Revelations about overseas training, intelligence failures and police responses raise urgent questions that cannot be left to internal reviews.

In a sharp piece of investigative journalism, the ABC’s Sean Rubinsztein-Dunlop this week reported that the alleged Bondi terrorists, Sajid and Naveed Akram, travelled to the Philippines for ‘military style training’. This occurred in November, just weeks before they opened fire on the Jewish Hanukkah celebration at Bondi Beach.

A new analysis by the news outlet DeSmog finds that the Trump administration’s efforts at EPA and other agencies to support coal generation, combined with growing energy demand driven by artificial intelligence, are prompting 15 U.S. coal plants to delay planned retirements this year, with one plant delaying its closure by seven years.

The great baseball legend and jokester Yogi Berra once quipped that a restaurant had become so crowded that nobody goes there anymore. Here’s a version for today: young people in America have such dismal economic prospects that they spend more money than ever.

America’s Weimar moment: What DoorDash culture says about economic decline

When the future becomes unaffordable and saving money is pointless, a $30 poke bowl makes complete sense

by Henry Johnston

When a Southern Air Transport plane was shot down over Nicaragua in October 1986, the world got a rare window into U.S. government covert activity. Southern Air Transport was founded as a small cargo airline in 1947, the same year the Office of Strategic Services evolved into the Central Intelligence Agency as the U.S. pivoted to its Cold War posture. The agency owned the airline outright from 1960 until 1973, at which point it was sold to the same man, Stanley Williams, who had run the company since the Kennedy administration. 

Epstein, Israel, and the CIA: How The Iran–Contra Planes Landed at Les Wexner’s Base
Jeffrey Epstein helped Leslie Wexner repurpose the CIA’s Iran–Contra planes from arms smuggling to shipping lingerie.

The EU’s determination to further fund Kiev’s military and prop up its imploding economy has been presented as a kind of victory. “Europe has delivered,” German Chancellor Friedrich Merz proclaimed, in celebration of a new cash facility for Kiev.

The grim reality behind the grandstanding: What’s in the EU’s new cash delivery to Kiev
How the latest loan for Ukraine will work, and what impact it could have on an ailing bloc, is not something its leaders are happy to discuss

Civilisations rise and fall. Some are vanquished militarily, subjugated, annihilated: Carthago delenda est (Cato, 146 BC). Many indigenous cultures of North and South America succumbed under the onslaught of Europeans conquistadores, who occupied their lands, spoliated their resources, enslaved them, starved them to death. The First Nations of America were victims of genocide, including the Arawaks, Siboneyes und Tainos of Cuba (Bartolomé de las Casas, “The Destruction of the Indies”).

Resolution 2026

Redescovering the moral compass

by Alfred de Zayas

In a week that could have seen Australia united through tragedy, mainstream media, politicians and many others have taken the opportunity to sow division instead. Even the pollsters.

Roy Morgan is Australia’s oldest and best-known market research company, “with an unparalleled reputation for reliable, accurate, meaningful, revealing market research,” according to their own blurb. This week, they saw fit to survey people about who was the worst terrorist.

==================

Roy Morgan> In your opinion, which of the following groups are responsible for the terrorism our world is living with everyday? (Multiple responses allowed)

Buddhists
Hindus
Jews
Christians
Muslims
The Israelis
The Arabs
The Indians
The Australians
The Chinese
The British
The Europeans
The Americans
The West

As the negotiations for a diplomatic settlement to end the war in Ukraine gain momentum, European leaders insist on slowing them down by repeating three lies. These are, essentially, the same lies they have been telling since the war began. 

Europe’s Three Lies About Ukraine
The European bloc’s reasons to keep the war grinding are unsound at best.

Ted Snider

A Jewish woman wearing a Keffiyeh as well as the Star of David was escorted off Bondi Beach by police. The resulting social media storm led to death threats to her and to her friend.

I am writing this knowing it will likely result in more death threats.

That is not a metaphor. It is a statement of fact, based on what happened to my friend Michelle and me this week, and what happened next when we sought protection from the state.

WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange has filed a criminal complaint against the Nobel Foundation, accusing it of misusing Nobel Peace Prize funds by awarding them to Venezuelan opposition figure Maria Corina Machado, who has publicly called on the US to attack her own country.

The complaint, dated Wednesday and submitted to Sweden’s Economic Crime Authority and War Crimes Unit, where the Nobel Foundation is based, argues that Alfred Nobel’s will legally restricts Peace Prize funds to purposes that promote peace and bars their use to advance war or foreign military intervention.

Guests at the White House Christmas reception fell silent Sunday as President Donald Trump veered way off topic to deliver a cozy holiday tale about … poisonous snakes?

“Tale” is probably giving him too much credit. During his address, 79-year-old Trump turned his attention to Peru, which he said “is known to be a rather rough place in terms of physical creatures crawling around.” 

Although August talks between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump were framed as an attempt to explore pathways toward ending the conflict in Ukraine, active combat operations have continued across the special military operation zone. In 2025, the fighting has entered a new technological stage, with drone warfare becoming one of the defining elements of the battlefield.

PAVEL MOROZOV
Russia’s Drone War Enters a New Phase in 2025 as Geran Strikes Reach Unprecedented Scale

From Mass Strikes to Laser Defense: How Russia Reshaped the Drone Battlefield in 2025

As a freelance writer, I know I have to produce copy that meets the expectations of editors and management. When I write opinion pieces, I know well that my arguments should closely align with the publication’s general outlook. But I’ve always believed that if my views on any particular topic diverged from an outlet I’m writing for, it was acceptable to express those viewpoints in other publications.

I was canceled by three newspapers for criticizing Israel
Editors at right-leaning publications stopped responding to my emails after I wrote columns critical of the war on Gaza in other media outlets...

BY DAVE SEMINARA

On 30 January 1933, when Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor of the German Reich by the President of the German Reich, Paul von Hindenburg, there was still a largely freely elected parliament, various parties and independent associations, a constitution with fundamental rights and separation of powers, and besides Hitler only two National Socialists in the new government of the Reich.

Germany is to be brought into line: towards “war readiness”

And who gets racked and ruined

by Karl-Jürgen Müller