US President Joe Biden’s comments about freeing Iran were not meant as a statement of policy but an expression of solidarity with anti-government protesters, White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters on Friday. Biden’s off-the-cuff remark at a Democrat fundraiser in California the evening before has already drawn condemnations from Tehran.

“Don’t worry, we’re going to free Iran. They’re going to free themselves pretty soon,” Biden told those attending a party fundraiser at MiraCosta College near San Diego on Thursday.

He was “expressing our solidarity with the protesters,” Kirby told the White House press corps the following day, adding that any change of government in Tehran “has to be up to the people of Iran."

So, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan picks up the phone and calls his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin: let’s talk about the “grain deal.” Putin, cool, calm and collected, explains the facts to the Sultan:

First, the reason why Russia withdrew from the export grain deal.

Second, how Moscow seeks a serious investigation into the – terrorist – attack on the Black Sea fleet, which for all practical purposes seems to have violated the deal.

BY PEPE ESCOBAR

Establishment panic about Elon Musk’s changes to Twitter means he’s doing something right

The only ones outraged about Twitter’s new owner are the ones afraid of free speech getting in the way of their authority

Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover has heads rolling. But it is funny how the only people who seem to be upset are those who vehemently do everything in their power to shut down any peon who dares to air wrong-think on the platform.

President Joe Biden kept a promise to Lula da Silva by congratulating him for “free, fair and credible” elections minutes after Sunday’s results declared Lula the winner over incumbent Jair Bolsonaro.

Pundits have interpreted the Biden administration’s words on the Brazilian election as a demonstration that it was rooting for Lula over his opponent, known as “Tropical Trump.” This reasoning is at best misleading, if not completely faulty.

Mining executives and diplomats have been assured of access to Australian ores and expertise under the new federal government.

Resources Minister Madeleine King held private meetings with international delegations at a mining conference in Sydney as police with sniffer dogs prowled the vast expo floor.

Ms King vowed to back new gas and coal fields to combat the energy crisis. She also expressed support for the ongoing role of gas to power mining and refining, which will support a net-zero emissions economy.

by AAP

The Albanese government’s position on new coal and gas development is clear, the minister told the International Mining and Resources Conference.

Bulgarian lawmakers voted on Thursday to supply Ukraine with arms, with socialist and nationalist MPs resisting the decision. This leaves Hungary as the final NATO member refusing to provide military aid to Kiev.

A bill authorizing weapons supplies to Ukraine passed Bulgaria’s National Assembly by 175 votes to 49, the Novinite news site reported. The pro-Western GERB party, currently the largest faction in the assembly, proposed the bill amid coalition talks following elections last month.

Germany has become an economic satellite of America’s New Cold War with Russia, China and the rest of Eurasia. Germany and other NATO countries have been told to impose trade and investment sanctions upon themselves that will outlast today’s proxy war in Ukraine. U.S. President Biden and his State Department spokesmen have explained that Ukraine is just the opening arena in a much broader dynamic that is splitting the world into two opposing sets of economic alliances.

This global fracture promises to be a ten- or twenty-year struggle to determine whether the world economy will be a unipolar U.S.-centered dollarized economy, or a multipolar, multi-currency world centered on the Eurasian heartland with mixed public/private economies.

There is no doubt that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is a serious war crime regardless of several provocations, including NATO’s eastward expansion and the role of the United States in the 2014 Maidan coup. Even so, the West is in no position to lecture Russia on sovereignty violations.

Given Russia’s modern history, it is possible to have sympathy with the Kremlin’s quest for a cordon sanitaire on its southwestern frontier without supporting an illegal war which is being fought “to the last Ukrainian” because the West sees the conflict as an opportunity to weaken its Cold War enemy. Washington knows Ukraine cannot prevail despite pouring weapons and munitions into the country. It cares little for the civilian population and, together with the UK, is firmly opposed to a diplomatic resolution.

The Defence Strategic Review must act in accordance with Australia’s commitment to sign the UN “Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons” (the ‘Ban Treaty’) and not seek to compromise that path by supporting roles in nuclear warfare alongside the US.

Anthony Albanese made a commitment in his “Changing the World” Speech (ALP National Conference, 18 Dec 2018), stating:

“We have on our side the overwhelming support of the Australian people. …

BY David Noonan B.Sc., M.Env.St.

We are urged at every turn to dismiss everything Vladimir Putin says as upside down to the truth. Those of us who keep our heads, while all about us others are losing theirs and blaming it on us, risk dismissal when we take the Russian president seriously.

Never mind. It is time simply to dismiss those who dismiss.

By Patrick Lawrence
Special to Consortium News

The attack on 82 year-old Paul Pelosi, the husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, in his highly secured home, has given rise to various interpretations.

According to Ms. Pelosi and the Democratic Party, the attacker was a Trumpist who had gone to the house to kill her. Not finding her, he attacked her husband with a hammer, cracking his skull. The old man was hospitalized. His life is not in danger. According to the suspect’s former girlfriend, the man is a lunatic who takes himself for Jesus.

However, no trace of a break-in was found; moreover, the bodyguards did not intervene; and the only hammer on the scene belonged to Mr. Pelosi.

In contrast to the politicized dramatic interpretation of the Democrats which portrays a country on the verge of chaos, another much more prosaic version is drawing attention.

On the 17th of January, 1961, the first elected Prime Minister of newly independent Democratic Republic of Congo, was assassinated with the direct involvement of the Belgian government and collusion of the United States (Damian Zane, BBC, 20/06/2022). It is a damning indictment of the European and American claim to human rights and democratic values.

By Teow Loon Ti

The secrecy surrounding Australian foreign and defence policy protects planners from the public that elected them. The war in Afghanistan offers ample evidence.

The United States and Australia carried out an assassination campaign against the tactical leadership of the insurgency. Known as the Joint Prioritized Effects List (JPEL), it is an intelligence-driven assassination program enabled by drones and special forces. 

By  Clinton Fernandes
Declassified Australia

In an arc of militarisation across northern Australia, successive Australian governments, in close concert with the United States, have responded to the rise of a newly assertive China in terms that constitute an almost historically irrevocable opposition to any accommodation with China as a regional great power.

“The Biden administration’s Nuclear Posture Review is, at heart, a terrifying document. It not only keeps the world on a path of increasing nuclear risk, in many ways it increases that risk. Citing rising threats from Russia and China, it argues that the only viable U.S. response is to rebuild the entire U.S. nuclear arsenal, maintain an array of dangerous Cold War-era nuclear policies, and threaten the first use of nuclear weapons in a variety of scenarios.” Stephen Young, Union of Concerned Scientists