Environment Minister Murray Watt wants the Parliament to amend our environmental laws, but leave a key component for him and his Department to sort out later. Former Senator Rex Patrick reports on EPBC reform.

“Trust me, I’m from the Government”.

It appears the Environment Minister, Senator Murray Watt, wants to push Federal Labor’s environmental reforms through the Parliament with a core element, the National Environmental standards, hidden from sight.

 

Watt happens. A Labor deal with Coalition or Greens on environment?
by Rex Patrick

 

The Senate should properly reject that approach.

A US warship has docked in Trinidad and Tobago as Venezuela blasts the Caribbean island nation for holding joint exercises with the United States.

Venezuela has criticized the Caribbean nation of Trinidad and Tobago, which lies just off its coast, for conducting a joint military exercise with the United States and allowing a US warship to dock.

 

Venezuela calls US exercises with Trinidad a 'provocation'

Kate Hairsine AP, AFP, EFE

On 17 October, US President Donald Trump told Fox News, “I hope to see Saudi Arabia go in, and I hope to see others go in. I think when Saudi Arabia goes in, everybody goes in.” The statement was calculated to reignite Washington's normalization push and reassert Riyadh's place at the heart of the US-Israeli regional alliance plan.

 

Saudi Arabia's path to normalization with Israel threatens a regional rupture
The kingdom's possible accession to the Abraham Accords could catalyze a new regional security order – but at great political, ideological, and moral cost.

BY Fouad Ibrahim

 

Vladimir Zelensky expects Ukraine to be able to fight Russia for up to three more years, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has told The Sunday Times. The Ukrainian leader’s reported remark comes as the EU is looking for new ways to fund Kiev, eyeing Russia’s frozen central-bank assets as an option. 

In an interview with the British newspaper on Saturday, Tusk quoted Zelensky as saying that “he hopes that the war will not last ten years, but that Ukraine is ready to fight for another two, three years.” Should the conflict with Russia drag on longer, Zelensky is “anxious about the toll the war would take on its population and economy,” the Polish prime minister said.

Last week, the vassal governor of Australia Anthony Albanese went to the imperial court in Washington and paid tribute to King Trump in the form of a “landmark deal” for joint mining of Australian rare earth deposits. The goal is to break China’s stranglehold on these critical minerals.

Trump, in his indefinite stupidity, immediately declared that “in about a year, we will have so much critical mineral and rare earths that you won’t know what to do with them”.

 

Achieving Escalation Dominance – How China Alone Can Resist US Economic and Tech Blackmail
What’s good for the goose is good for the gander

HUA BIN

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on Sunday that he anticipates that China will revive substantial purchases of US soybeans for several years and will delay its expanded licensing regime for rare earths by a year and re-examine it.

His statements came after two days of trade talks between US and Chinese officials in Malaysia.

 

Toward the end of World War II in Europe, the US government pondered a plan to not only demilitarize but also disintegrate and deindustrialize postwar Germany.

Named after its main proponent, Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau, the Morgenthau Plan proceeded from the insane assumption that “it is a fallacy that Europe needs a strong industrial Germany.” If it had been implemented, the remains of defeated Germany would have been deliberately turned into a post-industrial wasteland.

 

Independent candidate Catherine Connolly, a long-time advocate of Irish military neutrality and a critic of NATO’s expansion and EU militarization, has won Ireland’s presidential election in a landslide.

The ballot count was still underway when Connolly’s main rival, Heather Humphreys, conceded defeat after early tallies showed her trailing by a wide margin. Preliminary results put Connolly ahead by 63% to 29%.

“Catherine will be a president for all of us and she will be my president,”Humphreys told journalists.

Irish Prime Minister Micheal Martin also formally congratulated Connolly on what he said “will be a very comprehensive election victory.”

Although an independent, the 68-year-old former Galway mayor was supported by major left-wing parties, including Sinn Fein and Labour.

 

At a time in our history when the US tells us that Australia is valued mainly for the sacrifice we are expected to make in joining its strategy against China, our Prime Minister is undermined by intelligence that is incapable of dealing with the bifurcated risk now emerging starkly.

 

Mike Gilligan

New Australian national intelligence chief faces a people challenge

 

Venezuela's President Nicolás Maduro has accused the US of "fabricating a new war", after it ordered the world's largest warship to be sent to the Caribbean.

The USS Gerald R Ford can carry up to 90 aircraft and its deployment marks a massive increase in US firepower in the region.

The US has conducted 10 air strikes on vessels in the area as part of what it says is a war on drug traffickers. 

US President Donald Trump has accused Maduro of being the leader of a drug-trafficking organisation, which he denies, and there are fears in Venezuela that the US military build-up is aimed at removing the long-time opponent of Trump from power.

President Donald Trump’s demand that his own Justice Department hand over $230 million as compensation for federal investigations into his behavior is an unprecedented example of how his past indictment lingers over the presidency.

In Asian media this week: Trump says he spoke to Modi but India denies call took place. Plus: Japan’s new coalition a shift to the right; Timor Leste finally gets seat at regional table; Life worse than death on Myanmar scam farm; Prabowo – control, populism and diminished accountability; Sri Lanka suffers from world’s worst plastics spill.

 

David Armstrong

Modi cancels ASEAN trip, avoids meeting Trump – Asian Media Report

 

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has cancelled a trip to the imminent ASEAN Summit in Kuala Lumpur, avoiding any possibility of a meeting with Donald Trump.

Ukraine’s European backers made no official statements on granting Kiev access to long-range weaponry following a meeting in London on Friday.

Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky, NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer and his Dutch and Danish counterparts Dick Schoof and Mette Frederiksen attended the meeting devoted to additional military support for Kiev.

Zelensky was expected to seek more long-range weaponry following US President Donald Trump’s refusal to grant him access to Tomahawk missiles. However, despite statements from Rutte that Ukraine has the right to long-range weaponry, no statement was made recognizing Kiev’s request.

Starmer vowed to put “military pressure” on Russian President Vladimir Putin through continued supplies of “long-range capabilities” to Kiev.

There was – or seemed to be – hope for peace for a brief moment. And how deceptive it turned out to be. I was among those cautiously optimistic when we were told just over a week ago that the presidents of Russia and the US, Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump, had a long and useful phone conversation and were planning to meet in person again.

 

Why the Putin-Trump summit cancelation is terrible news for Ukraine
The West and Kiev are once again stranding Ukrainians in the forever kill zone

BY Tarik Cyril Amar

 

US President Donald Trump has announced the suspension of all trade talks with Canada, accusing Ottawa of distributing fake ads against tariffs.

"Canada has fraudulently used an advertisement, which is FAKE, featuring Ronald Reagan speaking negatively about Tariffs … Based on their egregious behavior, ALL TRADE NEGOTIATIONS WITH CANADA ARE HEREBY TERMINATED," Trump said on Truth Social on Thursday.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford has launched a striking ad featuring Ronald Reagan’s 1987 radio address, in which the former president warns against imposing tariffs. Reagan argues that while protectionist measures may seem patriotic in the short term, they ultimately harm American workers, shrink markets, and cost millions of jobs.