Far-right Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has called for stepped-up airstrikes on the Gaza Strip and for Israel to kill “30 to 40” Palestinians a day, while also renewing calls to resettle Israelis in the Palestinian enclave at the expense of the indigenous population.

Ben-Gvir, leader of the far-right Jewish Power party, made the remarks on the “October 8” podcast hosted by Rom Braslavski, a former Israeli prisoner of Hamas.

On Monday, the Jerusalem Post published excerpts from the interview, in which Ben-Gvir said Israel should not limit its attacks to those who “pose an immediate threat,” calling instead for far-ranging airstrikes across the entire Gaza Strip.

He said some people “aren’t worthy of life … they aren’t people at all.”

He also said Palestinians uninvolved in the fighting should not be exempt from Israeli attacks.

Businessman David Gonski has fronted the Royal Commission into Antisemitism as two Israel conferences land before Commission Bell reports. Wendy Bacon reports.

Prominent businessman David Gonski gave evidence at the Royal Commission into Antisemitism yesterday in its final hearing block which is focussed on social cohesion.

Gonski is Chair of the Antisemitism Education Taskforce which is driving the implementation of the Special Envoy for Antisemitism Jillian Segal’s plan for the whole education sector.  

In response to downturns in Australia’s productivity, advocates of productivism are peddling a revised version of the old neoliberal ‘trickle-down’ dogma. Increased productivity, they assert, will return the economy to growth. They react negatively to any suggestions that worrying increases in inequality are what’s holding the economy and the country back.

Allan Patience

Look, Queen Ursula, we need to talk, girlfriend.

Yes, I’m addressing you directly, EU Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen, because I’m not going to pretend that there’s anyone in charge in Europe who’s actually elected by the people and crafting EU policy.

And since you’ve apparently been more interested in monitoring Russian media platforms for dissident views that could potentially qualify as “Russian-aligned” than stopping online clarion calls for mass migration pushes into the EU, RT seems as good a place as any for an intervention.

Monday should be a very scary day for the small Middle Eastern country of Oman. President Donald Trump warned it against interfering with US efforts in the Strait of Hormuz, telling Fox News, “If Oman gets in the way, we’ll bomb the sh*t out of them.”

The Government has secretly inserted Palantir into its automated decision system inside the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) exposing Australia’s most vulnerable. Claudia Weisenberger reports.

If the NDIS Amendment Bill passes this week — and it will — a computer program will have the authority to cut a disabled person’s funding. If the program gets it wrong, section 59E(3) of the Bill provides that the decision stands anyway. 

There is no appeal.

Lev Shlosberg, a senior member of Russia's liberal opposition party Yabloko, was pronounced guilty of "public actions aimed at discrediting the use of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation" and sentenced to 11 years and 1 month in a penal colony by a court in Pskov on Monday.

Shlosberg has described the war as a catastrophe for Russia. The Kremlin says he is spreading slanderous lies about the army.

Making his closing statement before the verdict and sentence were read on Monday, Shlosberg maintained his innocence, saying he was the victim of a political trial.

A US Navy destroyer spent four days without power in the South China Sea last month, depriving its crew of hot meals, flushing toilets, and air conditioning, CNN has reported. The report comes as US sailors in the Persian Gulf are facing similar conditions.

The USS Benfold, an Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer, suffered an “engineering casualty involving its generators” while on an exercise in the South China Sea last month, a Navy spokesman told CNN on Monday.

The Benfold lost the ability to maneuver on its own, and lost galley services, toilets, air conditioning, and drinking water, the spokesman said. At the time of the incident, temperatures in the South China Sea averaged between 32 and 37 degrees Celsius.

Humanity has built an extraordinary system for producing and sharing knowledge, yet many people still lack a broad understanding of the systems shaping their lives. That gap is becoming a democratic dilemma.

We live in what is routinely called the knowledge economy. Humanity has never produced, stored or had access to so much knowledge. Yet here is an uncomfortable question: how much does the average person actually know about the world in which they live?

Stewart Sweeney

First Nations witnesses brought Parliament evidence of a terrorist bomb, death threats and lives disfigured by racism. Governments sent empty chairs. The media supplied silence. Canberra showed whose fear merits the machinery of state. Andrew Brown.

Australia does not merely have a hierarchy of grief. It has built a bureaucracy to administer it.

At the top, grief is televised, funded, securitised, furnished with a special envoy and carried into a Royal Commission by the full weight of government. At the bottom, grief is granted a microphone and denied an audience.

On 26 January, a homemade bomb packed with nails and ball bearings was thrown into a crowd of about 2,500 people at a First Nations rally in Perth. By dumb luck or mechanical failure, it did not explode.

When Lars Werner of the "Last Generation" climate activist group glued himself to the road four years ago to protest for greater climate action, Germany had not yet seen 12,500 heat-related deaths (the 2026 toll, so far), or record temperatures across Western Europe, and fully loaded ships were still navigating the Rhine without difficulty.

In Germany, record heat meets climate action fatigue

BY Oliver Pieper

Climate action does not seem to be a priority for the German government — despite record temperatures, heat-related deaths and drought. Why aren't more people taking to the streets in protest?

According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), the United States spent $21 trillion on its military between 2001 and 2024 (in constant 2024 dollars), equal to the combined military spending of the next 18 countries. 

Iran barely made that list at all, spending only 2 percent of what the U.S. did, and SIPRI estimated Iran’s 2025 military budget at only $7.5 billion. So how is Iran holding its own against the multi-trillion-dollar U.S. war machine?

Except for the unfortunate victims of Western information blackouts and propaganda, it has long been obvious that Ukraine under its leader-beyond-elections Vladimir Zelensky is not a democracy, even by the real world’s low standards. Zelensky’s regime is extremely corrupt, authoritarian, and lethally vicious.

Concentration Camp Ukraine? In a comedian’s dictatorship, a pop singer tells the truth

A rare celebrity outburst has pierced Kiev’s climate of fear, exposing forced abductions, repression and a regime terrified of truth

BY Tarik Cyril Amar

The planned transfer of US-made missiles and other weapons from Türkiye to Ukraine will “inevitably undermine mutual trust” with both Washington and Ankara, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has warned.

The US State Department notified Congress earlier this month that it was prepared to authorize the re-export of weapons from Turkish stocks to Ukraine. The package reportedly includes 70 M39 ATACMS tactical ballistic missiles, 12 M270 multiple-launch rocket systems, more than 2,500 M26 rockets with cluster warheads, and 47,000 203mm cluster artillery shells.

The total value of the proposed transfers is estimated at around $280 million.