U.S. President Donald Trump was denied access to his nation's nuclear codes by a high-ranking U.S. military official, according to explosive reports.

Retired CIA analyst Larry Johnson revealed on the popular YouTube program Judging Freedom that during an emergency meeting on Saturday, Trump attempted to access the nuclear codes.

"One report coming out of that meeting at the White House is that Trump wanted to... use the nuclear codes, and General Dan Caine stood up and said 'No'. He invoked his privilege as the head of the military, so to speak. It was apparently quite a blow-up.

The review that the mainstream media would not run – Louise Adler on Booker-Prize winner Howard Jacobson’s latest novel Howl.

Howl is a jeremiad, a 300-page essay on the immutability and inevitability of antisemitism thinly disguised as a novel.

Louise Adler

To some, it may be heresy, but charging tolls for passage through the Strait of Hormuz looks reasonable in a Trumpian world, Michael Pascoe argues.

If, unlike Richard Marles, you accept that the US has annihilated the “international rules-based order” and that under Trump’s rules, whatever you can get away with is now legal, Iran’s tolling ships passing through its territorial waters seems relatively reasonable.

Tolling the Strait. Is Iran acting with reason in a Trumpian world?

by Michael Pascoe

Most immediately, the idea of opening the Strait while the US blockades Iranian ports is Trump-level insanity.

In the near-immediate term, the tolls are cheap.

Twenty-four satellites disabled in minutes.

No explosions. No debris. No visible attack.

And yet — every system that depends on them goes silent.

Because modern warfare is not held together by ships, aircraft, or missiles.

It is held together by something invisible… orbiting above the Earth.

And the question no official briefing is answering directly is the one that matters most —

what happens when the system that tells the entire military where it is… suddenly stops working?

The swell in support seemed to happen "from 2008 - and particularly in 2011, when the banking crisis turned into a sovereign debt crisis", he said.
It was a rare occasion when an elite class - the wealthy bankers - could be identified as more or less directly responsible for a crisis which affected the majority of society.
'I am the people'
In his book The Global Rise of Populism, Dr Moffitt argues that there are other traits associated with the typical populist leader.
One is "bad manners", or behaving in a way that's not typical of politicians - a tactic employed by President Trump and the Philippines' President Duterte.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-43301423?ysclid=mo7nud3n4f587891003

Defence is supposed to provide ‘cradle to grave’ costings for proposed capability before a procurement is approved. That doesn’t seem to have happened for AUKUS nuclear waste storage and disposal. Transparency Warrior Rex Patrick is pursuing answers.

Imagine for a moment that you were the defence minister, and knowing that all defence capabilities must be costed from cradle to grave, you asked the Australian Submarine Agency for the latest cost estimates for a solution for the treatment and storage of high-level radioactive waste from AUKUS.

You’d expect that it might take a day or two to get the message to Defence and to get a response back to the ministerial wing of Parliament House.

US Vice President J.D. Vance faces a classic bind: Loyalty to President Donald Trump ties him to a presidency that is bound to fail, yet distancing himself invites charges of disloyalty. Either course imperils his prospects of becoming the next president. His latest assignment as chief negotiator with Iran has only compounded this predicament.

Prof. Schlevogt’s Compass No. 54: Vance’s VP dilemma – the poisoned chalice and taint of power

Trapped between loyalty and survival, Vance must escape Donald Trump’s design or risk becoming the face of its failure

Despite US efforts to suppress Iranian perspectives since 2021, Iran has challenged Washington’s information blockade by using innovative communication tactics to present its narrative worldwide during the ongoing conflict.

LEGO – Style Revolution: How Iran Broke Out of an Information Blockade

BY Simon Chege Ndiritu

Washington’s Policy: Bombing, Insulting, and Threatening

Of all Donald Trump’s instincts, perhaps his keenest is leverage. He knows how to use the power gifted to him – whether it be America’s economic size or military strength – to heap pressure on friends and adversaries.

The military campaign in Iran has been about maximising leverage ahead of a deal: essentially, bombing them into submission, and then negotiating with whoever’s left.

Talks, ceasefire in peril as Trump grapples with Iran’s new sheriffs in town

Pauline Hanson is different, she claims, because of her “resilience”, “integrity” and “honesty”.

“This country is ready for change, they’re fed up with the two major political parties,” she told Andrew Bolt on Sky News last year. “They don’t trust the politicians. They’re sick of the lies, they have had enough of everything.

Pauline Hanson keeps forgetting to declare gifts from Gina Rinehart. Please explain

BY Sarah Martin

“They want someone who is going to be upfront and honest with them and I have always been that.”

The US negotiating team is heading to Pakistan for the next round of Iran peace talks on Monday, President Donald Trump has announced, while renewing his threat to strike Iran’s infrastructure if no deal is reached.
In a Truth Social post on Sunday, Trump accused Tehran of violating the temporary ceasefire – set to expire on Wednesday – with reported attacks on ships in the Strait of Hormuz amid a renewed blockade of the waterway.

“Iran decided to fire bullets yesterday in the Strait of Hormuz – a total violation of our ceasefire agreement! That wasn’t nice, was it?” he wrote, claiming French and British vessels were targeted. Before declaring that his “Representatives are going to Islamabad…for negotiations.”

As warfare shifts decisively toward autonomous and distributed systems, Australia’s massive investment in nuclear submarines risks locking in a costly and inflexible strategy.

Richard Marles gave a polished performance at the National Press Club. Smooth, confident, practised. He spoke about drones, autonomy and the changing character of war. He sounded modern. But beneath the language of innovation sat an older and much heavier reality: Australia is still tying itself to one of the slowest, most expensive and least adaptable military projects in its history.

That is the contradiction at the heart of AUKUS.

P&I today begins a major new series - rethinking Australia’s foreign policy. The United States is becoming more erratic and less reliable, and Australia must respond by insulating itself – strengthening regional ties, rethinking defence settings, and reducing strategic dependence, according to John Menadue. 

John Menadue

Trump and Netanyahu are the most dangerous persons on the planet. US policy in the Middle East is not driven by oil. It is driven by Netanyahu. And allies in the Gulf are paying a very heavy price for allowing US bases on their soil. The same fate might be ours with northern Australia becoming a US military colony.

The Greens need to get out of their own bubble and do some very serious soul searching if they are ever to have broad appeal, argues a co-founder of the Queensland and Australian Greens, Drew Hutton.

Drew Hutton