The Great Australian Whinge is alive and well in our market and economic commentary. America is just so much better, the likely suspects regularly tell us. Michael Pascoe reckons they are selectively blind.

Wall Street has performed so much better than the ASX, American productivity growth is vastly superior to Australia’s, American GDP growth shames us, nobody would want to invest here, may the last entrepreneur relocating to Singapore please turn off the lights, and it’s all Labor’s fault.

America-envy. The pet shop galahs of economic commentary

by Michael Pascoe

Or so our petshop galahs increasingly screech. “We’ll all be rooned,” said Hanrahan and much MSM commentary and guest opinion pieces in the national dailies.

Ukraine has used virtually every NATO tool it could against Russia, but Moscow has found ways to counter all of them, former Ukrainian commander-in-chief Valery Zaluzhny has argued.

The retired general, who currently serves as Ukraine’s ambassador to the UK, expanded on earlier remarks in which he said Kiev would never join the US-led military bloc. According to Zaluzhny, NATO remains anchored in obsolete doctrines, unlike Ukraine.

Tara Reade: The US is handing its war machine to Israel
A new Pentagon-IDF tie-up deepens military integration while ordinary US citizens get more war, more debt, and less to hope for at home

In the early 2000s, I worked with domestic violence victims in Seattle, Washington.

One of my trainers was a scrappy woman who told me she was a former member of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). Looking back, I remember wondering why several former Mossad and IDF personnel were involved in training Seattle police officers. At the time, I didn’t think much of it. After all, they were working to help protect victims of domestic violence.

Fast forward to 2026.

A Spanish minister has suggested Israel was stirring problems over 60,000 migrants crossing from Morocco into Spain's North African enclave of Ceuta. 

Israel's ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Danon, posted on X on Friday: "Spain, which never misses an opportunity to lecture Israel, has declared a state of emergency in Ceuta following the crisis over its immigration policy.

"Maybe before it continues lecturing us, it's time it explained to the world why it still maintains colonial enclaves in Africa," he added.

Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt told reporters that finding an armed drone at a German airport was a new threat situation.

"Drone sightings, drone threats including in a hybrid context, are something we know from the past," Dobrindt said. "That a drone armed with explosives is at an airport is a new threat scenario," he added.

Interior Minister says armed drone is 'new threat scenario'

"All the speculation that is currently going on about the explosives, the construction, the question of the drone, the origin and, of course, who is behind it, is now part of the investigation," Dobrindt said.

Former Wall Street lawyer and federal prosecutor Jay Clayton has been confirmed as the next US Director of National Intelligence (DNI) despite having no traditional intelligence background, following his nomination by President Donald Trump.

Following US Senate approval in a 51-47 vote on Tuesday, Clayton will replace acting DNI Bill Pulte, has filled the role since Tulsi Gabbard resigned last month, citing personal family matters.

From Wall Street to top spy: Who is Trump’s new DNI Jay Clayton?

The former lawyer and prosecutor has been chosen to lead the US intelligence community following Tulsi Gabbard’s departure from the role

Beginning in the 1950s, the Soviet Union launched an ambitious programme aimed at developing artificial intelligence. While the history of AI today seems to be shaped by the giants of Silicon Valley, ideas originating from behind the Iron Curtain had a significant influence, although they remain largely overlooked. 

AI before AI: The forgotten Soviet programme (1/3)

By: Sébastian SEIBT

As part of the 105th anniversary of the Communist Party of China, Xinhua asked several friends of China about their views on the CPC.

1. On the CPC's Self-Revolution
General Secretary Xi Jinping of the CPC defined "self-revolution" as a way for the CPC to escape the historical cycle of decline. In your opinion, what are the inspirations for this "self-revolution" for political parties around the world?

Interview with Jean Pierre Page by the Chinese news agency Xinhua

BY Jean-Pierre PAGE

Deeply divided by nationalism and deprived of its vast colonies by the last century’s catastrophic two World Wars, western Europe has been in decline ever since. Recently that decline has become drastic and desperate as western Europe falls ever further behind – economically, militarily, and politically – today’s two superpowers: the US and China... Mediocre and unpopular leaders reflect western European decline.

Why Europe’s Leaders Provoke War with Russia

BY RICHARD WOLFF AND DEMOCRACY AT WORK

The word “terrorism” is applied selectively to enemies of the US and its allies, turning a legal and moral category into propaganda that obscures state violence and normalises genocide.

Allies of the US are never designated as “terrorist”.

Richard Nixon’s “war on drugs” failed. Drugs are now more widely used around the world than ever before. Police forces disguise the failure by telling us about another record drug haul.

And George Bush’s “war on terror” has failed because continuing US attacks on Muslim people – as in Iran – inevitably triggers a response.

John Menadue

I have accomplished, to the best of my ability, this work which has occupied me for 15 years, on a subject near to me—that of art. By saying that this subject has occupied me for 15 years, I do not mean that I have been writing this book 15 years, but only that I began to write on art 15 years ago, thinking that when once I undertook the task I should be able to accomplish it without a break. It proved, however, that my views on the matter then were so far from clear that I could not arrange them in a way that satisfied me.

What Is Art?

By Leo Tolstoy

Translated From the Original With An Introduction By Aylmer Maude

… Australia was on the wrong side of the very qualities — his strength of will, singleness of purpose, his refusal to 'give way, in things great or small, large or petty', the power of his imagination to set grim reality at defiance, his mastery of the English language — that made Winston Churchill, as the philosopher Isaiah Berlin described him, "the saviour of his country, the largest human being of his time." His total self-belief and his urge for action had their stubborn, reckless, and spiteful aspect. Australia often seemed to bring out that darker side.

Churchill and Australia
Graham Freudenberg

ISBN: 9781742623672

I’m a Sydney Bin Chicken

Born in a tall palm tree

I don’t so know when

Time is irrelevant to thee

All I want is quality garbage

That humans throw out in rage

Or drop like a pooping cow

Near street bins that overflow

With many a rotten tomato

Left over pizza is thus a treat

That Bin Chickens love to eat 

High class gourmet rubbish

Dreaming I was the king of Egypt 

Till I lost my privileged script

Badly transcribed in Hieroglyphs 

By a blind drunk stoned carver

Becoming nearly extinct forever

Until rescued by Taronga zoo

To avoid the vanishing eternal goo

And welcome street paradise

Of bin rubbish in glorious sunrise

As we multiply like educated rats

Our species is not full of ungrats

Some catastrophes disappear because they end. Others disappear because they continue for so long that the world grows accustomed to them. 

They cease to interrupt television schedules and Instagram reels, just as they no longer command the front pages of newspapers. 

Vijay Prashad: Silence on Gaza When Headlines Fade

The tapering off of media coverage of the U.S.-Israeli genocide hasn’t abated the violence. In fact, its permanence is what allows the world to look away.

Financial markets return to their ordinary calculations, the daily machinery of political and economic life resumes its familiar rhythm, and diplomats are asked to put away their briefing books on that tired but painful subject. 

The River Rhine has fallen to record low levels in several locations in Germany and the Netherlands as prolonged heatwaves continue across Europe.

Last week, levels were measured in Cologne in western Germany and in Lobith, where the Rhine crosses from Germany into the Netherlands, that were lower than at any point since records began.

Other major European rivers with important transport, industrial and agricultural functions have also seen record low levels, including the Danube, which flows through 10 countries, and Italy's Po river.