Transcript of Steve Witkoff's conversation with Yuri Ushakov on October 14

[phone rings]

Steve Witkoff: Hi Yuri.

Yuri Ushakov: Yeah Steve hi, how are you?

SW: Good Yuri. How you doing?

YU: I am ok. Congratulations my friend.

SW: Thank you.

YU: You made a great job. Just a great job. Thank you so much. Thank you, thank you.

SW: Thank you Yuri and thanks for your support. I know your country supported it and I thank you.

YU: Yes, yes, yes. Yes. You know that’s why we suspend the organisation of first Russian-Arabic summit.

SW: Yes.

The servant of the people has his hand in the cookie jar

While soldiers die on the battlefields afar

But the Guardian tells us all is okay

and that the President Yuckrainian can be cocky

             Robert Urbanoski — November 2025

Are we too smart for the status of our animality?

Do we need religion to help poor people cope with angst?

And here we are with pauline doing her burqa stunt again trying to prove that extremist right-wingers do not like Islam. We don’t like her sausages as well either…

London: A deal to end the war in Ukraine has gained more ground in talks to settle deep disputes over land claims and military power, as leaders from the US and Europe claim progress in revising the terms to be put to Russia.

US President Donald Trump claimed an agreement was “very close” and Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky hailed the “good result” on the potential deal, overcoming the uproar at the original White House plan revealed last week.

But Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov pushed back at European leaders for seeking changes to the initial US proposal to cap the size of the Ukrainian army and give Russia formal control of large tracts of eastern Ukraine.

Pauline Hanson has worn a burqa in the Senate, repeating a widely condemned stunt as she sought to ban the Muslim face covering on national security grounds – despite being unable to name a single safety incident linked to the burqa.

The special envoy for Islamophobia warned the stunt could “deepen existing safety risks for Australian Muslim women who choose to wear the headscarf, the hijab, or the full face and body covering, the burqa”.

For years one of the most hazardous places to stand was between mining billionaire Andrew Forrest and a microphone. These days the even-wealthier Gina Rinehart is challenging Forrest on visibility and hyperbole.

Most have become very familiar with Forrest eulogising about the climate-induced end of the planet. At the other extreme, Rinehart is sermonising about the catastrophic effect that environmentalists and leftist “watermelons” are having on Australian industry, farmers and even schoolchildren.

War of the megaphones: Australian billionaires push their climate agendas

Jowett and O’Donnell (2012), scholars in the field of political communication and propaganda studies, define propaganda as “the deliberate, systematic attempt to shape perceptions, manipulate cognitions, and direct behaviour to achieve a response that furthers the desired intent of the propagandist.”

Propaganda has always been a weapon of war, but in today’s Europe, and especially Germany, it has reached new levels of sophistication. What once targeted foreign adversaries is now increasingly directed at domestic populations.

Propaganda, Cognitive Warfare, and Europe’s Path to Self-Destruction

Ricardo Martins

Ukraine working with US to look for 'compromises that strengthen, not weaken us,' Zelenskyy says

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy insisted that “the core principle that kept Europe peaceful longer than at any other time in its history must be respected,” as borders should not be changed by force.

Speaking via a videolink at the opening session of the Crimea Platform parliamentary summit in Sweden, he warned that if this principle “does not work in Europe, then were will it work?”

Following the Libs ‘Net Zero’ battle, ‘Net Gain’ will be the focus this week as Murray Watt struggles to get changes to environmental laws passed. Rex Patrick reports.

One of the changes in Minister Watt’s Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation reform is the introduction of a requirement for a proposed project to pass a ‘net gain’ test.

From ‘net zero’ to ‘net gain’. The platypus-to-possum exchange rate

by Rex Patrick

What does ‘net gain’ mean?

HOW DOES ONE GIVES HOPE AND HAPPINESS IN A WORLD WHERE LIFE TAKETH WHAT IT GAVE YOU IN THE FIRST PLACE? THIS HAS BEEN THE CENTRAL TRAUMA OF BEING HUMAN — OF BEING Homo sapiens.... AS WE DISTRACT OURSELVES WITH VARIOUS DEVICES FROM TIKTOK TO ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, WARS AND FAIRY TALES, THE CENTREPIECE OF OUR MORAL BEHAVIOUR OFTEN RELIES ON A RELIGIOUS DOGMA.

FROM ISLAM TO CHRISTIANITY AND JUDAISM, FROM BUDDHISM AND POLYTHEISM, WE ARE ENTICED TO BELIEVE WE HAVE A CHANCE TO ESCAPE "THIS MORTAL COIL" AND JOIN THE GLORIOUS TROUPE OF HEAVENLY CLOWNS, WHO ARE HAPPY FOREVER.

LIFE IS A TRAGEDY IN WHICH WE NEED TO FIND OUR OWN COMEDY PLATFORM IN WHICH WE CAN ELIMINATE PAIN AND SUFFERINGS, WHILE SMILING ALL THE WAY TO OBLIVION... I KNOW, IT'S A BIG ASK — AND ONLY DOGS, CATS, BUTTERFLIES, BIRDS, ANTS AND RATS CAN DO THIS WITHOUT QUESTIONING THEIR EXISTENCE. 

All we had to do was survive until 25. Remember that jaunty little phrase? Now, here we are, limping to the end of a year in which we’ve experienced the highest unemployment numbers since 1994 and felt GDP contract like we were 10cm dilated. 

Living in New Zealand in 2025 has resembled living in a dying marriage. You can remember a time when things were good, but that feels so long ago now and you’re struggling to see a future. 

Veronica Schmidt

In this episode of RT’s ‘Sanchez Effect’, Rick is joined by Independent geopolitical analyst, author and correspondent with 40 years of experience – Pepe Escobar, to discuss the peace deal proposed by Donald Trump. Despite the proposal being portrayed by the West as ‘pro-Russian’, Pepe trashed it point by point, saying that the whole paper is unacceptable to Moscow.

Sanchez Effect | Pepe Escobar: 'They have to re-write 80% of the deal to make it work'

The nature of time has plagued thinkers for as long as we’ve tried to understand the world we live in. Intuitively, we know what time is, but try to explain it, and we end up tying our minds in knots.

St. Augustine of Hippo, a theologian whose writings influenced western philosophy, captured a paradoxical challenge in trying to articulate time more than 1,600 years ago:

“What then is time? If no one asks me, I know; if I want to explain it to a questioner, I do not know.”

Physicists and philosophers have long struggled to understand the nature of time: Here’s why

The Security Council’s backing of the Trump plan for Gaza ignores international law, punishes the Palestinians, and rewards those responsible for genocide.

More than two years into the genocide in Palestine, the UN Security Council has finally acted. But rather than acting to enforce international law, protect the victims, and hold the perpetrators accountable, it adopted a resolution that openly flouts key provisions of international law, disempowers and further punishes the victims, and rewards and empowers the perpetrators.

Craig Mokhiber

The EU has reportedly rejected the Ukraine peace deal drafted by the White House, putting forward its own set of conditions for a potential agreement.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen made the announcement on Sunday as US officials were discussing Washington’s proposal with EU and Ukrainian representatives in Geneva, Switzerland.

The US had submitted its plan to both Moscow and Kiev earlier this week. The contents of the document have not been officially disclosed to the public.

Media outlets have claimed that, among other things, it calls upon Kiev to withdraw troops from the part of Russia’s Donbass it still controls, downsize its military, and shelve its NATO aspirations in exchange for Western security guarantees.

THE PICTURE USED ON THE SPECTATOR ARTICLE IS EITHER DESIGNED TO REPRESENT THE CRAPPY SPECTATOR VIEW ON GLOBAL WARMING OR TO STIR THE POSSUM. GUS THINKS THAT THE SPECTATOR VIEWS ARE BROUGHT FORTH TO SLOW DOWN OUR EFFORTS TO MITIGATE WHAT IS CHANGING CLIMATE INDICATORS OF PLANET EARTH, INCLUDING UNDENIABLE RISING TEMPERATURE. HERE IS THE ARTICLE:

It’s not science if you can’t question it

The Spectator

22 November 2025