bench

WATCH: Biden adds fodder to dementia speculation as spirited response on filibuster reform degenerates into word salad

President Joe Biden apparently had some crucial things to say about reforming the Senate filibuster, the legislative speed bump against ruling-party dominance, but his descent into unintelligibility left his plans a mystery.

tomcats

Christian Porter has been made industry minister while Peter Dutton will replace Linda Reynolds in the defence portfolio.

Senator Michaelia Cash has been promoted to attorney-general and industrial relations minister to replace Mr Porter, who lost his job as the nation’s first law officer after launching defamation action against the ABC.

Mr Porter released a statement on Monday afternoon, congratulating Senator Cash on her new portfolios, and pledging to give his new appointments “all the energy and commitment I have”.

robert

The federal court ruled in May 2020 that Jane was entitled to use NDIS funds on sex worker services if it was deemed “reasonable and necessary” because the NDIS Act “does not expressly exclude such activities from being funded supports”.

Robert immediately responded that the government would seek to change the law, and in recent weeks he has embarked on a series of interviews highlighting the issue.

pox

The Cow-Pock—or—the Wonderful Effects of the New Inoculation!—vide. the Publications of ye Anti-Vaccine Society

Print (color engraving) published June 12, 1802 by H. Humphrey, St. James's Street.

water

Water fight: Israel turns off Jordan’s water supply amid drought and ‘personal frictions’

Already in trouble with Jordan, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu escalated tensions with his country’s closest Arab ally on Friday by unilaterally rejecting its request to increase water supply to the drought-hit kingdom.

Netanyahu’s decision – reportedly influenced by a souring of his personal relationship with Jordanian King Abdullah II – went against the security services recommendation to avoid risking historic water-sharing agreements critical to peace in the region.

According to the Haaretz newspaper, Netanyahu did not “respond positively even though professionals in water matters and defense establishment officials recommended acceding to the request.”

hr

The US president's preaching about human rights in a nation he wants to undermine have never sounded as hollow as when he speaks about the 'oppressed' Muslims of China. Just ask any Muslim-majority country bombed by the US.

By Caitlin Johnstone, an independent journalist based in Melbourne, Australia. Her website is here and you can follow her on Twitter @caitoz

kamala

Arizona Governor Doug Ducey has derided the president's move to appoint Vice-President Kamala Harris as the leading administration official to oversee the crisis at the southern border as the “worst possible choice” Joe Biden could have made.

“At no point in her career has [Harris] given any indication that she considers the border a problem or a serious threat. If President Biden's intent was to show that he's taking this issue seriously […] he's really done the exact opposite,” Ducey, a Republican, asserted on Wednesday.

Normandie

Émile Wenz is barely 21 when he begins his journey from Reims to Australia, in 1884.

samantha

Anyone who has spent enough time in Washington or has even a cursory familiarity with the professional functionaries who staff the foreign policy and national security apparatus here will have encountered, at one time or another, well-intentioned, seemingly humble, painfully earnest bureaucrats who are certain that the rest of the world needs, indeed cries out for, “American leadership.”

by James W. Carden

jake

dicky

After yet another explosive report by the ABC’s Four Corners on Monday night, accompanied by a sordid tale from Network 10 of male Coalition staffers getting their jollies on the desks of female MPs, Scott Morrison staged a media confessional on Tuesday morning in an attempt to change the narrative.

What narrative?

jen

NATO chief: Melting Arctic ice could heat up geopolitics

With China and Russia expanding their military presence in the Arctic, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg told DW melting ice could increase geopolitical tensions and show the "security impacts of climate change."

"The melting of the ice in the Arctic could lead to the heating up of geopolitical tensions between different powers in the world," Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg told DW’s Alexandra von Nahmen in an exclusive interview ahead of an in-person meeting of NATO foreign ministers.  

scomo...

Holding a press conference inside Parliament House, the Prime Minister defended himself against criticism stemming from his justification for his response to the Brittany Higgins rape allegation and how his wife had told him to imagine it was his daughter.

"Criticise me if you like for speaking about my daughters, but they are the centre of my life. My wife is the centre of my life," he said.

But he also angrily rejected questions from journalists suggesting he may have lost control over the ministerial staff.

no entry...

Biden team searches for new ways to slow border surge

The administration is sending sterner warnings to would-be migrants and devising alternate pathways for legal entry. But it’s unclear whether it will be enough.

By Sean Sullivan and Seung Min Kim

Read more at the WaPo...

glasshouse

In attacking the moral character of Russia’s president and China’s human rights record, the Biden administration opened the door for a critical examination of America's own troubled history.

By Scott Ritter