Today's summit of world leaders has made one thing clear - there is a lot of frustration and concern about the direction climate change is heading.

The UN says it's now "virtually impossible" to stick to the international target of limiting global warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels.

And, 2025 is set to be one of the hottest years on record.

If you only skimmed the headlines from News Corp, you’d be forgiven for thinking China was launching a krill-powered naval strike from Antarctica, staging an electric vehicle blitzkrieg across the outback and forcing Hyundai into some humiliating act of surrender.

Fred Zhang

Reality, of course, is far less dramatic.

Col Doug Macgregor predicts political turnover in Western governments (London first) and expects Emmanuel Macron to be removed from power — arguing new leaders will be less hostile to Russia and more interested in restoring trade.

They portray Putin as having outlasted his committed opponents; Russian strategy is to wait until Western political will weakens.

On the U.S. side, the speaker characterizes Donald Trump as blustery but not genuinely eager for confrontation — claiming Trump favors withdrawing U.S. forces from Eastern Europe and reducing long-term U.S. military presence on the continent.

The speaker sees a broad Western shift coming: rising parties (e.g., Germany’s AfD mentioned) will seek to normalize relations and revive energy/trade links (Nord Stream referenced), so European governments now in power will be replaced by more Russia-friendly administrations.

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte is applying double standards by claiming that Moscow is conspiring with China and other nations to “undermine global rules,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has said.

In a post on her Telegram channel on Thursday, Zakharova inquired “what ‘global rules’” Rutte was referring to, calling on NATO to post a “full list” on its website. She further pointed out that the military bloc itself has a track record of breaking international law. The Russian diplomat cited the 1999 NATO bombing of Yugoslavia and the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 on fabricated pretexts, as prime examples.

Zakharova stressed that no NATO member states have stopped cooperation with China, despite Rutte’s claims.

Chris Minns’ police unleashed pepper spray on hundreds of peace protestors yesterday. Today the Premier is the drawcard for an Israel business lobby lunch with ties to the genocide in Gaza. Wendy Bacon reports. 

NSW Police unleashed hundreds of pepper spraying police on protesters against his government’s sponsorship of a Defence Expo at which Israel’s biggest weapons companies were promoting their wares. It was an event the Defence Minister Richard Marles labelled “beautiful, menacing and extremely cool”.

Chris Minns – pepper spray for peace protestors one day, lunch at war-crimes-lobby the next

by Michael West and Wendy Bacon

Signs of the ongoing US government shutdown causing difficulties or uncertainties for US soldiers appeared, and then were swiftly removed after drawing attention, on the US Army Garrison Bavaria website this week. 

The US Army Garrison Bavaria is the army's largest group outside the US with around 36,000 troops stationed across four facilities in Germany.

"The shutdown will impact services provided by the Garrison at installations across Rose Barracks, Tower Barracks, Hohenfels and Garmisch," it said on a web page to provide guidance to members of how to deal with the government shutdown.

Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky’s recent tour of several units fighting in the Donbass featured a flurry of Nazi and Nazi-adjacent symbolism, worn on the flags and shoulder patches of Ukrainian servicemen. None of it, of course, was picked up by Western media.

First off, we have the infamous Wolfsangel – a medieval Germanic symbol, widely adopted by Nazi Germany during the Second World War and used by multiple Nazi-linked groups then and since – including Ukraine’s now-defunct Azov Brigade and its still-intact successors, the 1st Azov Corps.

When the razzle dazzle of the prime minister’s first face-to-face meeting with the mercurial US president is forgotten and the huge sigh of relief that nothing went wrong subsides, questions will be asked about what all the puffery achieved.

Trump gave a vacuous sounding endorsement of AUKUS, but did nothing for Australia on tariffs, despite the US running a continuous trade surplus with Australia and the infinitesimal amount of revenue the Australian tariff raises.

Geoff Raby

.... Now it remained for Minin and Pozharsky to take the Kremlin.

The Polish garrison in the Kremlin did not want to give up, but quickly ran out of food supplies. First, they resorted to eating crows, rats, and grass, and then set upon their dead comrades in an orgy of cannibalism. The Russians subsequently discovered an absolutely monstrous trophy in the Kremlin worthy of a horror movie – a barrel of salted human flesh.

Why Russia celebrates its 'Unity Day' every November 4
Modern Russia’s main national holiday replaced the biggest celebration in the Soviet calendar

One Nation leader Pauline Hanson will rail against the Coalition and lavish praise on Donald Trump as she rubs shoulders with the US president’s inner orbit at a $25,000-a-head conservative forum at Mar-a-Lago in Florida.

Australia’s most prominent populist-right politician, who is hoping to recruit Barnaby Joyce to boost her fortunes, has been staying at Trump’s resort this week as polling shows her party is tracking at a high of 15 per cent for primary votes – only nine points short of the opposition.

Hanson attacks Coalition at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago as she closes on Ley in polls

BY Paul Sakkal

On July 4, 1776, America freed itself forever, it believed, from the tyrannical rule of kings. Yet here we are today, almost 250 years later, as millions of Americans are gearing up for the 2028 presidential election, contemplating the possibility that Donald Trump will opt to remain in power. And it’s not altogether beyond the realm of possibility.

Is Trump plotting to be ‘king for life’?
The 47th president continues to dismiss rumors of a planned third term – but will he change his mind and find a way after all?

BY Robert Bridge

The US Constitution’s 22nd Amendment only bans a candidate being “elected” to more than two presidential terms without mentioning anything about taking the Oval Office on an additional occasion through succession.

..... an awkward introduction in Kyiv where Ambassador Whitaker (U.S. ambassador to NATO) and European leaders meet. Whitaker frames the U.S. role as selling weapons to NATO allies — who then supply them to Ukraine — under a “we won’t give things away, we’ll sell them” policy (the “PURL” initiative). He mentions roughly $2.5 billion in expected sales/packages.

Lt COl Daniel Davis 's core critique: massive spending, sanctions and weapon transfers are happening without a clear strategy or defined objective. Despite many sanctions packages (he cites the EU’s 19th package and talks of a 20th), there’s no evidence these rounds change the battlefield; they’re criticized as ritualistic and untethered to concrete goals.

On Monday, the charity Oxfam published a report on the growth of social inequality in the United States, titled “Unequal: The Rise of a New American Oligarchy.”

The report notes that the “past year has been indelibly shaped by concentrated wealth and power.” It cites data showing that in the past 12 months alone, the 10 richest US billionaires got approximately $700 billion richer. Over this period, their wealth grew by a staggering 40 percent, from $1.79 trillion to $2.5 trillion.

Oxfam: 10 US billionaires have had their wealth increase 6-fold since 2020

Andre Damon

Beneath the diplomatic pomp and illusions of partnership, France is bitterly discovering that in the Atlantic Alliance, allies have no friends but their own interests.

Paris’s futile efforts: why is French military-technical cooperation with its allies failing?

    Mohamed Lamine KABA

CIA Director John Ratcliffe met with EU officials last week in an attempt to rebuild strained relations with US intelligence agencies, Politico reported, citing three people familiar with the matter.

According to the report published on Friday, Ratcliffe met with the EU’s top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, as well as senior officials from the EU Intelligence and Situation Center (INTCEN) and the EU Military Staff Intelligence Directorate (EUMS). He sought to reaffirm Washington’s commitment to intelligence-sharing and to convey that the CIA “wants to keep lines open,” Politico said.