Tony Abbott’s prime ministership was short-lived and mostly memorable, for all the wrong reasons. But for Liberal conservatives in need of a feelgood story, the 10-year anniversary of Abbott’s landslide 2013 election win was an opportunity to let their greying hair down, with about 250 gathering at Sydney high school formal favourite Doltone House on Friday night to ruminate about what could’ve been...

The revellers included several relics of the Abbott government – among them former prime minister Scott Morrison, Abbott’s treasurer Joe Hockey, current shadow treasurer Angus Taylor and desiccated ex-Tasmanian senator Eric Abetz.

The Massacre of Vassy (French: massacre de Wassy) was the murder of Huguenot worshippers and citizens in an armed action by troops of Francis, Duke of Guise, in Wassy, France, on 1 March 1562.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has received five kamikaze-drones and a Geran-25 surveillance drone from the governor of Russia’s Primorsky Region, Oleg Kozhemyako, the local administration has said.

The gifts to the North Korean leader, who was on the sixth and final day of his visit to the country, also included a full set of body armor for assault operations, the press-service of the Primorsky Region revealed on Sunday. The state-of-the-art gear provides protection to the chest, shoulders, throat and groin, while being “much lighter than any known counterparts,” it added.

The gifts were handed to Kim as he and Kozhemyako visited the Far East Street Exhibition on Russky Island in Vladivostok to inspect the hardware being produced in Primorsky Region for the needs of Russia’s military operation in Ukraine.

This is a story of what a voice can achieve and how easily it is undone by external forces.

A little over 35 years ago I was Council Clerk and CDEP Coordinator for a small indigenous community in the far reaches of the Northern Territory tablelands. I saw my task was to act as the intermediary voice – and I use that word in its deliberate current context – between the needs of the community and the constricting demands of the federal and NT Government bureaucracy. The local Community Council also believed my task was to listen to their voice, and to put it into, what was for the old ringers, a foreign bureaucratic language so the outcomes they wanted could be delivered.

By Daryl Guppy

The West must prepare for “a long war” in Ukraine, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg declared on Sunday. Despite claiming to want a “quick peace” in Ukraine, Stoltenberg insisted that he still supports President Vladimir Zelensky’s goal of a military victory over Russia.

“Most wars last longer than expected when they first begin,” Stoltenberg said in an interview with Germany’s Funke media group. “Therefore we must prepare ourselves for a long war in Ukraine.”

According to media reports over the last two months, Western officials and military planners have conceded that Ukraine’s ongoing counteroffensive against Russian forces is unlikely to succeed, leaving the front lines mostly unchanged as winter sets in.

US President Joe Biden faced fresh criticism on Friday for claiming to have taught at the University of Pennsylvania. While the school paid him almost $1 million over three years for a bespoke position, there is no record of him actually teaching a class.

“I taught at the University of Pennsylvania for four years and I used to teach political theory. And folks, you always hear, every generation has to fight for Democracy,” Biden said on Thursday, in a meandering speech at the Prince George Community College in Maryland.

“Biden was paid $1 million, but he never taught a single class,” the Republican National Committee said in response.

IT IS IRONIC THAT THE WEST THINKS THAT PUTIN IS TRYING TO DESTROY THE WEST. IN REALITY, AMERICA HAS HAD WET DREAMS ABOUT DESTROYING RUSSIA, SINCE 1917…

SO, HOW CAN PUTIN DESTROY THE WEST? THE GENERAL COMMENTARIATIC VIEW OF MANY GARBOLOGISTS IN THE WESTERN MEDIA GUTTER IS THAT "PUTIN IS GOING TO LET THE WEST DESTROY ITSELF". 

WOW! TO SOME EXTEND, THIS IS EASIER THAN IT LOOKS. THE WEST IS CRAPPING ON ITSELF WITHOUT ANY HELP FROM PUTIN, EXCEPT A LITTLE INTERVENTION IN UKRONY TO SANITISE THE KIEV REGIME AWAY FROM FASCISM, NAZISM, CORRUPTION AND A WILLINGNESS TO BECOME A NASTY NATO FRONT SHOP CONTRARILY TO PROMISES MADE FOR SACRIFICIAL SELF-IMMOLATION OF THE USSR TO UNIFY GERMANY. THANK YOU... THAT’S IT. 

This summer saw the hottest average global temperatures in the last 125,000 years. Europe is embroiled in war, with other conflicts raging around the world. The global economy is still reeling from the impacts of the first global pandemic since 1919. Experts are warning against the threat posed by our most advanced technological creation–artificial intelligence (AI). However, to piece together how we got here as a species and secure societies for the future, we need a heavy dose of BI–basic intelligence.

By Chandran Nair

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro brushed off a question asked in English at the end of his visit to Beijing, telling the reporter to speak Chinese instead.

“Speak Mandarin, there’s no English interpreter,” Maduro cut off a reporter from Hong Kong. “It’s a new world!”he added. The exchange was captured on video and quickly made rounds on social media.

“We are in the 21st century, the century of the end of hegemonism and imperialism, the century in which a different, multipolar, and multicentric world was born for peace and unity,” Maduro said at the press conference, according to the Venezuelan broadcaster Telesur.

The Indigenous Australians minister [Linda Burney] says she feels betrayed by senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price's comment that First Nations people are not being affected by colonialism because "we now have running water".  

The top adviser to Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, Mikhail Podoliak, blamed “Russian propaganda” on Wednesday for reaction to his remarks about China and India having “low intellectual potential” and allegedly not understanding the world properly.

“Classic Russian propaganda: take it out of context, distort the meaning, scale it up to separate target audiences with conflict provocation,”Podoliak said on X, formerly Twitter. 

He did not, however, deny saying what he said in a widely shared interview with a Ukrainian outlet on Tuesday. 

WE, THE LOONIES OF THE DUCKDUCKGO COMMENTARIAT, CAN INDULGE IN SAYING STRAIGHT THAT JOE BIDEN HAS BEEN CORRUPT... BUT FOR THE ABC TO PLUNGE INTO THE CESSPOOL AND TELL US THAT VIKTOR SHOKIN WAS CORRUPT, WITHOUT THE WORD ALLEGED, IS A JOURNALISTIC FAUX-STEP... THE ABC IS NOT THE ONLY MEDIA THAT INDULGE IN THIS CAPER. THE WASHINGTON POST AND OTHERS, DESPERATE TO SAVE SENILE JOE BIDEN'S ARSE, ARE ALSO ON THE BANDWAGON...

MEANWHILE:

White House lawyers have reportedly written a letter directing CNN, the New York Times and other US media outlets to scrutinize Republican lawmakers more aggressively as they try to impeach US President Joe Biden.

The woman with the Yes pamphlets outside the MCG on Saturday was unwavering.

While the rest of us trundled into the ground in raincoats and under umbrellas, she stood alone in only a T-shirt and jeans, smiling in the breeze and the showers – entirely undaunted by the mass indifference to her and her message.

By Andrew Fraser

Ironic? The mass of the punters were St Kilda fans, using the William Barak Bridge. That is, members of the club of Nicky Winmar, of that immortal image from 1993, being supported by a structure named for the “King of the Yarra”, the Aboriginal artist and activist who marched on Parliament in the late 1800s, protesting oppression and mistreatment from the colonial government.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has claimed that the world is transitioning to a new diplomatic order in which Washington must lead the way in overcoming increasing threats from Russia and China by working with its allies to build trust among nations for whom the old system failed.

“One era is ending, a new one is beginning, and the decisions that we make now will shape the future for decades to come,” Blinken said on Wednesday in a speech at John Hopkins University in Washington. He said the “post-Cold War order” ended as “decades of relative geopolitical stability have given way to an intensifying competition with authoritarian powers.”

Twitter/X owner Elon Musk, embroiled in an ongoing war of words with the far-left Anti-Defamation League (ADL), which has pushed for censorship of conservatives on all platforms, has said the organization was “instrumental” in getting Donald Trump blacklisted from Twitter.

Speaking to the All-In Podcast, Musk said that the ADL characterized his decision to allow the former President back on to Twitter/X as an example of hate speech.

“The ADL was instrumental in getting Donald Trump deplatformed. And then when we restored the account, they made it super clear that they regarded simply restoring his account… that constituted hate speech,” said Musk.