THE AUSTRALIAN GOVERNMENT STILL GETS THINGS WRONG ON UKRAINE. ONE SHOULD NOT WONDER WHY…

NOT SURPRISINGLY, THE AUSTRALIAN GOVERNMENT FOLLOWS THE US ADMINISTRATION LIKE A GOOD DOG ON A LEACH. THEIR CONTRADICTORY POLICIES ARE: TAIWAN IS A SEPARATE ENTITY TO CHINA, BUT “UKRAINE” IS INDIVISIBLE. THE ONLY EXPLANATION HERE IS THAT WE’RE IN THE BUSINESS OF ANNOYING THE CHINESE AND THE RUSSIANS, BY BEING HYPOCRITICALLY FOCUSED ON BOTH FRONTS FOR CONQUEST. I DON'T REPEAT THIS OFTEN ENOUGH....

Nashville • It wasn’t exactly news when a principal in Nebraska censored a high school newspaper, canceled the school’s journalism program and abruptly disbanded its student newspaper. I mean, it’s news news, but it’s not surprising news. Red state bureaucrats and politicians have been at war with the First Amendment for a while now.

Even school officials’ reason for shutting down The Viking Saga, the award-winning 54-year-old student paper at Northwest High School in Grand Island, Neb., wasn’t exactly a shock.

BY Margaret Renkl

The Premier seems ambivalent about the 800 COVID-19 cases onboard the Majestic Princess (“Ship with 800 COVID cases set to dock”, November 12). Haven’t we learnt from the outbreak on the Ruby Princess in 2020? With cases numbers rising to 19,800 last week, the government seems very relaxed about its spread. Why isn’t the Premier mandating use of masks in shopping centres and on public transport rather than doing nothing? Both parties are too frightened to implement mask-wearing and boost the number of vaccinations, in case they lose votes in March. 

Robert Pallister, Punchbowl

The modern soldier is half-human/half machine

That lives on amphetamines to maintain alertness

And on sleeping pills to allay sleeplessness.

On orders to kill while on tour of duty

Fighting to protect the country 

From enemies that mad politicians invent

To keep alive a grand hegemony

Of conquering the world in a sickly sadist sad intent.

The modern soldier was invented by Marinetti —

An Italian fascist creator of plastic food 

For these defenders of deceitful mood

Decorated with armour, camera, kevlar, boots

Eating futurism without cutlery.

Futurism…

The fascist poet dreams of metallising the human body… 

War beautifully fertilising a flowering gully

And a gentle meadow, with flaming orchids from machine guns… 

America’s Neo-Nazi bedfellows in Ukraine are latest in long line of odious allies Washington has used against Russia.

From pogrom-mongers to Hitlerites to radical Islamists, the US has collaborated with repugnant partners for more than a century.

Soviet leader Joseph Stalin was furious when he found out in March 1945 that his supposed World War II ally, Washington, was negotiating with the German Nazis behind his back. In fact, by the accounts of some historians, American spy and future CIA director Allen Dulles essentially kicked off the Cold War when he held secret talks with Waffen SS General Karl Wolff as Hitler's regime was nearing its collapse.

By Tony Cox

NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet faces a damaging internal battle in the final week of parliament as Liberals threaten to cross the floor over the revival of the so-called koala wars which almost tore apart the Coalition two years ago.

As NSW parliament sits for the last time before the March election, the bitter issue of protecting koala habitat could split the Coalition, with Liberals who face challenges from teal candidates fearing it would ignite a backlash against the government.

The Nationals have introduced a bill to make it easier for landholders to clear private native forestry without duplicate approval processes between state and local governments. However, critics have warned it could water down environmental regulation and destroy koala habitat.

Josep Borrell, the European Union’s foreign policy and security chief, gave an important speech to the European Diplomatic Academy in Bruges, Belgium in mid-October.

Being amongst fellow members of the global elites, Borrell felt able to set out his views on the relationship between Europe and the West and other nations with an unusual degree of honesty and candour.

“Europe is a garden” declared Borrell. “We have built a garden. Everything works. It is the best combination of political freedom, economic prosperity and social cohesion that the humankind has been able to build – the three things together.”

Alcohol, warmongers, delusions, heist,

Drugs, politics, despair, powers…

Deceit, robbery, Kommerce, Khrist.

Krap. Krupp. Last bar orders.

The ones left behind, unfit for battle,

Drunks, flat-feet, obese, sick and old

Drink to forget this war or another

Senseless, penny-less, useless…

Together to forget they are alone.

The soldiers in the trenches, on standby

Fifteen thousand miles from Gundagai

Drink to forget they’re going to die

Not because they are a bad soldier…

They make excellent targets as Fodder.

Drunk, they walk funny, left and right,

Delaying the aim of the shot that might

Eternitelise them forever.

On this day, the odds are one for two will die, 

In a bomb crater. 

The other will loose a leg or two.

All the trees are naked stark

We’re Here Because We’re Here Because We’re Here Because We’re Here

My title comes from a song sung by soldiers as they marched to hell in the trenches of World War I and the same song my sisters and I sang in the car as our parents drove us to our summer vacation in paradise at Edgewater Farm.

I think of this as we march to WW III.

EUROPEANS HAVE BEEN UNDER THE DOMINATION OF THE USA. ANGELA MERKEL HAD TO BE SUPERSMART TO KNOW HOW TO NAVIGATE THE INFESTED WATERS.

WHAT FOLLOWS IS PURE SPECULATION.

OUR GUESS IS THAT MERKEL KNEW THAT THE US WERE PLAYING WITH FIRE IN UKRAINE TO BOTHER THE RUSSIANS. THE US HAD BEEN PLAYING A GAME OF CONQUEST AND ANYONE WHO THINKS UKRAINE CAME WILLINGLY TO LOVE “WESTERN CULTURE” IS A FOOL. THE US PROPAGANDA AND THAT OF SOROS PLAYED VIOLINS 24/7 WHILE THE LURE OF CASH WAS ATTRACTING THE CORRUPT POLITICIANS OF UKRAINE. THE ORDINARY PEOPLE WERE BEING FOOLED.

AS USUAL, SITUATIONS SUCH AS THESE ARE COMPLEX, ESPECIALLY IN REGARD TO UKRAINE AND RUSSIA. UKRAINE HAS BEEN A DIVIDED ENTITY EVEN BEFORE THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION OF 1917. HERE WE GO....

Dear Veterans,
I’m a civilian who, like many Americans, has strong ties to the U.S. Armed Forces. I never considered enlisting, but my father, uncles, cousins, and nephews did. 

As a child I baked cookies to send with letters to my cousin Steven who was serving in Vietnam. My family tree includes soldiers on both sides of the Civil War. Some years before my father died, he shared with me his experience of being drafted during the Korean War and, while on leave, traveling to Hiroshima, Japan. There, just a few short years after an American atomic bomb had devastated that city as World War II ended, he was haunted by seeing the dark shadows of the dead cast onto concrete by the nuclear blast.

I feel like we haven’t been talking enough about the fact that US government agencies were just caught intimately collaborating with massive online platforms to censor content in the name of regulating the “cognitive infrastructure” of society.

The only way you could be okay with the US government appointing itself this authority would be if you believed the US government is an honest and beneficent entity that works toward the benefit of the common man. Which would of course be an unacceptable thing for a grown adult to believe.

BY Caitlin Johnstone

Billionaires are responsible for a million times more greenhouse gas emissions than the average person, according to Oxfam.

Research by the international charity found that the investments of just 125 billionaires emit 393 million tonnes of CO2 each year, equivalent to the yearly emissions of 85 million cars.

This is one million times more than someone in the bottom 90 per cent of humanity. Everyone who earns below €173,000 on average is in this group.

Hungary and Türkiye should stop blocking the ratification of Finland and Sweden’s membership of NATO, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said on Thursday, adding that there is a “crystal clear basis” for allowing the two Nordic nations to join the military bloc.

Ankara and Budapest have been delaying the process, with Türkiye pointing to concerns about Sweden and Finland’s alleged support of Kurdish “terrorism,” while Hungary claims it will vote on the issue after it resolves a number of disagreements with the EU.

Speaking at a joint press conference with her Swedish counterpart, Tobias Billstrom, Baerbock said that both Ankara and Budapest have committed themselves to formalizing the accession “and that’s exactly what they need to do now.”

When Russian soldiers left his village in southern Ukraine after more than seven months of occupying it, Volodymyr Kmitevych thought the worst was over. But then he watched a missile strike down his wife, Olena, in front of him…

Less than two weeks after her death, the 55-year-old sits in a darkened room among the green potted plants she had arranged throughout their house, looking through a photo album full of memories. In one of the photos, a younger Kmitevych and his wife playfully hug each other on the couch.

“She was a miracle, we lived together for 31 years, soul-to-soul,” Kmitevych says from his home in Novooleksandrivka, which has been without electricity for months. “Now it’s just emptiness, I don’t know what I’ll do next.”