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dear reader .....Just a note to alert you that you can read the comments - without being registered. We won't even know who you are... although you will be counted. But a heartfelt thanks, even if you are just looking at the cartoons ... To be able to comment you will have to register but no one would have to know who you are, except the administrator of the site. Please note that this site is archived in the National Library of Australia in perpetuity. Just click on "recent comments" or on "read more" in the line below the cartoons to access some of the most fascinating and pertinent information there is from Australia and around the globe.
destroying culture and artefacts....
The devastation of Israel’s war on Gaza has not spared the besieged strip's cultural heritage and museums, mosques, churches, and archaeological sites have been destroyed or heavily damaged. As of September, Unesco confirmed damage to 69 cultural heritage sites since the war started on 7 October 2023. These include 10 religious sites, 43 buildings of historical and artistic interest, two repositories of movable cultural property, six monuments, one museum, and seven archaeological sites.
AI and AUKUS is a bad mix of security... everything can be decoded.....
In the digital age, where critical infrastructure, defense platforms, and national secrets are protected not just by armor but by encryption, cybersecurity has become a cornerstone of sovereignty. Within the AUKUS alliance, the ability to share information securely—across three nations and across sectors—is no longer optional. It is foundational.
Securing the Alliance: AUKUS, Cybersecurity, and the Future of Trusted Information Sharing By Michael Sharpe
in the happiest city in america: minneapolis......
Minneapolis ranked among the world's happiest cities for 2025. Locals say the secret lies in its Nordic roots, creative energy and community spirit that bring all-season joy.
xiao xiao and lei lei are going to china.... Japanese fans rushed to farewell the country’s last two pandas on Sunday ahead of their return to China, in a departure that highlights strained relations between the two countries.
the trump doctrine: ignore reality....
As the WSWS reported earlier this week, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), under the Trump administration, has made a fundamental change to how it evaluates air pollution regulations. According to internal agency emails and documents, the EPA plans to stop calculating the monetary value of health benefits—such as avoiding premature deaths, heart attacks and asthma attacks—when setting limits for fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and ground-level ozone.
The EPA sets the value of human life and health at zero: A further comment Benjamin Mateus
they should keep dreaming.....
BRUSSELS : NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte delivered one of the starkest warnings yet to Europe’s political class on Monday, forcefully rejecting the idea that the continent can secure itself without the United States and exposing the enormous economic and strategic costs of any attempt to do so.
joining the mad board of peace....
Vladimir Putin has offered to contribute $1 billion to join Donald Trump's Peace Council. But there's a catch. Many, myself included [SCOTT RITTER?], were surprised when Russian President Vladimir Putin announced he was prepared to donate $1 billion from frozen Russian assets in the United States to help fund Donald Trump's new pet project, a "Peace Council" ostensibly tasked with overseeing the reconstruction of Gaza. A logic gone completely mad
After all, Russia has been at the forefront of the concept of a world order based on law and the principles of the Charter of the United Nations.
information links and kill switches.....
On December 15, 2025, the European Union slapped sanctions on former Swiss intelligence officer and ex-NATO employee Jacques Baud. No day in court, no charges filed, just abrupt, suffocating, sanctions. Why did the EU sanction Baud? For “Russian propaganda,” of course, although many of the sources he cites in his reports on the West provoking war with Russia years prior to Russia’s military operation are Western and Ukrainian – including the SBU and Aleksey Arestovich, a former adviser to Vladimir Zelensky. Welcome to the latest EU insanity. Widely respected for his deep knowledge and analysis, much of which is based on his own research while working with NATO, Baud has grown increasingly popular over the years, appearing on numerous podcasts and interviews, authoring numerous books and articles as well.
significantly amplifying points of tension in global politics....
January 2026 marks a year since Donald Trump was sworn in as the 47th President of the United States. Few national leaders can compete with Trump when it comes to public engagement and the range of global issues tackled. He is undoubtedly the most quoted head of state. However, the high level of media attention to America’s domestic and foreign policies is a double-edged sword for the current US administration.
No endgame doctrine: What Trump is doing to the world order BY Alexander Bobrov
the mad trump world is a dangerous psychopathic place.....
Australia’s leaders are trying to avoid becoming a target in a harsher, more coercive world. But silence and caution can’t substitute for strategy – or for honest leadership that levels with the public. Higher Australian foreign policy has probably never been so simple. Our government, and probably an alternative coalition government (if anyone could imagine such a thing), would like very much to escape international attention for as long as possible. Trump fills the great Albo silence
turncoats, mad dogs and englishmen.....
British Conservative lawmaker Suella Braverman, who was home secretary — the UK equivalent to interior minister — between 2022 and 2023, has joined Nigel Farage's populist Reform UK party. Braverman, a sitting member of parliament, is the latest in a string of high-profile Conservatives join Farage's camp. Reform UK is currently the fourth power in the House of Commons but leading opinion polls ahead of both the ruling Labour Party and the Tories as both traditional parties struggle.
EU hardline approach to Russia has been criticised by some member states....
Moscow and Washington will not engage in dialogue with Brussels’ foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said. Peskov made the remarks after the US, Russia and Ukraine concluded their first round of three-way negotiations in Abu Dhabi on Saturday. EU officials have complained that, despite providing military and financial aid to Kiev, the bloc has been largely excluded from the talks. In an interview with Russia-1 journalist Pavel Zarubin which aired on Sunday, President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman described the current EU leadership as “incompetent,” adding that its actions “undermine the system of international relations.”
of global warming.....
Global warming is one of the biggest challenges faced by humanity today. As emissions continue to rise, global temperatures keep breaking records and the world's poorest nations bear the brunt of a crisis they did little to create.
Time to fix responsibility for climate change By Hu Yong | CHINA DAILY
However, public discourse on climate responsibility remains mired in individualism. Citizens are told to recycle, go vegan and shrink their "carbon footprints" while systemic sources of emissions — from industrial production to state-backed fossil fuel subsidies — remain largely untouched. It is time the global conversation shifts from personal virtue to structural accountability, from lifestyle tweaks to large-scale political and economic reform.
inside the confused head of a US general.....
On the war’s momentum [September 2022]: It has fundamentally shifted, and I’m normally fairly guarded and cautious about this, but the tide clearly has turned because the success of this offensive, as important as it is itself on the ground, is that it reflects a hugely important development: Ukraine has been incomparably better than Russia in recruiting, training, equipping, organising and employing additional forces. Russia has been struggling to do just that, literally running out of soldiers, ammunition tanks, fighting vehicles and so forth.
David Petraeus Ukraine will win the war
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