Secretary of War Pete Hegseth announced on Wednesday that the US is going to be launching major strikes in Iran, while President Trump says he’ll “bomb the shit out of” the Iranians if they don’t agree to a deal of his liking. 

A new Explosive Weapons Monitor report finds civilians are continuing to bear the brunt of explosive weapons in populated areas, with Israel’s armed forces responsible for the majority of recorded civilian fatalities in 2025.

While the overall number of civilians killed by explosive weapons decreased by 21 per cent last year, largely due to Israel scaling back attacks on the Gaza Strip and Lebanon in response to ceasefire deals, “the majority – 56 per cent – of all global civilian fatalities in 2025 could be attributed to Israeli armed forces, most of which occurred in Palestine,” according to an annual report released Wednesday.

The European Commission should have revealed the details of its Covid-19 vaccine contracts with drugmakers to the public, an adviser to the EU’s highest court has declared. Among the contracts was a deal with Pfizer that commission President Ursula von der Leyen negotiated via text message.

In an opinion published on Thursday, Advocate General Athanasios Rantos argued that the commission’s insistence on secrecy made it impossible to know whether its vaccine negotiators had any conflicts of interest with the pharmaceutical companies that they procured the shots from.

The commission signed six advance purchase agreements with pharmaceutical companies – including Pfizer, AstraZeneca, and Moderna – between 2020 and 2021. The contracts were worth a combined €71 billion ($82 billion).

One Nation’s surge is easiest to read as anger. It is better read through a different lens – gathering the Australians who formed their sense of who they are in an offline world, where belonging was anchored where they grew up.

Kos Samaras

Australian Press Council caves into the Zionist lobby and abandons its mission to defend free speech by vilifying cartoonist Cathy Wilcox. Michael West and Kim Wingerei.

Yesterday, the APC, self-proclaimed defenders of free speech, decided to uphold a complaint against SMH/The Age cartoonist Cathy Wilcox’s depiction of how Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israel lobby pressured the Government into holding a Royal Commission into antisemitism.

Vale the Press Council. Caves in to anonymous pressure campaign

by Kim Wingerei and Michael West

On June 9 local time, Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever, commenting on the upcoming EU summit, claimed that European leaders are "increasingly wary" of China. He added that the summit would replace mentions of China with so-called "geo-economic imbalances," because "we are so afraid that we don't even dare to do that."

Belgian PM is not ‘afraid of China,’ but afraid of taking responsibility: Global Times editorial

By Global Times

Democratic Party leaders had a chance this week to push back against Israel’s violent expansionism and the Israel lobby’s massive political spending in the United States.

Once again, Democrats chose instead to punt the issue despite plummeting public support for Israel, both among their base and the wider U.S. public, ahead of the midterms. 

Democrats Reject Resolution Condemning AIPAC Money in Primaries

“Democrats chose genocide over winning in 2024,” one Palestinian rights advocate said. “When does this stop?”

By Mike Ludwig , TRUTHOUT

Tony Abbott, the Liberals’ new activist federal president, is preparing to convene meetings around the country in an effort to drum up membership and support for the struggling party. 

After the Newspoll published at the weekend showed the Coalition falling to 18% (down 2 points), with One Nation on 31% and Labor on 30%, Abbott acknowledged the threat of the insurgent party as well as the Liberals’ difficulty with credibility.

View from The Hill: Tony Abbott to tour the country, trying to energise Liberals

BY Michelle Grattan

In a Tuesday email to supporters he wrote: 

“Like you, I can read the polls.” 

A FIFA Peace Prize, astronomical ticket prices, hiked train fares, threatened boycotts and a consumer complaint.

The build-up to the 2026 World Cup has been overshadowed by sociopolitical issues, which will continue to loom over the tournament.

A lot of the headlines have been generated by US President Donald Trump, who has made various threats and promises in the months leading up to the World Cup, which is being hosted in Mexico, the US and Canada — though almost all of the issues have been in the US.

But he's far from alone in causing angst among soccer fans across the globe, even here in Australia.

As we have already demonstrated many times, Euro-Israeli-American hegemony is the main driving force behind the march toward world war. This is the case from Finland to Ukraine, where the continued advance of the EU-NATO toward Russia's borders was the true trigger of the so-called Russo-Ukrainian conflict, extending to the genocidal Palestine, the continually attacked Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon, the destabilised Caucasus, and the ongoing geopolitical struggle from the Taiwan Strait to the Korean Peninsula: eager to take its revenge on Beijing and Pyongyang, Imperial Japan is frantically rearming to support the North American armada carrying nuclear weapons aimed at China and North Korea.

RESISTANCE, COUNTER-ATTACKS, AND THE DUTY OF BEING AT THE FOREFRONT

I - CLOSING RANKS IN THE FACE OF RISING GEOPOLITICAL PERILS

The release of the Epstein Files has shocked the public with unimaginable stories of the pedophilia, exploitation of women and brash depravity of the ruling class. While these stories have been the major source of public outrage, a deeper dive into the Epstein Files reveals the inside world of how the billionaire class operates to control information and collude with each other – hide their crimes and gain massive wealth at the expense of the working class.

Hedges Report: Epstein, the Russian Mob & Maxwell

The collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1990s is at the epicentre of the Epstein scandal, says investigative reporter Moe Tkacik, while the F.B.I. and media are complicit in hiding the financial and intelligence crimes of the ruling class.

The Ukrainian government is determined to gather the entire (albeit small) pantheon of Ukraine’s 20th-century national heroes in one place. Simon Petliura and Andrey Melnik are to be joined by one of the founders of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), Evgeny Konovalets, whose remains will be transferred from Rotterdam. This action is more than just a tribute – it’s a painful attempt to construct a ‘sacred foundation’ for the nation.

Ukraine is running out of heroes, so it’s digging up dead Nazis

A wave of symbolic reburials exposes the fragile foundation of Ukraine’s national identity project

One Nation’s polling surge could create serious instability after the next federal election, with the party’s growing Senate prospects threatening to disrupt the balance of power and test Australia’s political institutions.

South Australia, Farrer, and the latest opinion polling have put One Nation ahead of any third force in Australian politics in the past 80 years, even the Greens and the Democrats, let alone the Australia Party, the United Australia Party, the Centre Alliance, or the Nuclear Disarmament Party – all of which have had parliamentary representation.

Crispin Hull

Donald Trump promised Americans they would get tired of winning.

If this is what winning looks like, America can’t afford much more of it.

We are losing ground economically. We are losing credibility abroad. We are losing tourists, workers, stability, trust, constitutional guardrails, and whatever remained of the illusion that the government answers to “we the people.”

If This Is Winning, America Can’t Afford Much More of It

by John W. And Nisha Whitehead