 2014-to-2016—was used in a “real-life” scenario. In May 2021, sixteen months after S-Man’s original physician’s visit led to this chain of events, further details about his case emerged when physician assistant Keith Erickson agreed to tell his story to WORLD, a monthly Christian magazine. Up until that point, Erickson had been anonymous.

According to Erickson, he thought he was attending to just another flu patient. He learned of the “outbreak” only after checking the CDC website, where he “found a bulletin urging health officials to be on the lookout for patients matching three criteria: travel from China, fever, and respiratory illness.”

After alerting the Washington State Health Department about his patient, Erickson received a call from someone who identified herself as the head of epidemiology at the CDC. Erickson told WORLD that, after a five-hour barrage of phone calls and inquiries during which the patient sat in the exam room, CDC officials decided among themselves that S-Man might be the first patient in the US—”Patient Zero”—to have contracted this new virus.

Does anyone find it strange that even though word of the supposed virus was spreading around the world—and certainly throughout the medical community—Erickson was oblivious to the new pathogen? And is it also strange that, despite being unaware of it, he checked the CDC website? Why would he have taken such an unusual step? Erickson collected patient samples and over-nighted them to Atlanta, home of the CDC. The rest is history.

To date, “Snohomish Man” aka “Patient Zero” has never been identified. Several retrospective pieces have challenged his existence and questioned whether he is the real “Patient Zero.” The first and last we heard from the mystery man himself was in early February 2020, when he released the following statement: “I am at home and continuing to get better. I ask that the media please respect my privacy and my desire not to be in the public eye. I would like to thank the doctors, nurses, and entire team at Providence who cared for me. I appreciate all of the concern expressed by members of the public, and I look forward to returning to my normal life.”

It was reported that of the sixteen people who had come in contact with S-Man, none developed symptoms that might have been attributable to this allegedly highly contagious pathogen.

Consider the can of worms that might be opened if an intrepid reporter were to ask a few basic questions:

1. Where is S-Man now? What is his “normal” life like?
2. How did S-Man manage to disappear into the wilds of Washington State, never to be identified or interviewed?
3. Does anyone dare ask if Snohomish Man ever existed or if he was a made-up case?

And those questions barely scratch the surface.

CODA

The story of “Patient Zero” is not complete without recognizing the importance of the geographic location in which it took place. It is also incomplete without an examination of other related events of early 2020 that occurred in the same region. Seattle, Washington, is located in King County. King County is where Microsoft’s world headquarters is located—in Redmond, to be precise. Directly north of King’s County lies Snohomish County.

In the US, the first “covid death” was alleged to have occurred at EvergreenHealth Medical Center-Kirkland in Kirkland, Washington, a Seattle suburb that is also located in King County. Interestingly, the first health care worker said to be infected with the disease (in February 2020) and the first “outbreak” in a long-term care facility (in February 2020) were both said to have occurred in Seattle. Equally interestingly, on March 6, 2020, the University of Washington in Seattle became the first university in the US to announce that classes would move to remote instruction in an effort to “slow the spread of the novel coronavirus.”

Notably, the University of Washington in Seattle is the biggest beneficiary of Gates Foundation funding among all higher education institutions in the US. Between 2010 and 2019, UW received more than $1.56 billion from the Gates Foundation. That sum accounted for 13% of the Gates Foundation’s giving to higher education institutions during that time frame. Skip another ten days to March 16, 2020, when the first experimental covid vaccine doses in the US were given at Kaiser Permanente Washington Research Institute in Seattle—also, not surprisingly, funded by the Gates Foundation.

And so it goes that the area of the country where the seeds of the “covid story” were planted—the first “covid patient,” the first “covid death,” the first health care worker infected, the first “covid outbreak,” and the first university closure—is the same region where academia, industry, and the media are heavily financed and influenced by the Gates Foundation, an institution that stands to profit immensely from that story.

Mere coincidence?

And, in a follow up to the video by Dr Sam Bailey of her interviewing Sally Fallon Morell, someone posted this at my FB page in response to it. I think the piece makes lots of good points. I presented that interview but did not state i fully agreed with everything said. See here.

Teachers of Paleo nutrition claim our ancient ancestors were hunter-gathers with an emphasis on hunting, regardless of what the bulk of current scientific research reports. They base their hypothesis largely upon a flawed review of contemporary hunter-gathers.

Primates, including humans, have practiced hunting and gathering for millions of years. I know of no large populations of primates who have been strict vegans (ate no animal foods at all). However, plants have, with very few exceptions, provided the bulk of the calories for almost all primates. This truth has been unpopular in part because of a well-recognized human trait, sexism. Grandparents, women, and children did the gathering, while men hunted. Glory always goes to the hunters.

“When asked about the commonly held idea that ancient people were primarily meat-eaters, the highly respected anthropologist, Nathanial Dominy, PhD, from Dartmouth College responded, “That’s a myth. Hunter-gathers, the majority of their calories come from plant foods…meat is just too unpredictable.” After studying the bones, teeth, and genetics of primates for his entire career as a biological anthropologist, Dr. Dominy, states, “Humans might be more appropriately described as ‘starchivores.’””

WORD!

4IR. What’s Left? talks with a friend of the program (and of mine) Vincent Kelly about a significant aspect of the Epstein matter, his connections to science research in general and specifically to AI development/

Jeffrey Epstein and the Cult of Scientism, What’s Left? 9/27/25. an hour and 34 minutes.

“Vincent Kelly (who recently reprinted an article he wrote about Jeffrey Epstein with the same title) joins us to talk about a little known part of Epstein’s grotesque legacy: his connection to the science community. Check us out!”

My comments at the page, with some additions.

Thanks, Andy, Eduardo and Michael, and Vincent!!

GREAT discussion. WOW re Epstein’s links to scientists such as Stephen Hawking. And how he was very interested in termite behavior thinking that it explains human market behavior, as if the market is hard-wired into human biology. And he had LOTS of links to the AI sector. Excellent quote from Vincent’s article read by Michael around 36:00 about liberals/Democrats and Epstein, re their embrace of “science.” (scientism). [See below for a link to the article as well as the quoted segment]

One dissenting note. The term “commodity” is an artifact of capitalism. A good or service is not a commodity unless it’s made for exchange. In a post capitalist society there won’t be any commodities, and no use values, which are specific to commodities.

What exactly did “COVID” (i.e. the actual physical situation of the time) have to do with science?

[Adding, i didn’t think posting this at YouTube would survive, but what i meant was that the discussion participants appeared to think that 2020 was merely a case of an exaggeration of the dangers posed, as if there was any physical reality to the “Pandemic”/”COVID-19”/”SARS-CoV-2” disinformation narrative]

Thanks very much for this excellent article, Vincent, it educated me well about a subject i knew little about.

Jeffrey Epstein and the Cult of Scientism

Anatomy of a science philanthropy empire.

[Current intro]Much of the current media discourse on Epstein revolves around his connections with Trump, his suspected intelligence links to Israel, and the significance of the administration’s duplicity on the Epstein Files in the contemporary American political landscape. What has been lost in this recent media blitz is an attention to the more insidious aspects of Epstein’s legacy, particularly his influence on some of the world’s most prominent and prestigious figures in science and technology.

In order to shed light on Jeffrey Epstein’s science philanthropy empire, I am republishing an article I wrote in July 2019, a month before Epstein’s death in New York City’s Metropolitan Correctional Center in August of the same year. The article was originally published at Counterpunch under the title, “Jeffrey Epstein and the Collapse of Europe.” This is the last article I wrote for Counterpunch, whose editorial staff was shockingly inept and unhelpful when I was subjected to veiled threats by a technology company that was upset about my reporting on its connections to Epstein.

When I wrote this article, the details of Epstein’s science philanthropy endeavors could be accessed in various corners of the internet. However, an astonishing number of these web pages were subsequently taken down, in many cases within days and weeks of this article’s publication. This was presumably done in an effort to erase evidence of the scientific establishment’s strong ties with Epstein. When possible, I have updated the earlier hyperlinks with Internet Archive links to snapshots of these purged pages.

I emphasize Epstein’s passion for AI research and the symbiotic relationship between elite science and United States imperialism. In the more than six years since this article’s publication, AI has taken on a central role in public discourse. Likewise, the relationship between science and American empire has been thrown into sharp relief. Jeffrey Epstein’s science philanthropy and the scientistic worldview that animated his philanthropic efforts is, thus, essential to understand six years after his arrest and death. -Vincent

[the passage from the article which Michael read]

But what happens when the actions of one of the most passionate funders of this cutting-edge research “shock the conscience”? It is easy to write off Epstein as a sociopathic deviant, an exception. The mainstream media is now ready to do just that with an encouraging push from the opportunistic Democratic Party establishment, which ignores ample Democratic involvement with Epstein and feigns offense at his crimes in hopes of getting at Trump, in order to reestablish the liberal status quo of American imperial exceptionalism.

It is much harder, however, to reflect on the fact that it is figures like Epstein who are most invested in the scientific and technological progress that so many well-adjusted, liberal Americans uncritically support. Although Epstein’s actions are especially deplorable, his Epicurean scientistic worldview is one that is held by many others as a default. The fact that a man like Epstein subscribes to such a widespread epistemology and funds what is ostensibly the scientific research and technological development of the future should give us all pause.

And, the UK government will now require digital IDs on the part of all employees as part of a plan to deal with an immigration crisis.

Why is the UK introducing digital IDs – and why are they so controversial? Keir Starmer’s digital ID proposal has been criticised by rivals and civil liberties groups over privacy concerns. Alex Kozul-Wright and News Agencies, 9/29/25.

The British government announced last week that all employees will be required to hold a digital identity card, amid Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s attempts to curb undocumented immigration and reduce the apparent threat from the populist Reform UK party. Addressing the Global Progress Action Summit on Friday – alongside leaders from Canada, Australia and Iceland – Starmer said his left-leaning Labour government had been overly “squeamish” about discussing voters’ concerns on immigration.

That, he added, has allowed parties such as Reform UK – which campaigns on a strongly anti-immigrant ticket – to gain popularity. Reform, which is led by Brexit campaigner Nigel Farage, has been touted by polling groups as likely to be Labour’s main challenger at the next election, due in 2029. “That is why today I am announcing this government will make a new, free-of-charge, digital ID mandatory for the right to work by the end of this parliament,” he said.

But Starmer’s move has led to a civil liberties row in the United Kingdom, where the concept of national identity cards has traditionally been unpopular. Here is what we know.

“There’s a battle for the soul of this country now as to what sort of country we want to be,” Starmer told a conference of left-wing and liberal Western leaders on September 26. “That’s why I want this to be out as an open fight between Labour and Reform.” Reform UK, headed by the right-wing populist Farage, has moved ahead of Labour in public opinion polls amid growing concerns about immigration into the UK, fuelled by record numbers of illegal small-boat crossings from France to the UK this year.

In an effort to assuage right-wing voters concerned about immigration, Starmer wrote in an article in the conservative Telegraph newspaper on September 25: “There is no doubt that for years, left-wing parties, including my own, did shy away from people’s concerns around illegal immigration.” A YouGov poll published on September 26 showed that in a general election, Reform would most likely win 311 seats in the British Parliament, far higher than the five that it holds currently, while Labour would slump to 144 from 399 currently. There are a total of 650 seats in the UK’s House of Commons. To win a majority, a single party must win more than half, 326 seats. If Reform does win the next election, it has promised to deport undocumented immigrants en masse.

The UK government’s website says: “The new digital ID scheme will make it easier for people across the UK to use vital government services.” It will “improve access to public services like education and social benefits – by making it easier for everyone to quickly and easily prove their identity”, the website says. “It will also be available to use to prove your identity when voting in elections [and will] reduce identity fraud by minimising personal details you give out.”

However, Starmer told attendees at the Global Progress Action Summit that digital IDs would also “make it tougher to work illegally in this country, making our borders more secure” as it would make it much harder for people without permission to be in the country to find a job. Starmer added that “digital ID is an enormous opportunity for the UK”.

Ministers argue that the relative ease of finding work without a visa is one of the key reasons that undocumented immigrants are attracted to the UK compared with other European countries, where ID cards are relatively common. Germany, France, Greece, Spain and Italy require citizens and residents to hold them, and last weekend, Switzerland narrowly approved a plan to introduce voluntary electronic ID cards as well.

The idea of a digital “Brit Card” has been proposed by the Labour Together think tank, which is closely associated with the governing party. In June, it published a paper which put forward the concept of a free digital ID, stored on a person’s smartphone using a planned “gov.uk Wallet” app. It is understood that information about a holder’s residency status, name, date of birth, nationality and a photo will be included. The card could then be presented to employers, immigration officials and banks to verify a person’s legal status in the country.

Currently, UK citizens have to present another form of ID, such as a passport or driving licence, to prove their identity when applying for services such as banking or when applying for a job. The government says, however, that about 10 percent of UK citizens have never held a passport, while 93 percent of adults own a smartphone.

Though Starmer’s proposal has not been fully fleshed out yet, the digital ID would be held by all UK citizens and legal residents. It is unclear whether self-employed people would be required to hold a digital ID, but unemployed people would not be required to obtain the digital ID unless they seek employment. Over time, the ID could also provide users with access to services such as tax records, childcare and social welfare benefits.

According to the UK government’s website: “You will need just one ID in one secure place on your phone. This will make it easier to access some services without tracking down your physical passport, birth certificate or driving licence – as well as various utilities bills and council tax letters. It will prove who you are instantly, instead of waiting for manual checks and paperwork. That means you can get faster service across government departments. It will cut lengthy time spent filling in forms and document scanning by verifying your identity in seconds, rather than days or weeks for processing.”

Despite historical resistance to national ID cards among Brits, more than half – 57 percent – now support a national identity card scheme, polling by Ipsos found in July. The Labour Party attempted to introduce an identity card when it was in power in the 2000s under then-Prime Minister Tony Blair, but the plan was dropped because of civil liberty concerns.

Although Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy said the government had “no intention of pursuing a dystopian mess”, civil liberty groups say they are concerned about privacy issues as people would be required to provide personal information to be stored on a government app. Even though more people are in favour of national digital ID today than they were in the past, there is still a good deal of resistance to the idea, said Tony Travers, professor in the government department at the London School of Economics. “There is a deep cultural and political opposition to digital ID cards in the UK. Many people feel they are one short step from authoritarianism and state control,” he told Al Jazeera.

Indeed, more than 1.6 million people have already signed a petition against introducing digital ID cards on the UK Parliament’s website. Petitions which gain more than 100,000 signatures have to be considered for debate in Parliament. The Liberal Democrats party has also said it will not support mandatory ID cards. Last week, party spokesperson Victoria Collins said people would be “forced to turn over their private data just to go about their daily lives”.

Elsewhere, some research groups have suggested that digital IDs could create additional barriers for people already living on the margins, and exacerbate the risks of exploitation, social exclusion and poverty for undocumented migrants. Alongside seven other organisations, Big Brother Watch – a non-partisan civil liberties organisation – has written to the prime minister urging him to abandon the plan, saying it will “push unauthorised migrants further into the shadows”.

The leader of the Conservative Party, which governed the UK till last year, Kemi Badenoch, dismissed the plans for a digital ID as a “gimmick that will do nothing to stop the boats”. Meanwhile, Reform UK called the plans a “cynical ploy” designed to “fool” voters into thinking something is being done about immigration. Writing in the right-wing Daily Express newspaper last week, Farage said: “The Labour government’s plan to impose digital ID cards on all adults will do nothing to combat undocumented immigration. But it will give the state more power to control the British people.”

For Tony Travers, “Starmer’s proposal won’t do anything to curb illegal immigration in and of itself. It’s one of a series of proposals aimed at the issue.” “We’re in a situation … where reducing the number of illegal immigrants may stave off the [electoral] threat of Reform,” he said, adding, “But there’s no guarantee.”

And, Trump and Bibi met in the White House, and the result is an ultimatum to Hamas: accept this “peace plan” *surrender) or else.

Trump and Netanyahu to Hamas: accept Gaza peace plan or face consequences Pair say proposal represents new chapter but Israeli PM threatens to ‘finish the job’ if Hamas officials fail to agree. David Smith in Washington, 9/29/25

Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, have delivered an ultimatum to Hamas, warning the militant group to accept their 20-point peace plan for Gaza or face the consequences. The two leaders met at the White House in Washington on Monday then held a joint press briefing in which they hailed their proposal as a historic breakthrough and new chapter for the Middle East.

But it was clear that Hamas had not been consulted and its position on the terms remained uncertain. Mahmoud Mardawi, a Hamas official, said the group had not even received the plan, the Reuters news agency reported. It was later briefed that Qatari and Egyptian mediators met with Hamas on Monday evening to provide the group with the peace plan.

Both Trump and Netanyahu made clear that they were not offering Hamas a choice in the matter. If the group refused, Trump told reporters, “Israel would have my full backing to finish the job of destroying the threat of Hamas. “But I hope that we’re going to have a deal for peace, and if Hamas rejects the deal … Bibi, you’d have our full backing to do what you would have to do.”

The Israeli prime minister said ominously: “If Hamas rejects your plan, Mr President, or if they supposedly accept it and then do everything to counter it, then Israel will finish the job by itself. This can be done the easy way or it can be done the hard way, but it will be done.” Netanyahu added: “We’d prefer the easy way but it has to be done. All these goals must be achieved because we didn’t fight this horrible fight, sacrifice the finest of our young men to have Hamas stay in Gaza and threaten us again and again and again with these horrific massacres.”

Neither man took questions from reporters. Earlier the White House released the 20-point plan aimed at ending the war in the Palestinian territory that erupted after the deadly attack on 7 October 2023.

It calls for a ceasefire, a swap of hostages held by Hamas for Palestinian prisoners held by Israel, a staged Israeli withdrawal from the Palestinian territory, Hamas disarmament and a transitional government led by an international body. Trump said: “If accepted by Hamas, this proposal calls for the release of all remaining hostages immediately, but in no case more than 72 hours … The hostages are coming back.”

The plan also demands that Hamas lay down its arms and renounce governance in the strip. Hamas members who commit to peaceful coexistence would be given amnesty to remain in Gaza or they would be granted safe passage to receiving countries. Trump’s plan would also establish a temporary governing board that would be headed by Trump himself and include Tony Blair, the former British prime minister.

Trump said: “To ensure the success of this effort, my plan calls for a new international oversight body – the Board of Peace – which will be headed, not at my request … by a gentleman known as President Donald J Trump of the United States.” Earlier, a leaked 21-page draft document, seen by the Guardian and Haaretz in Israel, showed that a postwar Gaza governing authority would sideline key Palestinian political figures while giving significant authority to its chair on most key issues. [SNIP]...

Ending this segment and this edition, yet another debunking of the nuclear power will solve the energy/climate crises bunk narrative. Two segments.

The New Nuclear Fever, Debunked. Politicians who push small reactors raise false hopes that splitting atoms can make a real dent in the climate crisis. Andrew Nikiforuk, a week ago.

The industry has new powerful promoters. Tech billionaires are now thirsting for more electricity to feed their data centres and machine intelligence. Everyone from Jeff Bezos to Bill Gates is investing in nuclear reactors. Unfortunately, these claims that nuclear power can provide cheap energy security or reverse the persistent failure of national and global policies to reduce CO2 emissions is an illusion

Even the 2024 World Nuclear Status Industry Report offers a reality check. It reports that apart from new reactors built in China (almost all over budget), “the promise of nuclear” has “never materialized.” It adds that there is no global nuclear renaissance and likely won’t be one. Furthermore, the report pours cold water on the ability of SMRs, a nascent technology, to play any significant role in reducing carbon emissions.

That is not to say that nuclear technology won’t play a minor role in our highly problematic energy future. But what nuclear power can’t do is as luminous as a radium dial. Due to its cost and complexity, it will not provide cheap or low-emission electricity in timeframe or scale that matters as climate change continues to broil an indifferent civilization.

“Given the time required to implement small modular reactors,” notes energy analyst David Hughes, “[prime minister of the Canadian province of Alberta] Smith will likely be long gone before SMRs are ever implemented in Alberta to provide power for her dreams of doubling oil production.”

Vaclav Smil, one of the world’s foremost energy ecologists, no doubt concurs. Whenever anyone asks him about the future of SMRs he says, “Give me a call or send me an email once you see such wonders built on schedule, on budget, and in aggregate capacities large enough to make a real difference.” He is not expecting any calls for at least a decade or two.

Nuclear power, after overpromising and underdelivering during its heyday of the second half of the 20th century, remains what Smil calls a “successful failure.”

Its high priests (now they are nuclear bros) promised “electrical energy too cheap to meter” and “nuplexes” that would power satellites, TV stations and desalinization plants. Atomic energy also promised to replace oil. But complexity and brutal economics buried the techno-hype in piles of radioactive waste. Almost every large reactor ever built has been plagued by delays, technical difficulties, corruption and enormous cost overruns. A recent study that looked at 180 nuclear projects found that only five met their original cost and time goals. These economic realities explain why you don’t find a lot of nuclear reactors in Canada.

By the 1980s, such realities brought the so-called nuclear revolution to a crawl. Since then, more reactors have been retired than brought online. Global production of nuclear power probably peaked sometime around 2006. Today nuclear power accounts for about two per cent of delivered global energy consumption and that’s not likely to change much through 2050.

U.S. energy analyst Art Berman calculates that it would take the construction of 33 new plants per year for the next 27 years to move nuclear from two to four per cent of total energy supply. Smil has done his own math. To provide 10 per cent of its electrical supply, the U.S. would have to build and regulate some 1300 SMRs capable of putting out 100 megawatts per unit, he says.

And who has got the money, scientists and resources to do that in a period of growing political turmoil and economic corruption?…..

Members of the public, therefore, should be aware of the risks they are being asked to take on by funding the “advanced” technology of SMRs which remains largely untested. And they should know that to achieve an economy of scale would require the production of thousands of SMRs, which is not happening anywhere any time soon.

According to JP Morgan’s annual energy 2025 report, there are only three operating SMRs in the world: two in Russia and one in China and another under construction in Argentina. None came in on budget. “The cost overruns on the China SMR was 300 per cent, on Russian SMRs 400 per cent and on the Argentina SMR (so far) 700 per cent.” All promised to be up and running in three to four years and all took 12 years or more to complete. Argentina’s SMR project began in 2014 and it’s still not finished. That may happen in 2027.

Given these construction time frames, SMR certainly won’t put a dent in climate change in the near future or even decades from now. Certainly not in Russia, which uses its SMRs to mine arctic resources and produce more oil.

And then there is the inconvenient issue of nuclear waste. You’d think something called a small reactor would pump out small volumes of waste. That’s not what researchers discovered in 2022. They concluded, “SMRs will produce more voluminous and chemically/physically reactive waste than Light Water Reactors.” Managing and disposing this waste will be problematic. In fact, they calculated, “water-, molten salt–, and sodium-cooled SMR designs will increase the volume of nuclear waste in need of management and disposal by factors of two to 30.”