ASEAN has been around for so long media outlets rarely spell the full name – Association of Southeast Asian Nations. That sounds significant and grand. It’s not.

A better title for the acronym would be Association of Supercilious Egoists and Nationalists. Even that snide put down wouldn’t do enough injustice to a ten-member group that likes to think it’s a local version of the European Economic Community.

ASEAN is not Asia’s Common Market, but this week Australians will be bamboozled into thinking otherwise.

As Vladimir Putin’s war enters its third year, it is time to count the bodies. Ukraine admits to 31,000 deaths suffered by its troops. The actual toll is probably much higher, not to mention all the serious injuries. Tens of thousands of its civilians have lost their lives, including hundreds of children, while 21,000 young people have been kidnapped and taken by force to Russia.

Human rights barrister and author

The possibility of the Ukraine conflict escalating into World War III cannot be ruled out, former French Prime Minister Manuel Valls claimed on Thursday in an interview with the Europe-1 news channel. 

According to Valls, the fate of the French people and others across Europe is “closely tied” to the hostilities between Moscow and Kiev, meaning they should “act much more decisively” to support Ukraine, including militarily. 

“We cannot accept the hypothesis of a victory for Vladimir Putin which would represent the end of Ukrainian democracy and the strategic, military, political, and moral defeat of Europe,” Valls stated.  

US drops aid into Gaza where UN says 550,000 close to famine

In short: the US says about 38,000 meals have been airdropped from three planes along the Gaza coast.
A senior US administration official says Israel has essentially endorsed a framework for a proposed ceasefire and hostage release deal.
What's next? Talks to reach a ceasefire agreement are set to resume in Egypt on Sunday local time.
The US has carried out its first airdrop of humanitarian aid into Gaza, but some Palestinians are saying it is not nearly enough.

The development came as a senior US administration official said Israel had endorsed a framework for a proposed ceasefire and hostage release deal.

Three C-130 US military planes delivered more than 38,000 meals to the territory, where the UN says at least 576,000 people are at risk of famine conditions.

Last year the head of the ASIO, Mr Mike Burgess’s annual threat assessment was blighted by errors of fact. This year he’s enlarged his repertoire to errors of judgment.

In a speech which:

• rambles to the point of incoherence
• is self-congratulatory and self-serving
• is bulked up with pointless historical nostalgia, and
• contains more corn than the State of Iowa

The multi-billion dollar expenditure on nuclear powered submarines as part of the AUKUS pact has attracted some attention. Perhaps it helps to provide historical context if it is remembered that Australia’s first submarines were of limited use in the defence of our shorelines.

The nazi ideology thrives in The West.

The Australian government remains silent, continues to call Israel “our friend”, and rewards Israel’s war machine in a new contract with the Israeli arms firm Elbit. The Federal Government sends more troops to the Middle East while starving Palestinians in northern Gaza are massacred as they desperately seek food for their families, babies in Gaza are dying of starvation and dehydration and the IDF sexually abuses and rapes Palestinian women prisoners.

Disinformation group Advance Australia has been pouring advertising money into supporting the Liberals in the Dunkley by-election. Its funding includes over $1 million from a company whose ownership structure may be illegal. Anthony Klan reports.

Despite their claim to be a ‘grassroots’ movement of ‘ordinary Australians’, Advance Australia is bankrolled by a handful of wealthy families and individuals. According to the annual disclosure by the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) on 1 February 2024, the largest donation to Advance Australia was $1.025M, but the AEC does not know the legal source of those payments.

The payment was also the second biggest individual political donation in Australia in the financial year.

On February 19, 2024, a conversation took place among Grafe (department head for operations and exercises at the Air Force Forces Command of the Bundeswehr), Gerhartz (Bundeswehr Air Force Inspector), Fenske and Frohstedte (employees of the Air Operations Command within the Space Operations Center of the Bundeswehr).

More than two-thirds of the French public believe President Emmanuel Macron was wrong to suggest that NATO could someday send its own troops to support Kiev in the conflict with Moscow, according to a new poll.

Survey results published on Thursday by French newspaper Le Figaro showed that 68% of respondents disapproved of Macron’s comments on a future NATO deployment to the war-torn state, while just 31% said they agreed and the remainder were undecided.

The US Army is cutting its force by 24,000 and restructuring to be capable of fighting the next major wars as it struggles to recruit new troops, according to a new service document titled "Army Force Structure Transformation." What's behind the overhaul?

The cuts will diminish the US Army's size from roughly 494,000 to 470,000 troops by fiscal year 2029. According to the US press, counterinsurgency jobs, which increased during Washington's wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, will be slashed first.

"We [the US] are moving away from counterterrorism and counterinsurgency; we want to be postured for large-scale combat operations," US Army Secretary Christine Wormuth told reporters on February 27.

THE DESPAIR AND ANGER OF EUROPE’S FARMERS

Across Western and Central Europe, farmers are demonstrating. First in the Netherlands, Italy, Switzerland and Romania, now in Spain, France, Germany and Poland. This continent-wide uprising is against the European Union’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).

The European Union against farmers
by Thierry Meyssan

Across the European Union, farmers are rising up against the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), which subsidizes them. Governments are responding with adjustment measures, bureaucratic simplifications and a few words of comfort. In reality, they are powerless in the face of a structure designed to apply an ideology that is proving to be insane.

WHEN Putin “invaded” Ukraine, He would have analysed the risks of what it meant. According to John Mearsheimer Putin did not have any choice. On the other side of the “equation”, NATO was pushing the odds possibly in a way to force Russia into doing a “wrong” move. 

Recently, Craig Murray also acknowledged, reticently, that Putin “did not have a choice” so to speak.

So what have been the odds of the conflict between Russia and America? Why is Macron pushing for NATO boots in Ukraine? What would be the consequences? Why do the other European countries dismiss Macron’s demand? 

So what are the chess pieces on the board?

Whoever makes the first move usually wins… But this is a game where the best intellectual minds are in Russia and the west is full of hubris, secrecy, deviousness, deceit, senility and bravado…

Macron’s meeting signals that most EU countries are reaching a point of desperation – even to the point of mulling the idea of ground troops into Ukraine. But is NATO losing its edge?

Macron’s Bid to Undermine NATO and the EU Hit the Bullseye

BY Martin Jay