Gus is in hospital with a bad case of old age. Back on deck mid next week.

French President Emmanuel Macron is taking the bull by the horns. On Sunday evening, after being roundly defeated in the European elections, Macron announced a new election for the French parliament, the National Assembly.

Macron Says France Working To ‘Finalize’ Plan To Send Troops to Ukraine
The French leader says other NATO countries have agreed to send troops to train Ukrainian forces

by Dave DeCamp 

On Friday, French President Emmanuel Macron said France was working to “finalize a coalition” of NATO countries that are willing to send troops to Ukraine to train Ukrainian forces, a step that would mark a huge escalation in the proxy war.

During a press conference with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Paris, Macron said Ukraine’s request for NATO trainers was “legitimate” and downplayed the risk of escalation.

THE FOLLOWING ARTICLE BY PSEUDO-HISTORIANICAL PETER HARTCHER AT THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD IS A WINCE-LEMON-VINEGAR-CHLORIDRIC ACID INDUCED ROTTEN UNDERSTANDING OF WHAT HAS BEEN DONE TO RUSSIA WHICH PROVOKED THE MILITARY INTERVENTION IN NAZI YUCKRAINE. 

ONE CAN GET BLUE OR RED IN THE FACE, HARTCHER HAS ONE TRACK IN HIS SHRINKING UNINTELLIGENT PEA-THINKING APPARATUS:... RUSSIA WANTS TO RECREATE ITS FORMER EMPIRE OR THE GLORIOUS USSR OR WHATEVER THE AMERICANS HAVE BEEN DOING SINCE 1776...

Launched from the sanctuary of its own airspace, Russia has been using 1.5-tonne "glide bombs" to help gain ground and wreak havoc on Ukraine's second-largest city.

And there's little Ukraine can do right now to stop them.

Russia's big, cheap, retrofitted Soviet-era bombs have become one of its most effective weapons in the full-scale invasion.

NEW YORK – This city’s splendid Fifth Avenue and parts of the adjacent Central Park were thronged last weekend by masses of pro-Israel demonstrators demanding even more US support of Israel’s laying to waste of Gaza.

New York is the world’s leading Jewish City, exceeding even Israel’s Tel Aviv. More important, this city’s billionaires, many of them Jewish, are Israel’s most ardent and influential supporters. Their donations reach almost all politicians, high officials and, just revealed, important black and Hispanic members of Congress.

    by Eric Margolis

The United States's provocative actions are the principal reason the "unthinkable" possibility of nuclear war is becoming ever more likely.

The unthinkable is becoming thinkable. Nuclear war. The United States’s provocative actions are the principal reason. Desperate to remain the global supremo, our foreign affairs elites are embarked on an increasingly dangerous venture. Going mano a mano with China and Russia in a vain attempt to preserve its hegemonic standing against the tides of history, America is endangering itself and the rest of world.

A Trump/Republican victory would give oxygen to every right-wing hate group across the world. In the increasingly unconvincing defence of AUKUS our political leaders like to speak of our shared values with the United States. This rhetoric becomes increasingly dangerous if the United States lurches yet further to the right. If a Trump victory means people like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Senator Ted Cruz can claim they speak for the majority sheer decency demands that Australia distance itself.

By Dennis Altman

PARIS: Beneath the crystal chandeliers of the gilded reception hall of the Elysee Palace, opened in 1889 with a party for 8000 people, French President Emmanuel Macron hosted US President Joe Biden, at a state dinner intended to celebrate a very old alliance and show the bond is greater than its intermittent frictions.

Biden, addressing the French leader as ‘‘Emmanuel’’, rose from a long table adorned with a bouquet of pink peonies and roses to say that ‘‘France was our first ally, and that is not insignificant’’.

BY Roger Cohen.

If anybody in Australia is interested in real “Truth Telling” then look no further than the continued operation of Don Dale Juvenile Detention Centre in Darwin, NT. Don Dale has, and continues to provide, the real truth for all to see as regards the disaster that is race relations in Australia and how distant the prospect is of ever achieving Reconciliation. Forget ‘Dreamtime at the G’, NAIDOC and Reconciliation Weeks, Sorry and Apology Days, Welcome to Countrys and Paying our Respect to Traditional Owners Past and Present.

The people of the West are all more and more worried to see their elites, heads of state of the USA and of the EU, dragging them into a war against Russia, all this “with flowers in guns and singing” , exactly like in 1914!

Recent events are pushing France and Europe towards a harsh confrontation with Russian forces. While many Europeans hoped and wrongly believed that the war would soon end.

by Valérie Bérenger

Indeed, the rumours in the corridors of the French ministries suggested it, the European chancelleries seemed defeatist on the verge of collapse, going so far as to say more or less openly that “the cause was lost", to the point that we could believing that reality would – finally – take precedence over the narrative.

Israeli forces killed more than 200 Palestinians in the land, sea, and air attack that accompanied their rescue of four hostages from Nuseirat in central Gaza on Saturday, authorities in the enclave have claimed.

As Israeli jets launched airstrikes on the sprawling Nuseirat refugee camp on Saturday morning, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) released a short statement saying that it was targeting “terror infrastructure” in the area. Several hours later, the IDF announced that a team of police and military commandos had rescued four hostages from Hamas captivity in Nuseirat, taking heavy fire on the way in and out of the camp.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_56wMxEcows

'How Do You Explain That?': AG Garland Grilled By Cliff Bentz About Fani Willis Allegations
At Tuesday's House Judiciary Committee hearing, Rep. Cliff Bentz (R-OR) questioned Attorney General Merrick Garland about allegations about Fulton County D.A. Fani Willis.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ioy6Q3YA9Io

JUST IN: Chip Roy Has Tense Interchange With AG Garland Over Victims Of Illegal Immigrants

At today's House Judiciary Committee hearing, Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) questioned Attorney General Merrick Garland about illegal immigration.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TqJ3icFCsow

Should the European NATO members manage to provoke Moscow into a nuclear response, the Americans might stay on the sidelines, Russian President Vladimir Putin has suggested.

Speaking at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) on Friday, Putin was asked about the increasingly belligerent rhetoric from some European capitals, which moderator Sergey Karaganov compared to the baying of hyenas.

“The Europeans have to think: if those with whom we exchange such [nuclear] blows are obliterated, would the Americans get involved in such an exchange, on the level of strategic weapons, or not? I very much doubt it,” Putin said in response.