The deliberate undermining of democratic norms and the conflation of personal power with national interest are consistent with patterns seen in states that have tipped into authoritarian rule.

The United States has entered a phase that resembles the early stages of a failed state. What once seemed impossible, in a country with vast resources and robust democratic traditions, now appears increasingly plausible.

 

Jesse MacKinnon

Is the US on the path to becoming a failed state?

 

In planning its future release of up to 80 billion tonnes of planet-heating carbon, Australia has committed itself to the destruction of nations and wrecking of big cities throughout the Indo-Pacific Region.

Despite the platitudes of its political leadership, in what amounts to a declaration of war on its lowlying neighbours, Australia — a country that has criticised both Russia and Israel for assaults on their border states — continues to authorise huge fossil fuel developments that will accelerate global warming, ocean rise and the obliteration of entire societies in the region.

 

Julian Cribb

Go-ahead for new carbon bomb marks Australia as enemy of the region

 

NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte has repeatedly insisted that the alliance should be "stronger" and "more capable of deadly strikes,” calling on European militaries to “step up” and spend “considerably north of 3%” of GDP on defense.

Mark Rutte has warned NATO countries that unless they raise military spending to 5% of GDP, they should "learn to speak Russian." 

Alternative media is reshaping Australia’s political landscape, challenging traditional narratives and amplifying marginalised voices. As online platforms gain influence, they are shifting public perceptions on issues like China, elections, and political identity.

 

Australian Alternative Media and Its Impact on Australian Public Debate

By Lewis Taylor

 

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres on Monday told delegates at the UN Ocean Conference in Nice, France: "The ocean is the ultimate shared resource. But we are failing it."

The UN boss cited collapsing fish stocks, rising sea levels, ocean acidification, plastic pollution, destructive fishing and the quest for mineral riches at the ocean floor as key threats in his remarks.

The conference was organized to ratify a treaty that would give nations the right to establish protected marine areas in international waters.

In the waning days of President Donald Trump’s first administration, migrant caravans surged northward. The migrants themselves admitted they were coming in anticipation of President Joe Biden’s inauguration and the Democrat president’s pledge to pause deportations and end Remain in Mexico. The former Vice President Kamala Harris’s plea of “do not come” had little effect beyond the memes it generated.

 

Will 1,000,000 Deportations Be Enough?
The Trump administration has promised great things on immigration. Is it ready to deliver?

It is 1am on 3 June. A near gale force wind is blasting into Scotland. Great weather for the Moray East and West offshore wind farms, you would have thought.

The two farms are 13 miles off the north-east coast of Scotland and include some of the biggest wind turbines in the UK, at 257m high. With winds like that they should be operating at maximum capacity, generating what the developer, Ocean Winds, claims is enough power to meet the electricity needs of well over a million homes.

Except they are not.

Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky is well aware that he cannot win the conflict against Russia on his own and is trying to drag NATO into it, Sen. Tommy Tuberville, a Republican from Alabama, has said. Such developments could plunge the world into a new world war, he warned.

Tuberville made his statements on John Catsimatidis’s radio show “Cats Roundtable” on WABC 770 AM on Sunday. According to the senator, the conflict between Moscow and Kiev is on the verge of spilling over to other nations and potentially involving the American military.

The epic battle between illegal immigrants and law enforcement has proven beyond a doubt that the Biden administration committed a grave mistake when it opened up America’s borders to a free for all.

The Los Angeles migrant riots are the result of Biden’s biggest mistake
Flag-burning liberals find out, once again, that crime doesn’t pay

BY Robert Bridge

 

Paris is pushing France’s largest automaker, Renault, to establish a military drone production operation in Ukraine, the company has confirmed. Kiev has been significantly intensifying drone attacks on Russian infrastructure.

During the final week of May, 2,300 Ukrainian UAVs were shot down after being sent across the border to target Moscow and other regions, according to the Russian Defense Ministry.

Elon Musk appeared to jokingly reconsider his stance on the Big Beautiful Bill after a California Democrat came to his defense.

Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., wrote on X that "I can't believe I'm saying this – but [Elon Musk] is right." However, that seems to be the last point on which the two agree. They both object to the Big Beautiful Bill, viewing it as full of pork. Musk opposes the bill because he believes it raises government spending too much, while Schiff objects to what he calls its "far-right" content, which he describes as "dangerous."

 

It is an inevitable right of passage in Washington: every outgoing administration's senior officials have a chance to shake off the loss, find a golden sinecure, and then start crafting the narrative that they prefer, rather than the history that exists.

 

Jake Sullivan: Trump not doing diplomacy right   Says the National Security Adviser who did not do diplomacy with Russia or between Russia and Ukraine, at all

 

KELLEY BEAUCAR VLAHOS

 

Scott Morrison has credited Australians for their "courage and resilience" in the face of crises, including the Black Summer bushfires and a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic, as he receives the country's highest honour for his leadership. 

The 30th prime minister has been appointed a Companion of the Order of Australia (AC) for his "eminent service" to the country and direction of the national COVID response, as part of the King's Birthday honours.

Mr Morrison was prime minister for just over three and a half years — between 2018 and 2022 — a period in which he said, "we were hit with pretty much every crisis you can imagine".

Sebastião Salgado, who died last week, of leukemia, at the age of eighty-one, was among the most famous documentary photographers of the twentieth century. Throughout more than four decades of epic, globe-spanning projects, many of which were both self-assigned and largely self-funded, he forged an instantly recognizable aesthetic in a field that tends to shy away from overt authorial touch. His pictures were sweepingly cinematic, symbolically loaded, and unabashedly gorgeous, even when he was photographing some of the greatest human horrors of the past century, such as the famine in the Sahel region of Africa in the mid-nineteen-eighties, or the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide. A latter-day cornerstone of what Cornell Capa once dubbed “concerned photography,” Salgado’s work earned him numerous prestigious prizes and was showcased in grand touring exhibitions and in hefty coffee-table books.

The consensus was that he handled it quite well: The new German Chancellor Friedrich Merz  got through his first visit to US President Donald Trump without any heated exchanges or diplomatic faux pas. Although he hardly had a chance to speak during the nearly 50-minute press conference in the Oval Office, he was able to say that Germany will continue to support Ukraine in its defense against Russia.