The US backs Ukraine’s goal of forcefully retaking territories that have voted to join Russia, and rejects the notion of a peace deal, at this time, Secretary of State Antony Blinken disclosed on Monday.

Speaking after a wave of Russian missile strikes took out Ukrainian military and infrastructure targets on Monday, Blinken told a Wall Street Journal summit that the US would continue to arm Ukraine and bankroll its economy until it could “take back territory that’s been seized from it since February 24th.”

Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky has vowed to retake the regions of Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson, and Zaporozhye, all of which voted to join the Russian Federation in September. Zelensky has also promised to seize Crimea, a historic part of Russia that voted to rejoin in 2014.

There is considerable irony in the fact that Donald Trump when president virtually crawled to do Israel’s bidding more than any of his predecessors. He moved the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, he accepted brutal Israeli settlement and control of the Palestinian West Bank, approved of the Israeli annexation of the Syrian Golan Heights, and ignored repeated Israeli war crimes using US provided weapons.

Yet for all his gifts to Israel, which did not serve any actual US interest, he is currently being crucified by the Jewish/Israel Lobby because of an idiotic dinner with a pair of alleged anti-Semites, one of whom has been labeled a “holocaust denier.”

With the world undergoing tectonic changes, Germany must help ensure the EU's security, Chancellor Olaf Scholz has written in an article for Foreign Affairs magazine. The beginning of Russia’s military offensive in Ukraine marked the end of an era, according to the SDP leader.

Published on Monday, the piece begins with the premise that an “epochal tectonic shift” is taking place, with new powers emerging to shape a multipolar world – an observation bearing similarities to recent assessments by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Germany, Scholz writes, is “doing everything it can to defend and foster an international order based on the principles of the UN Charter.”

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre has shrugged off Elon Musk’s release of ‘the Twitter files’, calling the disclosure of 2020 pre-election censorship an “interesting coincidence” and accusing the billionaire of allowing hateful speech to surge on his newly acquired social media platform.

Asked at a press briefing on Monday whether the White House found it appropriate that Twitter suppressed news about then-candidate Joe Biden’s son, Jean-Pierre sidestepped the question, suggesting that Musk had an ulterior motive for leaking files revealing the company’s internal discussions.

America believes that it should run the world unchallenged in all dimensions of statehood.

Known as AUSMIN, the high-level talks between the United States and Australia are now underway in Washington on foreign policy and defence. Held annually since 1985 they are the cement which binds this habit of our being allies.

It is time to talk frankly about the big picture behind these talks and understand that our independence is no longer welcome within them. Friends need to be candid.

Yesterday, the Senate Committee on the Judiciary voted 15–7 to advance the worrying Journalism Competition and Preservation Act (JCPA). 

This bill would carve out an antitrust exemption for news media, enabling journalistic groups to band together as “joint negotiation entities” to demand payment from major digital platforms (such as Meta and Google) for links to and previews of their publications. If the joint negotiation entity cannot reach an agreement with the platform, the journalists would be able to force independent arbitration to set the payment level.

French President Emmanuel Macron sees “resentment” in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s eyes, due to his belief that the West seeks to destroy his country.

Speaking to CBS News on Sunday, Macron was asked to give his own take on what he sees in Putin’s eyes, as former US President George W. Bush famously did in 2001 when he said, “I found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy.” 

The French president replied that he sees “a sort of a resentment,” which he believes is aimed at the Western world, including the EU and US, and it is underpinned by “the feeling that our perspective was to destroy Russia.”

The previous Coalition Government under the Minister for Communication Malcolm Turnbull promised: ’a cheaper, good quality NBN, faster delivered’. It failed on all counts.

However, since it became clear that his government was unable to deliver on this promise, I knew that eventually something had to give. Instead of costing $25 billion as Mr Turnbull promised, the costs are now rapidly moving towards $60 billion. Under government policy, all of these costs had to be absorbed by the NBN company in the prices it charged to its retail customers.

BY Paul Budde

The following is a thread of Tweets written by Matt Taibbi on Dec. 2 about Twitter’s content moderation practices—specifically dealing with the Hunter Biden laptop story—after being given internal documents by Elon Musk. Outlets like USA Today have reported they have not been able to verify the authenticity of the emails. The thread was promoted by Musk stating “The public deserves to know what really happened …”

The EU should file a lawsuit with the World Trade Organization (WTO) against the controversial US Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), Bernd Lange, head of the European Parliament's Trade Committee, told the Berliner Morgenpost newspaper on Saturday. 

“My assumption is that the negotiations between the EU and the US will not be able to help agree even on small changes in the implementation of the IRA. The basic structure of the IRA will remain in place. In this regard, I think it is necessary for the EU to quickly file a complaint with the WTO in the coming months,” the lawmaker said ahead of a meeting of the EU-US Trade and Technology Council on Monday, at which the IRA package is expected to be discussed. He added that the lawsuit would help clarify “that the US's actions are clearly not compatible with WTO regulations.”

IS MURDOCH BECOMING A SOCIALIST?

THE ARTICLE THAT FOLLOWS THIS GUS-RANT IS BY OUR ESTEEMED AUSTRALIAN BRAINIAC BARRY JONES… HE RECOGNISES A SHIFT IN THE WAY GROUPS OF VOTERS HAVE CHANGED POLITICAL POSITION BY BECOMING MORE “EDUCATED”…

WE KNOW THAT FOR YEARS, THE ORDINARY MAN IN THE STREET AND THE TRADIES GET THEIR POLITICAL “EDUCATION” FROM THE LIKES OF THE “DAILY TELEGRAPH” WHILE THE MORE EDUCATED LIBERAL THINKERS GET THEIR NEWS FROM “THE MONTHLY” STYLE PAPERS AND ARTICLES — BUT NOT EXCLUSIVELY, AS WE NEED TO CONSIDER THE FAMILY TRADITION OF POLITICAL AFFILIATION…

Ursula von der Leyen is like those Americans who, due to the sheer speed at which they "do" Yurrup, makes her fall victim to the "if it's Tuesday it must be Naples" syndrome. Ask the men who run the Thames pleasure boats. They say that confusion between the Tower of London and the Leaning Tower of Pisa is common place. And they are tired of being asked "When do we pass Notre Dame?"

(After VINCENT MULCHRONE v the Madding Crowd)

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen likened Ireland’s struggle against British rule in the 20th century to the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, as she addressed the Irish parliament in Dublin. Her comments sparked anger among Tory MPs.

Last weekend [before March 11, 2022] a far-right group called America First held a political rally in Orlando. At one point, organizer Nick Fuentes, a white nationalist also involved in the 2017 Charlottesville rally, invited attendees to cheer for Russia. Soon the audience was chanting “Putin! Putin!”

Without context this may seem puzzling. Why would a group of ultra-nationalist Americans celebrate the invasion of a U.S. ally by someone both the left and right have largely understood to be an enemy of freedom?

BY Bethany Moreton

David Brock, the Clintons’ henchman who left the limelight after suffering a heart attack, is back. During the next two years, at the helm Facts First USA, he will have 10 million dollars at his disposal to discredit congressional investigators who will try to shed light on the Hunter Biden affair.

BY THIERRY MEYSSAN