The world’s first scientific estimate of global military emissions is here: they are not only nearly the same as the carbon emitted from all the cars in the world, but they are also higher than the world’s biggest oil and gas exporter – Russia.

Stupendous amounts of carbon dioxide emitted by the world’s militaries are playing a huge but invisible role in driving humanity toward climate catastrophe according to a new report published by Scientists for Global Responsibility (SGR) with the Conflict and Environment Observatory (CEOBS).

I don’t desire a future for humanity like the ones imagined by our culturally designated future-imaginers. I don’t want humans living in Elon Musk Mars colonies or Jeff Bezos space cylinders. I don’t want us to fly out into the stars, to disappear into virtual reality universes, or to move away from our humanness by becoming cybernetic organisms.

Not yet anyway. Not for a long time. Not until we’ve done what we need to do here first.

BY Caitlin Johnstone

MOST WESTERN JOURNALISTS STAY CLEAR OF THE TRUE GEOPOLITICAL GAME BEING PLAYED IN UKRAINE AND TINKLE ON THE EDGES WITH STRANGE DEBATES... LUCKY, SOME PEOPLE LIKE GIRALDI, UNZ, RITTER, ESCOBAR, PILGER AND GREENWALD TO NAME A FEW — ALL serious JOURNALISTS — BALANCE THE VERY SAD NEWS OF PEOPLE BEING KILLED, WHICH FEED THE ANTI-RUSSIAN INTERVENTION IN THE WEST, AGAINST THE HISTORICAL TRIGGERS AND THE CHEATING OF THE AMERICAN EMPIRE IN THIS DREADFUL GAME...

WE HAVE STAYED THE COURSE, BUT IT'S NOT EASY... SOMETIMES IT SEEMS THAT WESTERN JOURNALISTS ARE AFRAID OF VOICING AN OPINION FAVOURABLE TO PUTIN AS THEY ALL THINK ZELENSKY IS A GOD (HE IS A NAZI DANGEROUS TURD WHO WANTS NATO TO WAGE WAR WITH NUKES AGAINST RUSSIA). AT LEAST PAUL BARRY RECOGNISES THAT ON OTHER ISSUES SOME JOURNALISTS ARE VERY VERY VERY SLANTED TOWARDS A PARTICULAR WISH LIST.

Police in San Francisco can now use robots to kill people.

In an 8-3 vote by the city’s Board of Supervisors, the new policy grants the SFPD power to use lethal force via remote controlled robots. According to the police department it would now have the ability to deploy robots equipped with explosive charges “to contact, incapacitate, or disorient (a) violent, armed, or dangerous suspect” when lives are at stake, SFPD spokesperson Allison Maxie said in a statement.

U.S. military forces have been engaged in unauthorized hostilities in many more countries than the Pentagon has disclosed to Congress, let alone the public, according to a major new report released late last week by New York University School of Law’s Brennan Center for Justice.

by Jim Lobe

NOVEMBER 8, 2022

Home owners are being told to brace for even higher mortgage bills in 2023 as the Reserve Bank’s inflation fight approaches a second year.

The RBA unveiled an eighth interest rate hike at its final meeting of 2022 on Tuesday, lifting its target by another 0.25 percentage points to a decade high of 3.1 per cent.

It capped off an unprecedented run of rate rises that’s seen more than $800 added to typical monthly mortgage bills for millions of households.

As RBA boss Philip Lowe warns further increases will be needed to bring inflation down from three-decade highs, economists say families must now brace for at least another $200 in additional mortgage pain.

The US backs Ukraine’s goal of forcefully retaking territories that have voted to join Russia, and rejects the notion of a peace deal, at this time, Secretary of State Antony Blinken disclosed on Monday.

Speaking after a wave of Russian missile strikes took out Ukrainian military and infrastructure targets on Monday, Blinken told a Wall Street Journal summit that the US would continue to arm Ukraine and bankroll its economy until it could “take back territory that’s been seized from it since February 24th.”

Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky has vowed to retake the regions of Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson, and Zaporozhye, all of which voted to join the Russian Federation in September. Zelensky has also promised to seize Crimea, a historic part of Russia that voted to rejoin in 2014.

There is considerable irony in the fact that Donald Trump when president virtually crawled to do Israel’s bidding more than any of his predecessors. He moved the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, he accepted brutal Israeli settlement and control of the Palestinian West Bank, approved of the Israeli annexation of the Syrian Golan Heights, and ignored repeated Israeli war crimes using US provided weapons.

Yet for all his gifts to Israel, which did not serve any actual US interest, he is currently being crucified by the Jewish/Israel Lobby because of an idiotic dinner with a pair of alleged anti-Semites, one of whom has been labeled a “holocaust denier.”

With the world undergoing tectonic changes, Germany must help ensure the EU's security, Chancellor Olaf Scholz has written in an article for Foreign Affairs magazine. The beginning of Russia’s military offensive in Ukraine marked the end of an era, according to the SDP leader.

Published on Monday, the piece begins with the premise that an “epochal tectonic shift” is taking place, with new powers emerging to shape a multipolar world – an observation bearing similarities to recent assessments by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Germany, Scholz writes, is “doing everything it can to defend and foster an international order based on the principles of the UN Charter.”

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre has shrugged off Elon Musk’s release of ‘the Twitter files’, calling the disclosure of 2020 pre-election censorship an “interesting coincidence” and accusing the billionaire of allowing hateful speech to surge on his newly acquired social media platform.

Asked at a press briefing on Monday whether the White House found it appropriate that Twitter suppressed news about then-candidate Joe Biden’s son, Jean-Pierre sidestepped the question, suggesting that Musk had an ulterior motive for leaking files revealing the company’s internal discussions.

America believes that it should run the world unchallenged in all dimensions of statehood.

Known as AUSMIN, the high-level talks between the United States and Australia are now underway in Washington on foreign policy and defence. Held annually since 1985 they are the cement which binds this habit of our being allies.

It is time to talk frankly about the big picture behind these talks and understand that our independence is no longer welcome within them. Friends need to be candid.

Yesterday, the Senate Committee on the Judiciary voted 15–7 to advance the worrying Journalism Competition and Preservation Act (JCPA). 

This bill would carve out an antitrust exemption for news media, enabling journalistic groups to band together as “joint negotiation entities” to demand payment from major digital platforms (such as Meta and Google) for links to and previews of their publications. If the joint negotiation entity cannot reach an agreement with the platform, the journalists would be able to force independent arbitration to set the payment level.

French President Emmanuel Macron sees “resentment” in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s eyes, due to his belief that the West seeks to destroy his country.

Speaking to CBS News on Sunday, Macron was asked to give his own take on what he sees in Putin’s eyes, as former US President George W. Bush famously did in 2001 when he said, “I found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy.” 

The French president replied that he sees “a sort of a resentment,” which he believes is aimed at the Western world, including the EU and US, and it is underpinned by “the feeling that our perspective was to destroy Russia.”

The previous Coalition Government under the Minister for Communication Malcolm Turnbull promised: ’a cheaper, good quality NBN, faster delivered’. It failed on all counts.

However, since it became clear that his government was unable to deliver on this promise, I knew that eventually something had to give. Instead of costing $25 billion as Mr Turnbull promised, the costs are now rapidly moving towards $60 billion. Under government policy, all of these costs had to be absorbed by the NBN company in the prices it charged to its retail customers.

BY Paul Budde

The following is a thread of Tweets written by Matt Taibbi on Dec. 2 about Twitter’s content moderation practices—specifically dealing with the Hunter Biden laptop story—after being given internal documents by Elon Musk. Outlets like USA Today have reported they have not been able to verify the authenticity of the emails. The thread was promoted by Musk stating “The public deserves to know what really happened …”