It seems likely that our prime minister will meet Donald Trump at the United Nations General Assembly later this month.

AUKUS submarines will cost five times the entire annual defence budget. We can’t fund both AUKUS and a self reliant defence capability. We must choose self reliance.

 

John Menadue

Australia needs to diplomatically disengage from our 'dangerous ally'

 

Anthony Albanese has been wise not to heed the Austral-Americans urging him get to Washington as soon as possible to meet Trump. He decided not to join the Conga line of heads of state and government prostrating themselves before Trump, only to be humiliated.

The president of the UN General Assembly, Annalena Baerbock, has said she could imagine UN peacekeeping forces being deployed to Ukraine to secure a ceasefire and postwar peace if supported by the majority of UN states.

Baerbock, the former German Green and foreign minister, who took over the UN job on September 9, was speaking to German weekly newspaper Bild am Sonntag.

 

 

Killing the Hamas leaders in Qatar would clear the way to ending the Gaza conflict and the return of Israeli hostages, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Saturday, just days after the Jewish state bombed the militant group’s top members in Doha.

Hamas has said that its leadership was not taken out by the Israeli attack, which it described as an attempt to assassinate negotiators working on a potential settlement to the Gaza conflict.

“The Hamas terrorists chiefs” in Doha have “blocked all ceasefire attempts in order to endlessly drag out the war,” Netanyahu claimed.

“Getting rid of them would rid the main obstacle to releasing all our hostages and ending the war,”Netanyahu wrote on X on Saturday.

The Government has just announced a spend of $1.7B on new ‘Ghost Shark’ underwater drones. But there appears to be more stealth in the budget than there is in the capability. Former submariner Rex Patrick reports.

Pete Quinn must be pretty happy.

 

Ghost Shark drones – “music to Trump’s ears”

by Rex Patrick

Quinn was the Head of Navy Capability for five years. His responsibility in that role was to identify the needs and requirements of Navy’s future capabilities and to plan for, develop and deliver them to the fleet.

While he was in that role, Anduril Industries (Anduril) were successful in two limited tenders; one awarded in 2021 for $4.9M and the other awarded in 2022 for $77.5M.

 

Several days after its absurd endorsement of renaming the Department of Defense to the Department of War and calling for a more aggressive posture against Russia’s war with Ukraine, the Washington Post stated that signing a follow-on to the New START Treaty was “reckless.”  New START is actually the last remaining nuclear arms-control treaty between the United State and Russia and it is due to expire in February 2026. 

 

Washington Post Targets Disarmament in Its March to the Right

MELVIN GOODMAN

 

New START is the only stepping stone to pursuing deeper cuts in the U.S. and Russian strategic arsenals as well as to pursuing serious arms control negotiations with China, which is currently growing its strategy arsenal at a record pace.

In 1895, Theodor Herzl, the founder of the Zionist movement, asserted: **“**We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it any employment in our own country … expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly.”

 

David Rosen

The politics of extermination

 

We’ll look back on 2024 as the year we sailed passed 1.5. Marine heatwaves in 2024 and 2025 seriously damaged the Great Barrier Reef, again. Insufficient land and money to create enough new forests to offset carbon emissions. Iceland sends a letter to the future.

We’re getting hotter faster and are already past 1.5oC

 

Peter Sainsbury

Environment: Earth is getting hotter faster thanks to human

 

Prince Harry has made a surprise visit to Kyiv at the invitation of the Ukrainian government, saying he wants to do "everything possible" to support the recovery of thousands of servicemen seriously injured in the war.

As reported by The Guardian, during his trip to the Ukrainian capital, he and the team from his Invictus Games Foundation intend to set out in detail new initiatives to support the rehabilitation of the wounded, with the ultimate aim of extending help across all regions of the country.

State lying is not an accident of politics: it is its mother tongue.

Brutal dictatorship attacks the body, but insidious tyranny targets the mind and the means of survival. One can escape the blows; one does not always recover from a lifetime spent pretending to believe in them. 

 

The Empire of Lies: A Success Story

 

by Azzedine Kaamil Aït-Ameur

 

[GUSNOTE: THIS ARTICLE EXPLAINS IN MORE DETAILS WHAT WE "PHILOSOPHICALLY" EXPOSED IN 2006: "The Age of Deceit"]

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius requested 10 billion euros ($11.7 billion) more over the next two years for military support to Ukraine than was approved by the German government, German newspaper Bild reported on Friday.

Due to this disagreement, planned contracts with the Ukrainian defense industry must now be suspended, and support measures for the Ukrainian armed forces will have to be partially canceled or reduced, the report said.

The Albanese Government’s proposed changes to Freedom of Information laws will deny access to any document of the government that involves controversy. FOI guru Rex Patrick explains.

Just how fearless is advice that the author fears the public will see?

 

No controversy, please. We are the Aussie Government!

by Rex Patrick

 

In the current Freedom of Information (FOI) Act, parts of a document can be redacted if the contents would disclose deliberative matter; that is, advice, recommendations and consultations. It’s a catch-all exemption deployed regularly in response to document requests.

In reshaping the world for prosperity, humanity has undermined the very foundations of progress.

So warns the latest study from the World Bank Group, entitled Reboot development: the economics of a liveable planet.

 

Julian Cribb

Can we save a 'livable Earth'?

 

 

There is a lot of opinions about “Russia invading Poland with drones”…

Some commentators are suggesting that the Russians are "invading Poland with drones" deliberately so to distract the NATO forces from what is happening at the “front” (where there are "no NATO troops"), while forcing the military in NATO territories to scramble… Trump has called it a “mistake” as if the event was accidentally done by the RUSSIANS… while he hopes the conflict will stop soon under his command... Fat luck....

From a Russian perspective, there is nothing to gain for Russia having its drones cross the Polish border. All this does is bring brickbats from most decent people around the world onto Russia…

So, who benefits? The Nazi government in Kiev is the main immediate beneficiary…. We know… False flag? 90 per cent...

Washington has dismantled its decades-long strategy of balancing competing regional powers in West Asia, opting instead to destabilize the region through its full-spectrum military, diplomatic, and intelligence backing of the Israeli occupation state. 

Where the post-9/11 years were defined by US-led regime change and nation-building, today's strategy is defined by state-breaking and governance erosion.

This transformation is most clearly reflected in Israel’s new audacity. Biden administration official Amos Hochstein declared Tel Aviv to be “the absolute, overwhelming, dominant military hegemon of the Middle East.” In the past few days alone, Israel has bombed Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and for the first time, the US-aligned Qatar.

 

OUR DEMOCRACIES rely on voters. Voters have to make choices as to who or what ideas are going to represent these choices. Choices are made on various influences:

— what’s best for me?

— what’s best for the “community”

— I trust an ideology

— Party politics

— PROPAGANDA

 

PROPAGANDA is a funny beast as it can be the truth being spruiked or lies being promoted as truth.

 

How do we find out we are not lied to?

Being an old dog — a political cartoonist since 1951 — Gus hopes that he gets it right at most times. Experience tells you that roses have thorns and cupboards may have skeletons in them…

Nature can tell us a lot about deception and traps or webs of deceit, in order to assure survival of a species — or the extend of territory.