Thirty-four European countries plus Australia, Costa Rica and the European Union as an entity on Friday signed up to a future special tribunal that will seek to prosecute Russia for crimes committed during its invasion of Ukraine. 

The plan has been in the works since soon after Russia's full scale invasion in 2022, Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy signed an agreement with the Council of Europe last year seeking to implement it. 

Ukraine: European countries sign up to special tribunal plan

Mark Hallam with AFP, open source material

At talks in Moldova, more than 30 countries have said they will join a future special tribunal for Ukraine prosecuting Russia over its invasion. How the body will force Russians to stand trial is not clear.

Washington and Moscow both enthusiastically celebrated the victory of the Allied “Grand Alliance” over the fascist powers at the end of World War II.  Since then, however, the two capitals have typically been on opposite sides of numerous nasty geostrategic struggles around the world.  They also have relished opportunities to work with foreign countries and political movements to create major headaches for the other great power.

Payback: Russia Uses Iran as a Proxy Against the United States

by Ted Galen Carpenter

… From her early writings onward she [Simone Veil] was to problematize the imagination as the “folle imagination”, a barrier between mind and reality, meaning that the human knower is kept from things-in-themselves. Weil’s epistemology, then, informed by her initial studies of Descartes, would take on inflections of Kant and Plato while positioning her against Aristotle.

“No drama” Starmer has not proven to be a leader for these times. In an age when style so regularly stumps substance, this dour 63-year-old has failed to meet the theatrical requirements of the modern day. But the revolving door at Downing Street – if over the coming days or weeks it revolves again – surely speaks of a larger problem. Maybe the United Kingdom has become ungovernable.

https://www.smh.com.au/world/europe/australia-got-addicted-to-political-beheadings-ten-years-on-is-the-uk-following-suit-20260514-p5zx31.html

HERE, NICK BRYANT TRIES TO POLISH A DECEITFUL PIECE OF USELESS CRAP... I PREFER THIS ANALYSIS:

Modern despots increasingly mimic the language and rituals of democracy while concentrating power through manipulation, spectacle, nationalism and the managed consent of their citizens.

Let’s begin with a troubling truth: in many countries, hundreds of millions of people feel that when it comes to the biggest decisions affecting their lives, despite all the talk of ‘democracy’ and ’the people’, they have no control over those who decide things in their name. Their shared experience of organised powerlessness is amplified by fears that our small blue planet is spinning out of control.

John Keane

https://yandex.com/video/preview/16613307568494764927

https://yandex.com/video/preview/13089194321333632740

https://yandex.com/video/preview/2247940627282892935

PLEASE VISIT:

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT — SINCE 2005.

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

         RABID ATHEIST.

         WELCOME TO THIS INSANE WORLD….

The NSW Parliament’s antisemitism report was folded into the Bondi Royal Commission, missing the airing of contesting views and rigorous questioning. Stephen Lawrence MLC writes.

Throughout 2025, I served on Australia’s first parliamentary inquiry into society-wide antisemitism. When the Bondi terrorist atrocity occurred, we had yet to finalise a report, and I supported the decision to simply send our evidence to the Royal Commission.

A notable feature of our inquiry was the care taken to test evidence and contentions through robust questioning.

This included testing key witnesses vigorously as to the line between antisemitism and legitimate criticism of Israel, and on other key contentions and demands of Jewish representative groups of a Zionist perspective.

While the leaders of the world’s two largest economies are meeting in Beijing, FOX News anchor Bret Baier is waltzing around the city doing his job: scaremongering his viewers back in the United States about just how draconian China’s traffic enforcement is.

Baier claimed that he asked his Chinese driver to park illegally while they were filming, resulting in an instant fine after being caught on traffic cameras. You know exactly how FOX News are going to frame this, right?

Well, at least you won’t be surprised!

But today, I also want to show you another video, not a propaganda video carefully curated by the FOX News team, but one filmed by a Beijing local which shows exactly the regard Baier and his team have for law and order here in China.

With the US ceasefire announced on April 8 all but over, the conflict with Iran is intensifying. President Trump is escalating threats of renewed military attacks against Tehran.

On Monday, Trump dismissed Iran’s latest reply to a US proposal as “totally unacceptable,” called it a “piece of garbage,” and said he “didn’t even finish reading it.” He said the ceasefire—which effectively ended last week when the US fired on Iranian military targets—was on “massive life support.”

Trump threatens Iran will be “decimated” if it does not accept US-dictated deal

BY Kevin Reed

WASHINGTON (Sputnik) - The US Space Command (SPACECOM) and US allies expect to finalize a joint plan for future orbital warfare by the end of the year, SPACECOM Commander Gen. Stephen Whiting said.

"We are in the process now of building a defense of orbital assets CONOPS [an orbit Concept of Operations] together," Whiting said on Tuesday at the Mitchell Institute in Washington, as quoted by Breaking Defense.

He expects to have it finished by the end of this year.

According to the general, the US and its allies must determine how to combine their space capabilities, avoid duplicating efforts, and subsequently integrate and synchronize them.

The EU’s imports of Russian liquefied natural gas (LNG) has reached a record high this year, amid the growing energy crisis triggered by the US-Israeli war on Iran, according to a report by a US-based energy think tank.

The Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) reports that the bloc’s imports jumped 16% year on year in January-March, with France, Spain, and Belgium accounting for most deliveries. Russia remains the EU’s second-largest LNG supplier, despite the bloc aiming to phase out Russian fossil fuels by 2027, it noted.

EU countries spent €5.9 billion ($6.9 billion) on Russian pipeline gas and €6.7 billion on Russian LNG in 2025, according to the report. Russia accounted for about 13% of the EU’s combined natural gas and LNG imports in 2025, according to previous data.

This budget is a Labor dream come true. It will redistribute income from investors to workers.

It will redistribute real estate opportunity from the prosperous old to the aspirational young.

And, because it’s a Labor dream, it’ll be attacked by the Coalition as a nightmare. Which is exactly what the Albanese government is hoping for.

This budget will be attacked as a nightmare. That’s exactly what the PM wants

BY [SMH] Peter Hartcher