The National Anti-Corruption Commissioner, Paul Brereton, has submitted his resignation to the Governor-General, following three years of not very much.

His resignation follows a tenure marred by controversy, including failing to recuse himself when he should have, doing another job without disclosure, and generally leading a commission that has fallen well short of reasonable expectations.

In three years and an annual budget of $67m and 220 staff members, the highlight from the latest NACC report (2024-25) says it all:

There was more evidence this week of the Kiev regime’s endemic corruption. And yet the European Union leaders are lining up to send a massive €90 billion ($105bn ) loan to this regime, a regime which has become a byword for industrial-scale scamming.

The EU has already pumped about €200 billion into propping up the Ukrainian regime since February 2022, when the NATO proxy war with Russia escalated.

European leaders aren’t blind to Kiev corruption… they are key partners in a massive extortion racket

EU leaders like Kaja Kallas, the bloc’s top foreign diplomat, have played dumb about the endless scandals seeping out of Kiev.

Artificial intelligence is no longer merely a technological tool but is becoming an instrument of regulatory power, which means that the rules of the Great Geopolitical Game may no longer be defined as they once were – that is, through the confrontation between great powers – but rather through a mediated dimension, indeed transposed into a sub-dimension: the virtual digital realm, where AI has, or so it seems, the ability to control cyberspace.

Geopolitics and AI: Who will write the Rules of the Game?

BY Lorenzo Maria Pacini

Technology has now begun to move at such a pace that it is dragging the centers of geopolitical power along with it – no longer the other way around.

Foreign ministers from NATO’s 32 member states met in Helsingborg, Sweden, on Thursday and Friday [21-22 May 2026] to prepare this summer’s NATO summit in Turkey. The meeting was dominated by sharpening antagonisms between the United States and its erstwhile European and Canadian allies under conditions of an ongoing war pursued by the imperialist powers to subordinate Russia to the status of a semi-colony.

NATO summit in Sweden exposes sharpening inter-imperialist antagonisms amid escalation of war on Russia

BY Jordan Shilton

AN ANALYSIS BY GUS LEONISKY: Power in politics or in social constructs presents a very bleak picture to the ordinary person seeking freedom.

A division of ideology is apparently sweeping France. Immigration has shifted representations in governments at local and national levels.

Some French people are going back to Foucault’s views in order to make sense of what is power. They know that philosphers can explain power... and that philosophers can't influence the powerful...

Let’s not mince words, the “death tax” campaign begun by The Australian and the rest of News Ltd stable is a pack of lies and manipulative misinformation. It is best met with facts and reassurance.

There is no death tax in the Budget. The changes to taxes on trusts only affect the very wealthiest of people. The changes to capital gains tax will not stymie innovation, send innovators offshore, or affect anyone unfairly.

Death to News Ltd’s propaganda

BY Crispin Hull

The campaign is classic propaganda designed to scare and dupe people into voting against their own interests.

Indeed, there is a solid argument that if the changes to trust income went further it would benefit the great majority of Australia’s 16 million taxpayers.

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic arrived in Beijing on Sunday for his first state visit to China, a trip that is aimed at striving for more tangible outcomes in building a China-Serbia community with a shared future for the new era.

President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Qiang will respectively meet with Vucic during the visit, which runs from Sunday to Thursday, to exchange views on bilateral relations, as well as international and regional issues of mutual interest.

Before leaving for China, Vucic described his visit as "undoubtedly the most important trip abroad" in his political career, according to Serbian news agency Tanjug.

He said that Serbia attaches great importance to building strong partnerships with friendly countries that respect its independence, development and right to choose its own path.

... There were now two of us on the bench. My neighbor was leafing through a book, from whose pages a withered flower slipped unnoticed. I picked it up to give it back to him. The stranger greeted me, raised it to his withered lips, and placed it back in the mysterious book.

"This flower," I ventured to say, "is surely the symbol of some sweet, buried love? Alas! We all have a day of happiness in the past that disenchants our future."

"Are you a poet?" he replied, smiling. The thread of the conversation had taken hold: now, on what spool would it unravel?

"A poet, if it is a poet to have sought art!"

"You sought art! And did you find it?"

"Would to heaven that art were not a chimera!"

"A chimera!... and I too have sought it!" he exclaimed with the enthusiasm of genius and the emphasis of triumph.

More than 20 years after he wrote that the Liberal Party has deserted it roots and become deeply conservative, Greg Barns argues it is well beyond time for a genuine liberal force to enter the fray.

Greg Barns

[2014] In the main this has been understood as applying to grave violations of the laws of war (especially the Hague and Geneva Conventions), crimes against humanity (recently specified to include apartheid and torture as distinct crimes), crimes against the peace (aggression, which was the core crime alleged at Nuremberg and Toyko, but has been called into question in recent years), and genocide (not formally criminalized until 1948).

Geopolitics and international state crime: an accountability black hole

There is a conspiracy of silence around victors’ justice within the United Nations and in global diplomacy, as if it is embarrassing even to call attention to such a fundamental deficiency in the implementation of international criminal law.

by RICHARD FALK

On May 26, the Donetsk People’s Republic marked the tenth anniversary of the first battle for the region’s international airport. This was a key clash in the fight between Ukraine and local citizens who opposed the nationalist-dominated government that had seized power in Kiev as a result of the US-backed coup in February 2014.

Scott Ritter: Why did it take Russia so long to realize Donbass was worth fighting for?

As its military operation enters a critical stage, the question of why it took Moscow eight years to intervene remains a sensitive topic

BY Scott Ritter

The anniversary was but one in a succession of similar commemorations of events which, together, draw attention to the fact that the war in Donbass has been ongoing for a decade.

If one adjective could describe renowned British broadcaster, naturalist and author Sir David Attenborough, it would be "indefatigable." 

Though having physically slowed down with age, the now 100-year-old presenter's passion for the natural world — and his enthusiasm in sharing it with viewers — has not waned. 

Celebrated naturalist David Attenborough turns 100

BY Brenda Haas

The still-sprightly centenarian has been knighted twice, nominated for the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize, and is perhaps the world's most recognizable nature lover.

The Federal Reserve is about to welcome a new chair for the first time in eight years as Kevin Warsh takes the reins from Jerome Powell. And while what’s happening in Washington may feel far away from your everyday financial life, it’s a change worth paying attention to.

Incendios: Una crítica ecosocial del capitalismo inflamable (Verso, 2025) analyzes the nature of capitalism through the lens of flames. Through an eco-Marxist analysis of three fires that occurred in Portugal, Peru, and the United Kingdom in June 2017, writer and filmmaker Alejandro Pedregal reconstructs the eco-sociohistorical layers that underlie the present we inhabit.

Capitalism Is a Flammable System: An Interview with Alejandro Pedregal

By Alejandro Pedregal, Alejandro Coronel

This interview and the introductory note originally appeared in Spanish, in the Latin American edition of Jacobin.