A fortnight ago, I wrote in these pages that there are two ways to discuss immigration. In good time, civilly and constructively. Or too late, angrily and hatefully.

With Australia teetering on a millisecond, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has dithered and left it too late.

He missed the moment on October 9, 2023, the day after Hamas slaughtered 1200 civilians in Israel. 

https://www.smh.com.au/national/too-timid-too-late-albanese-dithered-as-jewish-australians-endured-attacks-20251219-p5np10.html

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HOLD IT... HAMAS DID NOT DO THE ENTIRE DAMAGE ON THE FATEFUL 7 OCTOBER 2023... 

There is an unavoidable military reality that Europe continues to deny, even as its own officials whisper it in private briefings and NATO commanders leak the same conclusions to any journalist willing to hear. The conflict is not merely going badly for Ukraine; it is structurally unwinnable.

Strategic Reality: The Conflict of Attrition, Ukraine Cannot Win

Phil Butler

I love the optimism of Santa Claus 

Father Christmas, Père Noël and Saturnalia

I enjoy the commercialism of these times

When boots become full of joy and paraphernalia

Useless toys, new cars with CO2 exhausts

For dumb kids and environmental crimes

I love the shops and their bright windows

full of tinselling love and fake falling snows

I enjoy the commercialism of these times

When felt-bags are hung over fireplaces

To be filled by a bearded jolly man 

Driving a trolley pulled by deers with red faces

Futile plastic amusements and silly games

Made by miniature midgets at the North Pole

Or miraculously crafted by the industrious chinaman

His machines under strict communist control

Which we hate so much the West claims

But love anyway because the price is cheap

THE FOLLOWING ARTICLE AT IAI news IS RELATIVELY WRONG AS IT SEEMS TO IGNORE THE NECESSARY PHYSICALITY OF MEMORY… 

Conscious experiences of change, from seeing a bird take flight to listening to a melody, cannot be broken down into ever smaller units of experience. They must inhabit what William James called the “specious present,” a sliding window of time where the immediate past and present overlap. Philosopher Lyu Zhou argues that this exposes a deep rift between mind and matter. When the physical world undergoes change, it does so through succession – one physical state replaces another, and the past is gone – whereas consciousness requires the active retention of the past inside the present, revealing its fundamentally non-physical nature.

Revelations about overseas training, intelligence failures and police responses raise urgent questions that cannot be left to internal reviews.

In a sharp piece of investigative journalism, the ABC’s Sean Rubinsztein-Dunlop this week reported that the alleged Bondi terrorists, Sajid and Naveed Akram, travelled to the Philippines for ‘military style training’. This occurred in November, just weeks before they opened fire on the Jewish Hanukkah celebration at Bondi Beach.

A new analysis by the news outlet DeSmog finds that the Trump administration’s efforts at EPA and other agencies to support coal generation, combined with growing energy demand driven by artificial intelligence, are prompting 15 U.S. coal plants to delay planned retirements this year, with one plant delaying its closure by seven years.

The great baseball legend and jokester Yogi Berra once quipped that a restaurant had become so crowded that nobody goes there anymore. Here’s a version for today: young people in America have such dismal economic prospects that they spend more money than ever.

America’s Weimar moment: What DoorDash culture says about economic decline

When the future becomes unaffordable and saving money is pointless, a $30 poke bowl makes complete sense

by Henry Johnston

When a Southern Air Transport plane was shot down over Nicaragua in October 1986, the world got a rare window into U.S. government covert activity. Southern Air Transport was founded as a small cargo airline in 1947, the same year the Office of Strategic Services evolved into the Central Intelligence Agency as the U.S. pivoted to its Cold War posture. The agency owned the airline outright from 1960 until 1973, at which point it was sold to the same man, Stanley Williams, who had run the company since the Kennedy administration. 

Epstein, Israel, and the CIA: How The Iran–Contra Planes Landed at Les Wexner’s Base
Jeffrey Epstein helped Leslie Wexner repurpose the CIA’s Iran–Contra planes from arms smuggling to shipping lingerie.

The EU’s determination to further fund Kiev’s military and prop up its imploding economy has been presented as a kind of victory. “Europe has delivered,” German Chancellor Friedrich Merz proclaimed, in celebration of a new cash facility for Kiev.

The grim reality behind the grandstanding: What’s in the EU’s new cash delivery to Kiev
How the latest loan for Ukraine will work, and what impact it could have on an ailing bloc, is not something its leaders are happy to discuss

Civilisations rise and fall. Some are vanquished militarily, subjugated, annihilated: Carthago delenda est (Cato, 146 BC). Many indigenous cultures of North and South America succumbed under the onslaught of Europeans conquistadores, who occupied their lands, spoliated their resources, enslaved them, starved them to death. The First Nations of America were victims of genocide, including the Arawaks, Siboneyes und Tainos of Cuba (Bartolomé de las Casas, “The Destruction of the Indies”).

Resolution 2026

Redescovering the moral compass

by Alfred de Zayas

In a week that could have seen Australia united through tragedy, mainstream media, politicians and many others have taken the opportunity to sow division instead. Even the pollsters.

Roy Morgan is Australia’s oldest and best-known market research company, “with an unparalleled reputation for reliable, accurate, meaningful, revealing market research,” according to their own blurb. This week, they saw fit to survey people about who was the worst terrorist.

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Roy Morgan> In your opinion, which of the following groups are responsible for the terrorism our world is living with everyday? (Multiple responses allowed)

Buddhists
Hindus
Jews
Christians
Muslims
The Israelis
The Arabs
The Indians
The Australians
The Chinese
The British
The Europeans
The Americans
The West

As the negotiations for a diplomatic settlement to end the war in Ukraine gain momentum, European leaders insist on slowing them down by repeating three lies. These are, essentially, the same lies they have been telling since the war began. 

Europe’s Three Lies About Ukraine
The European bloc’s reasons to keep the war grinding are unsound at best.

Ted Snider

A Jewish woman wearing a Keffiyeh as well as the Star of David was escorted off Bondi Beach by police. The resulting social media storm led to death threats to her and to her friend.

I am writing this knowing it will likely result in more death threats.

That is not a metaphor. It is a statement of fact, based on what happened to my friend Michelle and me this week, and what happened next when we sought protection from the state.

WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange has filed a criminal complaint against the Nobel Foundation, accusing it of misusing Nobel Peace Prize funds by awarding them to Venezuelan opposition figure Maria Corina Machado, who has publicly called on the US to attack her own country.

The complaint, dated Wednesday and submitted to Sweden’s Economic Crime Authority and War Crimes Unit, where the Nobel Foundation is based, argues that Alfred Nobel’s will legally restricts Peace Prize funds to purposes that promote peace and bars their use to advance war or foreign military intervention.