Is Albo auditioning for membership of NATO? His Labor government may be more competent than the Coalition on foreign affairs but little has changed on government secrecy, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese even stepping up weapons traffic to Ukraine while keeping mum on coal.

“Today we are announcing an additional $100 million in military-technical assistance. In total, we have already provided $390 million,” Albanese said this week on his tour to meet President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyi. “We are also additionally providing 14 armoured personnel carriers and 20 “Bushmaster” – armoured vehicles. Thus, the total number of “Bushmasters” was 60″.

Last week, Reuters reported that over five million barrels-worth of crude from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve released by the Biden administration to help ease gas prices in the United States had instead been shipped to refineries in Europe, India and China.

Some 950,000 of the oil released from the SPR to cope with spiraling gasoline prices may have wound up in depots controlled by Sinopec, the Chinese state-owned energy giant which Hunter Biden co-founded capital market firm BHR Partners has a $1.7 billion stake in, the Washington Free Beacon has reported, citing Department of Energy (DoE) data and information previously disclosed by Chinese and US business regulators.

This March, when the Biden administration presented a staggering $813 billion proposal for “national defense,” it was hard to imagine a budget that could go significantly higher or be more generous to the denizens of the military-industrial complex. After all, that request represented far more than peak spending in the Korean or Vietnam War years, and well over $100 billion more than at the height of the Cold War. 

THE BRILLIANT THOMAS PIKETTY ENTERS THE MURKY WATERS OF PRESENT WORLD POLITICS. HE IS EITHER NAIVE OR MISINFORMED, OR DELIBERATELY CHOSE TO IGNORE REALITY TO PROMOTE IDEALISTIC BULLSHIT. GUS EXPLAINS IN CAPS. HERE COMES PIKETTY:

…

Will Europe succeed in redefining its place in the global geopolitical order? With the invasion of Ukraine by Russia and the rise of tensions with China, circumstances oblige Europe to do so, but it is full of hesitations.

EUROPE WILL NOT SUCCEED UNLESS IT RECOGNISES RUSSIA’S CLAIMS OF SELF-DEFENCE, OF THE SELF-DETERMINATION OF THE DONBASS REGION AND RUSSIAN SECURITY. WHAT GEOPOLITICAL ORDER?

Red Cross official Basheer Omar told RT on Saturday that the humanitarian situation in Yemen is one of “unimaginable horror,” with two thirds of the population deprived of basic healthcare. Omar called on the international community not to leave the Yemeni people “alone facing their fate.”

With the armed conflict in Yemen in its eighth year, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) released a report this week stating that around 66% of Yemen’s 30.5 million people lack access to basic healthcare, and those in need of medical attention often risk death to visit the 51% of healthcare facilities still operating in the country.

Germany just posted its first monthly trade deficit in three decades, and the head of the German Federation of Trade Unions has warned that key industries in the country may collapse permanently as a result of high energy prices and shortages. The golden era of the European Union’s economic locomotive has already come to an end. 

By Glenn Diesen

In case you haven't noticed, the wheels are falling off the global economy right now.

Since the late 1970s, Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman have written a series of books about the United States’ involvement in so-called “state terrorism.” Chomsky and Herman, in their publications, concluded that the global rise in state terror was the result of US foreign policy. The fact that the United States and its allies sponsored and used state terrorism on a “massive scale” during the Cold War is also acknowledged by Professor Ruth J. Blakeley from the University of Sheffield, as well as many other American analysts.

The global use of the ideology of terrorism in the interests of the US political elites began even before the entry of Soviet troops into Afghanistan, when, with the support of American and NATO intelligence agencies, Washington’s interest began to shift from European neo-fascism to Islamic fundamentalism.

There are significant long-term consequences in the fiasco for the whole idea of synodality and co-responsibility in the Catholic Church in Australia.

The 43 bishops cast their deliberative votes this morning on Parts 3 and 4 of the Motions and Amendments, which had yesterday received qualified majorities (two-thirds). Part 3 passed without any fuss, but Part 4 on women’s place in the church was rejected. The room was stunned. Uproar broke out. Hearts were broken. When the Assembly resumed after morning tea a large group of women and some men, including a couple of bishops, refused to take their seats, standing in symbolic protest at the entry to the meeting room. I was proud to be a part of this action.

BY JOHN WARHURST

This is the state of our Western Anglo-Saxons today: confusion.

The definition of populism is conflicted by various populist trends. The right, the left, the LGBTiW+ (I have added the Wankers to the nomenclature), the traditional Christians versus the progressive and of course the warmongers versus the naked peaceniks, the lovely Democrats versus the nasty republicans, all with their arse in the air as they feed from the same capitalistic trough. 

Former CIA director and secretary of state Mike Pompeo gave a speech at the Hudson Institute last week that’s probably worth taking a look at just because of how much it reveals about the nature of the US empire and the corrupt institutions which influence its policies.

Pompeo is serving as a “Distinguished Fellow” at the Hudson Institute while he waits for the revolving door of the DC swamp to rotate him back into a federal government position. 

BY caitlin johnstone

The Democratic Progressive Party of Taiwan, due to its relations with Tokyo, has long chosen to ignore the commemoration of Taiwan people's fight against the occupation by Japan in 1895.

It was in that year when the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) was forced to sign the Treaty of Shimonoseki after losing the Sino-Japanese War, ceding Taiwan island to Japan.

The scale of the war was reflected in the casualties it caused. About 14,000 Taiwan people died, while the population of the island was 2.6 million at that time.

After more than a decade, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) updated its Strategic Concept to name China as a chief global security threat to our "values." In response, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian accused the alliance of promoting "conflict and confrontation."

Russia hasn't really started anything yet – Putin

The president cautioned Russia’s rivals against attempting to defeat it on the battlefield

Russia is ready to engage in peace negotiations with Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday, warning that those who reject such prospects should realize that prolonging the ongoing conflict would only make such talks more difficult.

“We do not refuse to negotiate peace, but those who refuse should know that the longer they do, the more difficult it will be to negotiate,”Putin said, issuing a warning to those who might think Russia has already exhausted its capabilities amid the conflict.

Once upon a time, in a galaxy not far away, the Empire of Chaos launched the so-called “War on Terror” against an impoverished cemetery of empires at the crossroads of Central and South Asia.