If you are one of the world's two superpowers and you receive a clear and specific challenge from the other power, essentially a threat to your existence, how do you respond? China did it in an unexpected and very Chinese way. Basically: which of us is stronger, difficult to say, but we are smarter and therefore we will win.

NATO challenges Beijing, China provides unexpected response

BY Dmitri Kosyrev

This is what happened at the recent NATO summit in Washington. And the “third plenum” of the CPC Central Committee that concluded on Thursday, announced in advance by almost all of the world's media as a momentous event for the entire world, not just China.

After one year of operation, the National Anti-Corruption Commission has spent $65 million on organising itself, pretty presentations, and rejecting submissions of obvious corruption. What’s the scam?

The scam is how the Labor Government colluded with the opposition to set up an anti-corruption body to honour Labor’s election promise, but designed it to avoid investigating each other’s rorts. Party politics at its very worst.

The NACC, the Notionally Avoiding Corruption Commission, turns one. What’s the scam?
by Michael West and Kim Wingerei

US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan has said that he does not expect Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to attack US President Joe Biden during his address to US legislators on Wednesday.

White House officials were reportedly concerned that the speech could include public jabs at the administration.

The US paused its delivery of 3,500 bombs to Israel in early May amid calls for West Jerusalem to scale back its assault on the densely-populated city of Rafah in southern Gaza. In June, Netanyahu publicly criticized Washington for “withholding weapons and ammunition to Israel” for several months, calling it “inconceivable.”

The Israeli leader could stage a “diplomatically complicated and politically dicey spectacle for a president running for reelection,” Politico reported in June.

US President Joe Biden has ended his bid for re-election, opening the way for another Democratic candidate to take on Republican Donald Trump in November’s election.

On Sunday afternoon (US time) Mr Biden declared it was in the “best interest” of the Democratic Party and the country for him to drop out of the 2024 US presidential race. He also endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to replace him on the ballot.

The most powerful companies in the world have united against free speech, and they’ve deployed your tax dollars to fund their mission.

Last week, the House Judiciary Committee released a report on the little-known Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) and its pernicious promotion of censorship. GARM is a branch of the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA), a global association representing over 150 of the world’s biggest brands, including Adidas, British Petroleum, Nike, Mastercard, McDonald’s, Walmart, and Visa.

By Brownstone Institute

Shell Canada Drops 2050 Climate Goal from Website
Shell is the latest oil giant to delete claims after an anti-greenwashing law passed in Parliament.

Shell Canada has deleted a “net-zero” goal by 2050 from its website.

The description of Shell’s Quest carbon capture and storage (CCS) project was edited in recent weeks, and no longer includes the heading “Achieving Net Zero by 2050.”

That language appeared on Shell Canada’s website as recently as June 18, according to the Internet Archive.

List of 64 U.S. Coups During 1947-1989

This is the list of U.S. coups during the Cold War that’s presented in the highly regarded 2018 academic book COVERT REGIME CHANGE, by Lindsey O’Rourke.

(Only the start-date for each coup is shown here, but some of these coups went on for years; 39% succeeded at Government-overthrow, 61% did not. This list is taken from “Table 1.1: U.S.-backed regime change attempts during the Cold War (1947-1989)”):

France 1947

Italy 1947

Albania 1949

Belarus 1949

Bulgaria 1949

Czechoslovakia 1949

East Germany 1949

CrowdStrike outage: Airlines start to resume services

Thousands of companies were dealing with huge backlogs of customers after one of the biggest technology crashes in recent years. Flights and doctor visits were canceled, and banks and TV channels went offline.

Airlines were gradually resuming services on Saturday, a day after a technology crash disrupted computer systems globally for several hours.

Companies and other organizations have been dealing with a backlog of orders, canceled appointments and delayed travel plans due to the outage.

In Asian media this week: India’s message of foreign policy independence. Plus Green-tech overcapacity claims ‘absurd’; How West could help the Rest fight climate change; Asia-Pacific NATO would add to flash points; Party dismisses disgraced leaders; Newspaper scores press freedom own goal.

A striking image from Narendra Modi’s recent visit to Russia was of the Indian Prime hugging Russian President Vladimir Putin.

According to Al Jazeera, a bear hug is almost inevitable whenever Modi greets a male world leader.

Top NATO general claims Ukraine has ‘great’ war strategy
Meanwhile, Russia’s advances on the frontlines and Vladimir Zelensky’s non-stop pleas for more military aid paint a different picture

The chief of NATO’s European Command, Christopher Cavoli, has described Ukraine’s losses on the frontlines as merely a sign it is “generating force” for a further offensive. In a speech at the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado on Thursday, the bloc’s top general said Kiev’s overall military strategy is “great” in terms of balancing recruitment, training, and arms procurement.

According to Cavoli, in modern warfare, one “either wins fast and upfront” or is stuck “for a long slog full of unpredictable twists and turns,” which is the case in the Ukraine conflict.

Once again, the US is rehashing the cliché of the "China threat theory" - this time in space. Jeffrey Kruse, director of the US Defense Intelligence Agency, said during the annual Aspen Security Forum in a panel discussion on space and national security on Wednesday that the US is seeing from China a heightened "intent to use counter-space capabilities to threaten space."

Joy Reid blasted brutally for calling Trump assassination attempt ‘photo op’, likening it with Biden’s Covid diagnosis

MSNBC host Joy Reid targeted Donald Trump following his recent assassination attempt, implying that the former US President is partly to blame for it.

Reid, who was co-hosting with Rachel Maddow during live coverage of the Republican National Convention (RNC) on Wednesday, suggested that Biden recovering from coronavirus is a “sign of strength” akin to Trump surviving an assassination attempt.

Calling both Trump and Biden “elderly”, Reid claimed: “Donald Trump is an elderly man who, for whatever reason, was given nine seconds to take an iconic photo-op during an active shooter situation. Weird situation, we'll figure that out one day.”

On Thursday, a Yemeni drone struck a building in the Israeli capital of Tel Aviv, killing at least one, according to Israeli officials. The Ansar Allah (Houthi) forces said its drone bypassed Israeli air defenses and declared Tel Aviv as an unsafe zone and a primary target for their weapons.

Israel blamed the attack on human error and claimed its defenses were not breached.

Video on social media shows a gliding-type drone flying over the shoreline near Tel Aviv before arriving in the city and causing a large explosion. The Houthis said the new drone is undetectable by Israeli air defenses and named it the Jafa, after the Palestinian name for Tel Aviv before it was occupied by Israel. Its projected path indicates it bypassed far more than just Israeli defenses, traveling nearly 1000 miles (~1600 km) according to some estimates.

How RNZ, ABC and other Western media failed to challenge Israeli war narrative.

This article was first published in the peer-reviewed research journal, the Pacific Journalism Review

As Israel stands accused at the United Nation’s highest judicial court of breaching the 1948 Genocide Convention, it could be argued Western media institutions stand in the dock too. On 26 January 2024, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) at The Hague determined Israel had a ‘plausible’ case to answer (ICJ, 2024, paras. 31-32, p. 4) and issued six interim orders, including taking measures to prevent acts of genocide and punishing those who incited it. This followed an 84-page writ by South Africa, filed on 29 December 2023.