“When New York Governor Kathy Hochul, whose state has banned natural gas pipelines because of ‘climate change’, goes all in for nuclear energy, you know the revolution is under way. For decades, the anti-nuclear movement moved from protesting nuclear weapons to oppose nuclear energy as well. But not today. Gov. Hochul, in an adjunct to her state of the state speech in January, said her administration supports a grant request by Constellation Energy for federal funding to build one or more small modular nuclear reactors at its Nine Mile Point site in Oswego. Constellation’s four New York State reactors provide about a fifth of the state’s electricity. Hochul’s announcement dovetailed the release of a state ‘Blueprint for Consideration of Advanced Nuclear Energy Technologies,’ crafted by the Brattle Group for the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority.” (02/15/25)
“Thousands of people marched to the United States Embassy in London on Saturday to protest President Donald Trump’s ethnic cleansing plan for the Gaza Strip, a proposal that has been roundly condemned as unlawful and monstrous by the U.N., international human rights organizations, and Palestinians living in the enclave decimated by relentless Israeli bombing. The march came after Trump doubled down on his proposal for the U.S. to ‘take over’ Gaza after forcibly and permanently displacing Palestinians from the territory. ‘Think of it as a big real estate site, and the United States is going to own it and we’ll slowly (very slowly, we’re in no rush) develop it,’ Trump told reporters last weekend. Marchers carried signs Sunday expressing contempt for the president’s proposal, which Amnesty International denounced as ‘inflammatory, outrageous, and shameful’.” (02/15/25)
“On a recent Sunday, Tracy Quinn drove down the Pacific Coast Highway to assess damage wrought upon the coastline by the Palisades Fire. The water line was darkened by ash. Burnt remnants of washing machines and dryers and metal appliances were strewn about the shoreline. Sludge carpeted the water’s edge. Waves during high tide lapped onto charred homes, pulling debris and potentially toxic ash into the ocean as they receded. ‘It was just heartbreaking,’ said Quinn, president and CEO of the environmental group Heal the Bay, whose team has reported ash and debris some 25 miles (40 kilometers) south of the Palisades burn area west of Los Angeles. As crews work to remove potentially hundreds of thousands of tons of hazardous materials from the Los Angeles wildfires, researchers and officials are trying to understand how the fires on land have impacted the sea.” (02/16/25)
“The fog of war is a good analogy for what has transpired the past few days in the federal workforce. After getting a favorable ruling to move forward, the so-called ‘deferred resignation’ program closed Wednesday night, with 75,000 workers signing up. This represents about three percent of federal employees, short of the administration’s goal of 5-10 percent. Some agencies saw higher pickup, like the eight percent of staff at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation who opted for it. But some IRS employees who took the offer were then told they had to stay until May 15 because their jobs were ‘essential’ to tax filing season. It’s the first documented shenanigan of a program that is still being challenged in court.” (02/15/25)
“US Secretary of State Marco Rubio plans to meet Russian officials in Saudi Arabia in the coming days for talks aimed at ending the war in Ukraine, US officials say. America’s top diplomat will be joined by national security adviser Mike Waltz and the US special envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, the officials told the BBC’s US partner CBS News. US special envoy to Ukraine Keith Kellogg said Washington, Moscow and Kyiv would be involved in talks, but Europe was not invited. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Kyiv had not been invited to the talks in Saudi Arabia. Amid European concern that the US is moving ahead on peace talks with Russia without consulting the continent, Ukraine’s European allies will gather in Paris next week for an emergency summit on the war.” (02/16/25)
“[Lee] Zeldin last week announced that his team rooted out roughly $20 billion in taxpayer money that the Biden administration had squirreled away at an unnamed outside financial institution. The plan, per Zeldin, was to park that cash to be passed out to far-left climate groups in ‘a rush job with reduced oversight,’ as it was ‘awarded to just eight entities that were then responsible for doling out your money to NGOs and others at their discretion with far less transparency.’ So a $20 billion giveaway for groups pushing the radical climate agenda, meted out with zero input from anyone voters actually put in charge. Kudos to Zeldin’s team for catching this scam, we hope in time to stop the billions from going all the way out the door.” (02/15/25)
“Millions of dollars collected by the United States Army for a food program were spent elsewhere — with less than half of the funds actually finding their way to soldiers’ plates, according to a report. An investigative report from Military.com found that of the $225 million snatched up from junior enlisted soldiers as part of the Basic Allowance for Subsistence program, just $74 million went towards food. ‘It’s just returned to the big pool of army funds, and it’s used someplace else,’ an official told the outlet. The money is collected in what amounts to a tax on troops — taken from their BAS payment of $460 per month and automatically deducted from paychecks of service members who live in barracks. The program is intended to help enlisted men and women to cover food costs.” (02/15/25)
“Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says he directed his ministers not to sign off on a proposed agreement to give the United States access to Ukraine’s rare earth minerals because the document was too focused on U.S. interests. The proposal, which was at the center of Zelenskyy’s talks with U.S. Vice President JD Vance on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference on Friday, did not offer any specific security guarantees in return, according to one current and one former senior official familiar with the talks. Zelenskyy’s decision to reject a deal, at least for now, was described as ‘short-sighted’ by a senior White House official. ‘I didn’t let the ministers sign a relevant agreement because in my view it is not ready to protect us, our interest,’ Zelenskyy told The Associated Press on Saturday in Munich.” (02/16/25)
“The CFPB was one of the few remnants of the 2008 financial crisis that actually aimed to help ordinary people. The workers locked out of the agency spoke about their jobs, the value of the work they did, reminding themselves and their audience that federal employees have vital jobs that working Americans rely on. Naturally, that’s placed it in the crosshairs of Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency, which has so far functioned like a private hit squad, moving in and out of various government offices in what Reuters, based on the analysis of two Republican experts, called ’an ideological assault on federal agencies long hated by conservatives.'” [editor’s note: The avowed purpose of this effort is to cut back all the fraud, waste and money laundering, and then see if some needs to be reinstated – SAT] [additional editor’s note: “Avowed” is not the same thing as “actual” – TLK] (02/14/25)
Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone
“The two big stories in the news today are the Trump administration saying Ukraine is going to have to give up territory and NATO ambitions in order to secure a peace deal, while Israel appears to retreat from its ceasefire standoff with Hamas. US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said on Wednesday that the US ‘does not believe that NATO membership for Ukraine is a realistic outcome for a negotiated settlement,’ and that ‘returning to Ukraine’s pre-2014 borders is an unrealistic objective.’ This comes as Trump announces that he is in talks with Vladimir Putin to bring the war in Ukraine to an end. Both NATO membership and recapturing all territory lost to Russia have been the goal of Ukraine’s President Zelensky and the NATO enthusiasts throughout the western world who adore him.” (02/13/25)
