2017 — Russophobia in America today is as intense as it was at the height of Cold War when terrified school kids had “Duck and Cover” drills and the public was obsessed with bomb shelters. However, all the drama about Russian hacking and collusion are a smokescreen. The real conflict is about geopolitical power struggle for world domination, which involves hundreds of trillions of dollars, massive egos of Machiavellian elites, and nations driven by memory of the past and visions of the future.

Why The West Hates Putin – It’s More Than What You’re Being Told

China's ambassador to Australia has attacked Australia's domestic spy agency over allegations of foreign interference, warning it risks harming Australia-China relations.

Ambassador Xiao Qian has pointed to a video aired before a speech delivered by ASIO Director-General Mike Burgess last week as "casting aspersions" on China, prompting a sharp rebuke from the spy agency.

Chinese ambassador and ASIO trade barbs over foreign interference allegations

By Tom Lowrey [ABC]

The Liberals, it seems, can’t resist returning to damaging infighting even in the one part of the country where things have been going quite encouragingly for them. 

Once again the Victorian Liberals are caught up in another chapter of that extraordinary saga, “Doings of Deeming”. 

View from The Hill: Even when they’re doing quite well, Liberals find a way to put their foot in it

BY Michelle Grattan

Marxist sociologist Alain Bihr offers a comprehensive analysis of the global ecological catastrophe in a new book whose title perfectly encapsulates its content: Capitalist Ecocide.

The book .... comprises three volumes, whose approximately 1,200 pages represent a remarkable work of research, synthesis, and analysis.

BY Daniel Tanuro

NATO-EU Europe, that tense, unhappy realm of deeply unpopular yet aggressively doctrinaire centrist regimes, has many grifts.

Its elites, whether national or EU, in business, politics, and the mainstream media and think-tank sinecure system are stunningly inept when it comes to addressing the urgent, even vital problems of their subjects. They could not care less about critical economic decline and general impoverishment, crumbling infrastructure, withering education, and scarce, unequal health care, to name only a few.

The EU can’t fix Europe – but it can fund Kiev forever

While railways stall, hospitals fail and scandals spread, Brussels still finds endless billions for its pet proxy war

The Federal Court has found pro-Israel activist Ofir Birenbaum breached his Cairo Takeaway settlement deed. Stephanie Tranand Wendy Bacon report. 

The Federal Court has found pro-Israel activist Ofir Birenbaum breached the confidential settlement that resolved his high-profile defamation dispute with Sydney restaurant Cairo Takeaway after he and his solicitor made public statements portraying the outcome as a victory.

In a judgment delivered on Tuesday, Justice Bromwich declared that Birenbaum breached the settlement deed by publishing statements on social media and by statements made on his behalf by his solicitor, Rebekah Giles. 

The provisional surrender document signed by Donald Trump appeared to represent a triumph for Iran and indeed for the world; but neither the U.S.A. nor Israel has the slightest sense of honour and they cannot be trusted to negotiate in good faith.

Iran knows this – after all, the U.S.A. twice attacked Iran actually during peace negotiations, on each occasion killing key Iranian negotiators.

To understand the American position, it is important to realise two key points:

The machine saw what five millennia of human eyes had missed.

In February 2026, a joint team from the University of Birmingham and the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich deployed a new synthetic-aperture radar array beneath the Stonehenge monument, feeding raw geophysical data into a neural network trained on archaeological pattern recognition.

Stonehenge AI Scan: Has Artificial Intelligence Finally Solved the 5,000-Year Mystery?

BY DANIEL MERCER

Electric vehicles will not save the planet on their own but anti-EV rhetoric conveniently ignores the problems caused by petrol and diesel vehicles.

A recent article in The Australian warns that electric vehicles may ‘feel right for the wealthy’ but will ‘destroy our planet’. The script is familiar: EVs require minerals; their interiors contain plastic; some manufacturing uses coal-fired electricity; China makes many of them; Pauline Hanson mentioned it. Case closed. It manages to sound environmentally concerned, while showing little interest in environmental comparison.

Fred Zhang

One hundred four degrees Fahrenheit in Paris, a new record? That is what I read Thursday. Paris, as I figured out while studying there decades ago and freezing through the dark winters, is latitudinally further north (roughly 48.8°N) than Nova Scotia (43.5°N – 47°N).

The heat wave of all heat waves has Europeans in a state of shock and panic. There are “red alerts” across the Continent. In the foothills of the Alps temperatures are running into the mid–90s. The Swiss… how to put it?… do not know quite what to do when it is in the mid–90s.

PATRICK LAWRENCE: Heat Waves, Brain Waves

With people jumping into the Canal Saint–Martin in 100°–plus temperatures in Paris, it’s a good time to recall Paul Valéry and his regrets at the mental and spiritual consequences of Europe’s Great War on itself.

The Sanders, Corbyn, Ardern and Shorten moments were missed chances to renew social democracy through structural reform, leaving genuine economic grievances to be harvested by the populist right.

Every generation offers political moments that, in retrospect, appear as forks in the road. In the past decade, four such moments emerged across the English-speaking democracies: the rise of Bernie Sanders in the United States, Jeremy Corbyn in Britain, Jacinda Ardern in New Zealand and Bill Shorten in Australia. Each was different in ideology, personality and political circumstance. Yet together they represented something larger: opportunities to reverse the long retreat of social democracy from its founding purpose.

Former SBS journalist Mary Kostakidis was back in court on Monday, defending herself against racial discrimination claims by the Zionist Federation of Australia. Stephanie Tran with the update.

As the Royal Commission into Antisemitism and Social Cohesion began its third hearing block, two of Australia’s highest-profile legal disputes arising from criticism of Israel returned to the Federal Court on Monday.

WhatsApp battle. Zionist action v Mary Kostakidis drags through discovery

by Stephanie Tran

In separate hearings, the court dealt with interlocutory disputes in proceedings brought by Zionist complainants against veteran journalist and former SBS news presenter Mary Kostakidis and University of Sydney academics Nick Riemer and John Keane.

A monument will be erected in Kiev honoring Ivan Mazepa, a 17th-century Cossack military commander who was infamous for switching sides between major powers seeking regional dominance in Eastern Europe, Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky has said.

Zelensky announced the project on Sunday at a ceremony to unveil a bust of Mazepa at the Kiev-Pechersk Monastery. He claimed that Russia has “smeared” Mazepa as a traitor and insisted that he was an outstanding statesman.

Mazepa led the Cossack Hetmanate, an autonomous entity that split from the Catholic Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth amid economic exploitation and religious persecution of its Orthodox Christian population.

A leak has revealed new details about Dialog, a secret society started by billionaire Palantir cofounder Peter Thiel — and man, does it sound weird.