A new book examines how to deal with the complex problems caused by natural and humanitarian disasters, technological failures and geopolitical tensions.

Rarely a day passes without headlines describing national, regional or global crises. The world is disrupted by war, climatic extremes, geopolitical tensions, the risks of untamed technology, disease outbreaks, populist policy upheavals, tariffs, trade chokepoints and more. Attention and political debates shift from one to another, up and down the lists of what are variously termed polycrises and global catastrophic risks. Leaders and media pay attention to crises one at a time, from time to time.

 

The EU has signed on to ‘Pax Silica’, a US initiative seemingly designed to shut China and others out of the global AI supply chain and extract resources from Europe for the benefit of Washington’s military-industrial complex.

“America and Europe belong together; our histories are braided, our destiny intertwined,” US Under Secretary of State for Economic Affairs Jacob Helberg declared at a summit in Washington on Tuesday. “But we share more than a past. We share a purpose - to build a future that answers to our values and is worthy of our inheritance.”

 

Wired for War: Pax Silica is AI slavery disguised as strength

Palantir stands to emerge as the biggest winner in the US push to subjugate Europe and exclude China

 

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - Russian President Vladimir Putin and his US counterpart Donald Trump discussed America's proposals on Ukraine at the Alaska summit and they were accepted by the Russian side, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Friday.

On Thursday, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio argued that the Russian-American summit in Alaska had produced only proposals on Ukraine and not agreements.

"When my counterpart Marco Rubio says that in Alaska there were only proposals and no agreement, I have a question about what we actually mean by 'agreement.' If one side—in this case, the United States—placed its settlement proposals on the table, outlining how to approach this crisis, and the other side expressed agreement with those proposals, then to say that there was no agreement strikes me as not very elegant." Lavrov told reporters.

Community Strong Australia might not be the strongest name, and its logo less than transfixing, but Michael Pascoe reckons CSA senators are on the way.

With all eyes on One Hanson’s polling and the short-shift horserace media generally give the community independents movement, Zali Steggall and Allegra Spender have launched the Community Strong Australia non-party party. It faces a tough battle to reach official minor party status, but that doesn’t mean it won’t.

The antipathy of traditional media towards the “teals” and the general conservatism of political coverage will make it hard for the unconventional party to gain much coverage, although that’s not the way community independents have succeeded anyway.

 

So let me get this straight. Top Iran critic, former Trump National Security Advisor, John Bolton, has successfully cut a deal on spying-related charges with the US government for $2.25 million and to have any prison time capped at five years max – after Iran got ahold of a treasure trove of top secret intelligence thanks to him? And is confident that a judge would just go along with it?

 

Nothing sticks to John Bolton

A spy scandal, a plea deal, and maybe no jail: Bolton’s latest escape act shows how Washington protects its most connected failures

BY Rachel Marsden

 

The Big Ride for Palestine SA’s agreement with a sportswear manufacturer to create a jersey for its winter ride has been stymied by concern about its branding.

There is something quietly absurd about a cycling jersey becoming a flashpoint for corporate cowardice. Yet that is precisely what happened when an Australian sportswear manufacturer refused to produce a winter, long-sleeved jersey for the Big Ride for Palestine SA – a community cycling group raising awareness for peace in one of the world’s most devastating conflicts.

 

Chris Yiallouros

Pedalling into censorship

 

 

Malcolm Fraser and Gough Whitlam both warned against surrendering Australian sovereignty to US military and intelligence interests, but AUKUS and the Albanese government’s foreign policy have deepened that dependence.

 

John Menadue

Fraser, Whitlam, Albanese and national sovereignty

 

“Even if America was a benign power and it had the capacity to make good diplomatic decisions, I would not want to give that power, any power, the capacity to take Australia to war because they go to war,” Malcolm Fraser said in a 2015 address to the Australian Institute of International Affairs. Gough Whitlam would have agreed wholeheartedly, but not Anthony Albanese.

 

2019 — Last February, a small business in the Yonne region, Nicolas Industrie, withdrew from a contract for 120 tank transporters for the Saudi army. "Verboten!" (Forbidden!) Rheinmetall had ordered this subcontractor, which consequently laid off two-thirds of its workforce. This occurred while, on January 22nd in Aachen, Emmanuel Macron and Angela Merkel had signed, amid jeers from the Yellow Vests, a new Franco-German treaty in which they pledged to overcome their differences regarding arms exports!

Beyond the old refrains about European defense, Macron was requesting a permanent seat for Germany on the United Nations Security Council and was planning exceptions to "overcome obstacles to the implementation of cross-border projects."

 

As Keir Starmer prepares to leave the UK’s highest office after less than two years, the media has lined up to explain why he failed to deliver on the enormous hype he received as opposition leader and during his initial months in office. A repeated trope has been that Starmer was a “decent man,” but simply not cut out for mainstream politics. However, his record of concealing the UK establishment’s repulsive crimes – be that serial child sex abuse or spy agency torture – shows him to be anything but decent.

The Union Jack flutters on a telegraph pole.

Once a symbol of might and power, it is now anything but in a modern and broken kingdom where poverty is rife and rising further.

Modern Britain is a paradox.

The UK is still one of the richest countries in the world — a diplomatic power with a strong military and currency.

But millions of its residents live on the breadline, struggling to heat their homes and buy food.

The streets are cracked and broken. Many are strewn with rubbish. And at night, the lights are off as councils struggle to pay bills in what has become a fallen empire.

THERE ARE CONFLICTING WEIGHTED SOURCES OF INFORMATION IN REGARD TO THE UKRAINE CONFLICT. SO FAR THE WEST HAS BEEN PUSHING MASSIVE PROPAGANDA THAT GIVES THE NAZI KIEV REGIME THE UPPER HAND, OR LOSING LIGHTLY OR INFLICTING DEVASTATING BLOWS TO RUSSIA, AS THE RUSSIAN ADVANCE IS SOMEWHAT SLOW... AS WELL, THE WESTERN MEDIA AND POLITICAL CLOWNS PROCLAIM THAT RUSSIA WANTS TO TAKE OVER EUROPE, WHICH IS A SILLY PROPOSITION, BUT HAS TRACTION IN THE POLITICAL TOILETS OF THE EUROPEAN UNION...

 

WE KNOW THE WESTERN PROPAGANDA WELL — THAT WHICH TOLD US ABOUT "SADDAM'S WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION"... IN THIS RUSSIA/UKRAINE CONFLICT, THE WESTERN PROPAGANDA IS AS BULLSHIT AS THEN, BUT IT IS FAR MORE SOPHISTICATED IN ORDER TO DEAL WITH A DELICATE DIFFICULT CASE. SADDAM WAS A PUSHOVER. PUTIN IS NOT. SO RUSSOPHOBIA RUNS HOT.

 

Pauline Hanson’s National Press Club speech exposed the weakness in the old right-wing politics of subtraction: in an age of scarcity, promising to take things away no longer lands on someone else, but on the voters she needs.

For decades the Australian right has won by taking things away and calling it discipline. It worked because the loss always fell on someone else, and because good times left a buffer to absorb it. Pauline Hanson has just reached for that same move in an age of scarcity, when there is no buffer left and no one else to blame, and aimed it squarely at her own base.

 

Kos Samaras

Every country has its catastrophic moment – the date that goes down in history as the nation’s darkest day. For Russia, disaster struck on June 22, 1941.

The Nazi attack on the USSR resulted in the deaths of 27 million people; around half of them were unarmed civilians – innocent victims of the war and the Nazis’ genocidal plans. The Soviet territory occupied by the Nazis during the war was the size of a country like Iran and had a pre-war population of 86 million.

 

The worst day in Russian history: How the USSR met Hitler unprepared – and still crushed him

On the 85th anniversary of the Nazi invasion, a look at why the Red Army nearly broke in 1941 – and why the USSR did not....

One of the most controversial and difficult-to-find Civil War conspiracy pieces ever published, this short work originated as two articles printed in Social Justice in February 1940. In just a few dozen pages, Coughlin presented a dramatic alternative narrative of the Civil War, arguing that the conflict was not primarily about slavery but was driven by international financial interests seeking profit, debt, and control......

 

FLASH/FLASH/BEFORE EPSTEIN AND TRUMP: ABRAHAM LINCOLN AND THE ROTHSCHILDS – THE REAL CAUSE OF THE CIVIL WAR