https://therealnews.com/thousands-protest-donald-trump-tariffs-interfere...

Membership of the Chinese Communist Party has just exceeded 100 million. It has long been the largest political party in world history.

When Prime Minister Albanese meets President Xi Jinping, he is not only meeting the head of the second largest economy in the world in nominal dollars, and by far the largest in purchasing power parity terms, but also the head of the biggest political party the world has ever seen. This matters.

Geoff Raby

Western Europe is “losing” the economic competition with its main rivals, China and the US, and is struggling with a shortage of globally competitive companies, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon has said.

Since 2022, when the EU imposed sweeping sanctions on Russian energy over the Ukraine conflict, growth across the bloc has stagnated. Germany, once its economic powerhouse, is now experiencing its third year of economic downturn. 

Europe is losing – JPMorgan CEO
The region’s economic competitiveness is dwindling, Jamie Dimon has warned

Moscow has argued that EU restrictions are self-defeating, causing surging energy prices and weakening the bloc’s economy.

The US has removed Syria’s al-Qaeda franchise from its list of designated terrorist organisations just days after the UK added nonviolent activist group Palestine Action to its own list of banned terrorist groups.

The Western empire will surely find ways to be even more hypocritical and ridiculous about its “terrorism” designations in the future, but at this point it’s hard to imagine how it will manage to do so.

Caitlin Johnstone

Britain and France have unveiled a new agreement to coordinate their nuclear arsenals more closely, citing what they see as heightened “threats”to security in Europe. Moscow has called the move part of NATO’s overtly anti-Russian policy, warning it would factor the agreement into its military planning.

In a joint statement on Thursday, the two governments said that British and French nuclear weapons are aimed at protecting the two nations’ vital interests, adding that “our nuclear forces are independent, but can be coordinated and contribute significantly to the overall security of the alliance.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNzafnexnFE

America just made a decision that could change the entire future—and hand China the upper hand for decades to come. While China is investing billions into clean energy, dominating industries like solar, wind, electric vehicles, and battery storage, the United States is doubling down on oil and gas. In today’s video, we break down the biggest energy race of the 21st century: how Beijing is using clean technology to expand its global influence, while Washington is clinging to the past.

Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky claimed he had no idea about the atrocities committed by the Ukrainian Nazi collaborators during the World War II until confronted on the issue by Poland’s president, Andrzej Duda, the latter has told the Polish RMF24 broadcaster.

According to the president, Zelensky’s claim shows that Ukrainians are kept in the dark about their nation’s dark past. “He said to me: ‘Andrzej, I've never heard of the murders, the killing of Poles in western Ukraine, in Volhynia. They didn't teach us about it in school’,”Duda said, recounting one of his meetings with the Ukrainian leader.

This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a flooding: With apologies to T. S. Eliot

Every year the UN runs a Climate Change Conference – the next is scheduled for November in Brazil. High on the agenda will be the plight of Pacific Islanders seeing their homes drown. There’s an equally pressing need close by, but the solutions seem doomed.

Duncan Graham

A Last Gasp of a Dying Empire – NATO Summit: When Crashes, The EU Goes Down with it!

Seth Ferris

THE DEVIL OF MONEY

We see people of adventure 

who hunt this curse

To lock it in their purse 

each judges one’s misfortune

that to make awful times better 

one would have to stop the blither.

All of you who criticise the spirit of this image, 

have you never paid money any homage? 

These warriors, these scholars, these learned doctors,

These bourgeois, these merchants, this singer,

These soldiers, these workers, these galley rowers, 

In short all of them, I feel much anger.

A whore monkey will become chaste and beautiful 

if the devil fills her bowl with money in full 

so money is needed, I am convinced of it.

Everyone wants to have it, even if it’s just one crown, 

I’m mesmerised by a beautiful system

Full name is spelled De-mo-cra-cy

It demands trust in a ma-jo-ri-ty

A barking pack of dreadful MAGA men

When half of the people plus one are dumb

And the others are super-intelligent like me

Not a chance we have to really be

Anything but full of stark darkly glum

Trump plays to enter all conversations

Like a worm in Robert Junior’s brain

And there’s little we can do so in vain

Against Donald’s crook administration’s

But De-mo-cra-cy will change odds

And my mob to become in charge again

Our superior spirit soon goes down the drain

Following putrid leaders like dead gods

Blinken, Biden, Austin the Thirds

Sullivan, Power — all stinking mad turds

Is this what the majority wants

"Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori'*

Is all very well, but I think that before I

Would try it, I'd rather the maxim were amended

Thus-'Patriots are more useful living than when dead.'

FRANCIS HODGSON NIXON, The Lays and
Legends of Peter Perfume (1865).

In deciding to hold off on another interest rate cut, the Reserve Bank’s board appears to be waiting to find out what the past was like. Michael Pascoe reports.

I don’t know where to begin with six of the nine RBA board members, the ones who want to wait for another meeting so they can consider what the Bureau of Stats (ABS) will tell them was happening some three months ago. They have no grasp of the present, so forget about the future.

The same six have no faith in the RBA’s own forecasts. Hilariously, they will only trust the forecasts after they have been proven correct. That’s a key part of why they didn’t cut rates again yesterday – they want the bank’s forecasts to be confirmed by the ABS when it hands them the story of the past, the June quarter CPI due to be published on July 30.

Australia is facing the prospect of a Trump administration review demanding it pay more for submarines under the $368 billion AUKUS pact and guarantee the boats support the US in a conflict over Taiwan.

Sources familiar with the review by Trump’s Undersecretary of Defence, Elbridge Colby, believe he intends to urge major changes to the program before Australia can get the nuclear submarines it has been promised.

The review puts Anthony Albanese in a politically difficult position as the prime minister prepares to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping during a six-day trip to China next week.

But the Trump administration is not united behind Colby’s thinking, according to former aides, with foreign policy a major sticking point in the Republican Party.