What’s the scam with the carbon credits middlemen? Correspondence obtained by MWM claims brokers are taking fees equivalent to half the value of the project’s credits, even more.

The energy and carbon consultants that mediate between the Clean Energy Regulator (CER) and project owners are taking up to 70% of the value of the Australian Carbon Credit Units (ACCU), according to industry sources.

In a note from Martin Energy Group’s Andrew Boughton to Dairy Australia, he says, “It beggars belief that 20% to 50% of the value of a national carbon credit scheme designed to help farmers and builders is being used to benefit office-bound intermediaries in a wildly disproportionate way relative to their services and assumed risks.”

"History Repeats Itself". "This is the U.S. in the Hands of the Jews". Anti-Semitic USA political cartoon in 1896. Portrays Uncle Sam being crucified like Jesus. Two figures labeled "Wall Street Pirates" with caricatured Jewish features poke him with a spear and raise a poisoned sponge to his lips.

The tub of poison is labeled "Debt", the poisoned sponge "Interest on Bonds", and the spear "Single Gold Standard". Below, figures labeled "Republicanism" (Caricature of James G. Blaine) and "Democracy" (Caricature of Grover Cleveland) pick Uncle Sam's pockets.

THE CARTOON ABOVE SEEMS TO STILL BE RELEVANT TODAY, DESPITE “ANTISEMITISM” HAVING BECOME A CRIME.

The economic shocks from the war in the Middle East will remain for months, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has declared in a rare prime-time address to the nation, suggesting Australians should try to save fuel where possible.

So the world’s greatest military power went to war against a fourth rate nation whose military budget would be rounding error in our defense spending. And it appears that we lost. 

Hi, Paul Krugman with a late night, well, evening update, which I don’t usually do, but I wanted to get this in before who knows what happens in the news tomorrow. 

The Psychology of Military Incompetence

How the Iran War was lost

BY PAUL KRUGMAN

Australia was quick to back US action in Iran. But as questions mount over strategy and legality, the risks – and consequences for allies – are coming into sharper focus.

It is just a month since America and Israel unleashed their air assault on Iran. Prime Minister Albanese rushed to be the first global leader to support it. But he just appeared on ABC TV complaining about “uncertainty in US objectives”. What he is saying is that he regrets his vulgar haste and wants the US to stop.

Mike Gilligan

The United States Department of Defense has demanded the retraction of a newspaper report alleging that a broker for defence chief Pete Hegseth attempted to make a large investment in weapons companies in the run-up to the war on Iran.

Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell demanded the “immediate” retraction on Monday after the Financial Times reported that a wealth manager for the defence secretary contacted BlackRock about making a multimillion-dollar investment in a defence-related fund in the weeks leading up to the war.

Hegseth’s broker at Morgan Stanley ultimately did not go ahead with the investment in the exchange-traded fund, whose holdings include Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman, because it was not yet available for purchase at the time, the Financial Times reported, citing three unnamed sources.

The United States has deployed its third nuclear aircraft carrier to the Middle East. The USS George H.W. Bush departed Naval Station Norfolk on March 31, 2026, heading into a theater where the USS Abraham Lincoln has been repositioned away from Iranian strike range and the USS Gerald R. Ford spent weeks in a European repair facility after a fire.

Cost-of-living pressure will not automatically shift votes to the Coalition, as culturally aligned voters begin drifting toward alternatives that project conviction and stability.

Every political cycle, someone rediscovers the old rule: when household budgets are hurting, voters punish the government of the day. It’s a tidy theory. It’s also increasingly wrong and under Angus Taylor, the Coalition is about to find out the hard way.

Kos Samaras

[23 MAY 2025]... Friedrich Merz is Germany’s new chancellor — head of government in Europe’s largest economy, but likely also setting the direction for the EU as a whole. Leader of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), Merz’s campaign for the federal election this February 23 was marked by sharp conservative rhetoric and promises of market‑driven reforms. Yet, falling well short of a majority, he immediately turned toward the familiar terrain of negotiating a “grand coalition” with the center‑left Social Democratic Party (SPD).

Friedrich Merz’s Failed Quest to Be a New Angela Merkel

BY NILS SCHNIEDERJANN

THE VAGARIES OF READING FIVE-YEAR OLD SCIENTIFIC ARTICLES AGAIN, AND LINKING A FEW NEW SOURCES, CONTROVERSIAL IN THEIR CONTENT, RE-AWAKEN A MONSTER THAT SHOOK THE WORLD SIX YEARS AGO…. 

WAS COVID-19, A NATURAL EVENT OR WAS IT IS ENGINEERED — OR ACCIDENTALLY RELEASED — WITH GAIN-OF-FUNCTION ADDED TO NATURAL PATHOGENS?… Gus asks the question AGAIN..…

I am writing this for people who were then too young to understand the breadth of the event. Many people died, mostly old people. EVERYWHERE. 

According to statistics, more than seven million people died worldwide from the disease — or about 0.9 per cent of people infected. (779 million worldwide). About 1.2 million people died in the USA…

There is a particular kind of intellectual courage that consists not of grand gestures or romantic rebellion but of something far more demanding: the stubborn, lifelong insistence that human beings are capable of reasoning their way to a better world. Jürgen Habermas, who died on Saturday at the age of 96 in Starnberg, Germany, possessed that courage in abundance.

Jürgen Habermas, the Last Rationalist
The German philosopher built the 20th century’s most rigorous defense of democratic reason and then watched it tested.

By Bobby Ghosh

In an era that has grown increasingly comfortable with irrationalism, tribal identity, and contempt for expertise, his death feels less like the closing of a chapter and more like the extinguishing of a lamp.

As we begin a new week, the media is filled with reports that President Trump is ready to approve a US ground operation against Iran, either to seize Iran’s uranium or to attack an island off the country’s coast. Thousands of US troops have sped to the conflict area to await President Trump’s decision.

by Ron Paul 

Welcome to meaningless planet

Where happiness is measured by parking meters

Bio-mechanical levers mimicking an electronic device

Vandalised by inspectors of numbers

Thinking their laziness and your honesty shall suffice

Your overstay anyway by death be met

Welcome to disinterested planet

Where the rising seas have reached under the trees

For the brown skin rangers angels under the stars

Hesitate to take a deep freeze

In the twirling space now filling with useless Mars

As deaths by flowing tears are met

Welcome to a useless blue planet

Where little princes want you for toiling slaves

Unless you're female for them to be whores

A demented President raves

By declaring terribly painful and deadly wars

Having fun while losing his biblical bet

Trump’s Secretary of Defence invoking divine violence against Iran has intensified concerns about the fusion of religion, politics and war in US leadership.

Jon Queally

US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth delivered a prayer in the name of Jesus Christ during an Evangelical Christian service at the Pentagon on Wednesday in which he called for American soldiers to be blessed with “overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy” and for “every round to find its mark” as the US-Israeli war on Iran continues despite widespread disapproval by a majority of US voters and global condemnation.