It is dispiriting that the Public Service Act Amendment Bill now before the Parliament says so little about ‘merit’. Nothing about secretary appointments and terminations and only a minor grammatical change to clarify that ministers are not able to direct agency heads about individuals’ employment.

By Andrew Podger

Yet we have:

The lead prosecutor handling the criminal investigation of US President Joe Biden’s son has been given special counsel status, potentially deepening the probe after a federal judge rejected a plea deal that would have enabled Hunter Biden to avoid jail time on tax and gun charges.

Attorney General Merrick Garland announced the decision to appoint David Weiss, US attorney for the district of Delaware, as special counsel on Friday. Weiss said in a court filing earlier in the day that negotiations on a revised plea agreement with Hunter Biden were at an “impasse,” suggesting that the case may wind up going to trial.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced recently that he and his wife of 18-years, Sophie Grégoire Trudeau, were amicably separating, leaving some Canadians jealous that they couldn’t do the same. Immediately, the rumor mill went into overdrive. 

We are under constant bombardment. Hardly a day goes by without some news of a military nature. If it is not about sending more equipment to prolong the war in Ukraine, it is about Australian minerals being domesticated to serve Americas military interests.

YouTube has terminated the account of former US spy [? — WEAPONS INSPECTOR!] Scott Ritter and deleted all of his videos on the platform. According to Ritter, the Google-owned social media giant accused his channel of violating the terms of service.

Writing on X (formerly known as Twitter), Ritter stated that his channel, ‘The Scott Ritter Show’, through which he attempted to “import Russian voices to an American/Western audience,” had been flagged for ‘hate speech’ and taken down without prior warning or any specific examples of the offense.

“There was never any hate speech involved in any of the episodes of ‘The Scott Ritter Show’, unless one views unique content from silenced voices hateful,” Ritter said, calling the move “the latest in a series of actions by YouTube to silence Russian voices.”

Biden gone crazy – Trump
The former US president, facing dozens of felony charges, has accused his successor of political persecution

Former US president Donald Trump slammed his successor Joe Biden as simultaneously insane and inept in a rant on his Truth Social platform on Thursday, declaring the Democratic politician’s policies had nearly destroyed the country.

“What Crooked Joe Biden, who can’t string two sentences together, has done to our once great Country through his Open Borders CATASTROPHE, may go down as the greatest and most damaging mistake ever made in USA HISTORY,” the Republican presidential hopeful wrote, insisting the “INVASION” of the US “MUST STOP IMMEDIATELY.”

“Our country is being destroyed by a man with the mind, ideas, and IQ of a First Grader,” Trump continued in all caps.

A World Health Organization (WHO) official suggested that mass vaccination might be required to combat mosquito-borne illnesses as the infected insects migrate to new countries due to climate change.

Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO’s technical lead for COVID-19, made the comments at a recent press conference.

“A lot of this is also about other uses of tools that exist,” she said, “in instances where we have interventions like medical interventions, therapeutics or vaccines depending on the pathogen.” 

“We need to be able to prepare for that.”

It is becoming increasingly unlikely. Julian Assange is in prison; the dissenting voices of Seymour Hersh, John Pilger, Glen Greenwald and Tucker Carlson have been excluded from the mainstream, moving into self-publishing; and Mick Hall has resigned from Radio New Zealand after it tightened control to safeguard the pro-American narrative.

By Tim Beal

“You haven’t been here long enough”.

Mick Hall was an idealistic journalist who had worked in various media outlets in Australia and New Zealand.

Inspired in his 20s, by Hunter S Thompson, the legendary iconoclastic American journalist, Hall had become jaded with corporate media and was excited at the prospect of a new career in Radio New Zealand (RNZ), the state-owned, public service broadcaster which he joined in 2018.

What do you think about the direction the world is heading?

It should come as no surprise that people are growing weary of much of what is going on, and alien technology and close encounters with visitors from another world (aliens) are more in vogue, and with ample justification. It’s all about control and keeping the people in the dark. However, I think that ordinary people are looking for leadership. It has already been a problem, as they are not looking in the right places, especially in the US.

BY Henry Kamens

Recently, the head of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, said that the European Union should double its assistance to Ukraine. She went on to say the EU should create a support fund of 50 billion euros by the end of the year and that everything should be done to ensure victory on the battlefield for the Ukrainians.

BY Phil Butler

France may soon overtake Russia as the world’s No. 2 arms exporter

Reports of new deals to sell French arms to India and Qatar are just the latest sign that France’s defence industry is gaining pace. The news comes as Russian arms exports decline in the wake of the war in Ukraine, leading to speculation that France could soon take its place as the world’s second-largest weapons exporter after the United States.

Text by:Gregor THOMPSON

The US State Department pressured Pakistan to remove its popular prime minister, Imran Khan, last year over the latter’s neutrality regarding the conflict in Ukraine, The Intercept reported on Wednesday, citing a secret diplomatic cable obtained from a Pakistani military source. The cable documents a meeting between US State Department officials and Pakistan’s ambassador to the US on March 7, 2022.

“People here and in Europe are quite concerned about why Pakistan is taking such an aggressively neutral position” on Ukraine, US Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs Donald Lu warns his Pakistani counterpart in the cable, blaming the PM alone for the offending policy.

France has been kicked out of Niger by its new military government, by extension placing US interests there in peril. Who would ever have thought that the US footing the bill for training Nigerien soldiers would result in a net gain for Russia and China? Apparently not the US State Department.

Enter Victoria Nuland with demands to speak to those in charge.

Extreme climate impacts are exploding in this year’s Northern Hemisphere summer. We urgently need to understand how climate disruption will affect Australians: their safety and well-being in the face of ever-more-extreme climate events, the viability of public and private infrastructure, communications and logistical systems, challenges to food security, and much more.

The Australian Government is spending $28 million to assess climate risks to the nation’s future. But the National Climate Risk Assessment (NCRA) initiated by the Department of Climate Change, Energy, Environment and Water is poorly conceived, won’t do the job and should not proceed in its present form.

Anthony Albanese likes to think of himself as a Bob Hawke unifying type. But if he keeps dragging us along this war path, he will be remembered as our Tony Blair.

We hear a lot about how AUKUS is going to be about getting the balance right, rebalancing the region as China expands. And yes, China has its interests, and is building a military in the region and that is also to be concerned about. But I wonder about balance. And we’ve just been reminded again the stories from Guam and from Okinawa. There are 343 US bases in East Asia alone. Now, I don’t know how eight nuclear submarines adds to the balance in the region.

By Marcus Strom