The recent pact between China and the Solomon Islands has exposed the manifest hypocrisy with which the United States and Australia view their relationship with smaller members of the Pacific community. The Solomon Islands have recently signed a security deal with China. The details of the arrangement have not been publicly disclosed, but it is believed to provide for periodic visits by Chinese warships to the small Pacific Island nation, and for the provision of Chinese assistance in maintaining public order.

BY James O’Neill

The visit to India on April 21-22 by UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson is not an ordinary event for either side.

As far as India is concerned, the way its leadership has developed relations with each of the leading players in the current phase of the Great Game, one of which is the former metropole, does not contradict New Delhi’s overall (relatively) neutral positioning at the world’s gaming table. However, this positioning itself is subject to a number of serious challenges, with the main one stemming from the complex nature of relations with the second global power, which today is the People’s Republic of China.

Ukrainian Ambassador to Germany Andriy Melnyk sparked a culinary-themed diplomatic dispute by calling Olaf Scholz an unstatesmanlike “liverwurst sausage” over the chancellor’s refusal to visit Kiev. Scholz said Monday that he had no plans to travel to Ukraine for the time being due to Kiev’s snub of President Frank-Walter Steinmeier last month.

Senior Free Democratic Party politician and Bundestag Vice President Wolfgang Kubicki has stepped out in defence of his coalition ally Scholz, insisting that the chancellor is not a sausage.

The Nuremberg Rallies (officially Reichsparteitag, meaning Reich Party Congress) refer to a series of celebratory events coordinated by the Nazi Party in Germany.

During hurricane Harvey that hit Texas in 2017, there was major flooding in many locations. What I was going to write used the word “ludicrous", but I will restrain this to “quaint”, to describe the rescue boats that were flying the American flag — as if the safety of people depended on the American dream in which Americans are American first, otherwise why bother exist unless one is American. And the American dream is embodied in the American flag. It is a symbol of belonging to America. We might be drowning in American induced rain-water, but the flag is flying proudly like a beacon of patriotic hopeful godly American pride of American existence.

let’s make a useless detour into a "historical hurricane", just for fun….

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May 4, 2001 marks the day when the US was voted off the United Nations Commission on Human Rights. The decision should have provided the superpower with a much-needed wakeup call. Instead, it just became more reckless on the global stage.

KATIE HALPER: Professor Michael Hudson, thank you so much for joining us. We’re really excited to have you.

We wanted to start off by asking you if you could provide an overview of what the economics driving this conflict are—and by conflict, I mean the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, and, of course, with the rest of the world, or really the conflict between Russia and US, and the economic fallout.

In two months, the Russian special military operation against the Banderites has turned into a real war between the Russians and the Donbass People’s Republics on the one hand and the Nato-backed Ukrainians on the other.

A Ukrainian victory would be a blow against Russia and a Russian victory would mark the death of NATO. Neither of the two protagonists can back down. So all moves are allowed.

First, the Banderites saw their former allies from the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations (ABN) and the World Anti-Communist League (WACL) [1], such as 3,000 militiamen from the Turkish Grey Wolves, flocking to Ukraine.

Let me tell you about the most brazen assault on Australia’s secular democracy you have probably never heard about.

It’s the Seven Mountains Mandate. And it’s quietly creeping from America into Australian political life, with the express purpose of taking control of all the institutions of power.

The Morrison government's election campaign is a disaster, but the real story is still the state of the press

At the halfway point of the election, inside one of the most pockmarked government terms in modern history, Anthony Albanese comes back from a week incapacitated with COVID. Live in Perth, at an important time in the nation’s history, he stands before the media to take questions. After weeks of gotchas at the expense of genuine questions on policy… “where’s Tanya?”, they ask.

Philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche wrote: “Underneath this reality in which we live and have our being, another and altogether different reality lies concealed.”

What does this mean at a democratic level? 

It could mean (and it does) that the government of the people by the people is a surface distraction.

THIS IS WHAT we EXPOSED in the cartoon about the devious inauguration speech by George H W Bush (https://yourdemocracy.net/drupal/node/43837):

On Saturday, the Chinese Embassy in Washington asked the Biden administration to halt the supply of weapons to Taiwan, warning that the People’s Republic reserves the right to respond to such provocative behaviour. Beijing considers Taiwan an integral part of China destined for eventual peaceful reunification with the mainland.

Taiwanese authorities are searching for a stopgap alternative to US-sourced M109A6 self-propelled howitzers amid delays to the latter’s delivery, the island’s Ministry of National Defence announced Monday.

Israel Summons Russia’s Ambassador, Demands Apology Over Lavrov’s Remarks About Hitler, Zelensky

In an interview with an Italian TV channel on Sunday, the Russian foreign minister suggested that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s oft-made claim that Ukraine does not suffer from problems with Nazism because Zelensky himself is Jewish was severely flawed.

Israel summoned Russian Ambassador to Israel Anatoly Viktorov on Monday over Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov’s comments about Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Adolf Hitler.

Let us honor those workers who stood up to Amazon, especially Chris Smalls, described by Amazon’s chief counsel as “not smart, or articulate,” who led a walkout at the Amazon warehouse at Staten Island JFK8 at the beginning of the pandemic two years ago to protest unsafe working conditions. He was immediately fired. Amazon’s high-priced lawyers, however, were in for a surprise. Smalls unionized the first Amazon warehouse in the country. He, along with his co-founder Derrick Palmer, built their union worker by worker with little outside support and no affiliation with a national labor group, raising $120,000 on GoFundMe. Amazon spent more than $4.3 million on anti-union consultants last year alone, according to federal filings.