Do you remember when Labor parliamentarians were vocal advocates in the Australian Peace Movement?

If so, you are probably part of the Whitlam /Hawke / Keating generation when there were lively foreign policy debates within the parliament, the ALP and trade unions. We questioned the American alliance because many of us had watched the consequences of the Vietnam War. We were influenced by “People for Nuclear Disarmament”, because our generation understood the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki when the first nuclear bombs devastated the people of Japan.

by Margaret Reynolds

During the 1970s many of us campaigned against nuclear ships visiting Australian ports and in my home city of Townsville we opposed B52 bombers being stationed at the North Queensland air base.

MANY PEOPLE ARE AFRAID OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE. IT'S UNDERSTANDASHFJIJLE.... YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN. WE'RE CRAP AT SOLVING PROBLEMS DUE TO MISUNDERSTANDINGS, PREJUDICES AND IGNORANCE. OUR BRAIN RESISTS LEARNING THAT IS CONTRARY TO PREVIOUS ACCEPTANCE.

ENTER THE MACHINE LEARNING ALGORYTHMS.

"Oh, grandmother," she said, "what big ears you have."

"The better to hear you with, my child," was the reply.

"But, grandmother, what big eyes you have," she said.

"The better to see you with, my dear."

"But, grandmother, what large hands you have."

"The better to hug you with."

"Oh, but, grandmother, what a terrible big mouth you have."

"The better to eat you with."

https://americanliterature.com/childrens-stories/little-red-riding-hood

MORAL(s) OF THE STORY (SO FAR):

Only once has a defeated President gone on to win re-election four years after his first term. Grover Cleveland, who won in 1884 and again in 1892 is generally ranked by historians in the middle rung of American Presidents. Beside Donald Trump he is a paragon of Presidential dignity.

We in Australia are used to a ceaseless election cycle, but that Trump announced his candidature two weeks after the mid-term elections is a record. The rest of Joe Biden’s first term will be overshadowed by the spectre of the 2024 elections, and Congress will act increasingly in light of this.

By Dennis Altman

Secretary-general of the United Nations António Guterres, Your Excellencies, heads of state and heads of missions accredited to the Seventy-seventh United Nations General Assembly; Deputy Secretary-general of the United Nations Amina Mohammed, to all of you.

I come from one of the three most beautiful countries on Earth. There is an explosion of life there. Thousands of multicolored species in the seas, in the skies, on the land. I come from the land of yellow butterflies and magic. There, in the mountains and valleys of all the shades of green, flow not just abundant waters but also torrents of blood.

Colombian president Gustavo Petro

I come from a country of bloodsoaked beauty. My country is not just beautiful — it is also violent.

Balinese culture, a perpetual exercise in sophisticated subtlety, makes no distinction between the secular and the supernatural – sekala and niskala.

Sekala is what our senses may discern. As in the ritualized gestures of world leaders – real and minor – at a highly polarized G20.

Niskala is what cannot be sensed directly and can only be “suggested.” And that also applies to geopolitics. 

BY PEPE ESCOBAR

 Once a year, delegates from almost 200 countries gather for the purpose of finding ways to keep climate change from spiraling out of control. This time around, they’re meeting in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, for COP27. And the event is brought to you by the largest plastic producer in the world, Coca-Cola.

While Coca-Cola is considered a lower-tier sponsor than the conference’s “partners,” which include Microsoft, IBM, and Bloomberg Philanthropies, Coca-Cola’s role has garnered an exceptionally large amount of criticism.

By Kate Yoder / Grist

The meeting between Anthony Albanese and Xi Jinping put me in mind of the public reaction in Australia when Whitlam met Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai in 1971.

The meeting in Bali is potentially more than just a diplomatic reset. It could be a pivotal moment for Australia, in the dynamics of the ‘China question’ in our domestic politics – the way we think about and how we approach the relationship.

Ukraine’s President Vladimir Zelensky has stepped out of line in his relationships with his foreign backers, Maria Zakharova, spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, has said. She was referring to his attempt to nudge NATO into retaliating against Russia for a deadly incident in Poland.

“Zelensky sits in a bunker and cannot understand why his version about a ‘Russian missile in Poland’ was dismissed even by the worst of Russophobes,” she wrote on social media on Wednesday. The president, she added, should realize that his job is “to do the dirty work and not tell bosses what they should do.”

MORE TO COME

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW ••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

No big surprise to see Craig Foster elected chair of the Australian Republican Movement (ARM) last night. But in his first address to ARM members, he flagged a change to how the movement operates.

Peter FitzSimons has been the leader of the ARM for the past seven years. The author, SMH columnist and former rugby union player has been the recognisable face of an organisation which has supported the idea of an Australian head of state since 1991. It counted FitzSimons, novelist Thomas Keneally and Malcolm Turnbull among its founding members, and the latter went on to spearhead the campaign leading up to the 1999 referendum which was defeated, to the surprise of many at the time.

For the Western press, the 20th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party offered a number of signals which—if read in good faith—could have been perceived as reassuring.

Instead, establishment outlets reverted to familiar narratives regarding China’s Covid mitigation strategy and tied these into renewed predictions of a long-prophesied economic disaster—one that would inevitably befall China as a result of its government’s decision to forsake the orthodoxy of open markets.

More than anything else, corporate media fixated on Hu Jintao’s departure from the congress hall, engaging in tabloid-variety speculation around the fate of CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping’s 79-year-old predecessor.

The way the U.S. provoked and now sustains its Ukraine proxy war is no more ethical than its invasion of Iraq. If people can’t see this, it’s because the propaganda around the latest war hasn’t cleared from the air yet.

By Caitlin Johnstone
CaitlinJohnstone.com

New research published by France’s Ecole de Guerre Economique has revealed some extraordinary findings about who and what the French intelligence services fear most when it comes to threats to the country’s economy.

The findings are based on extensive research and interviews with French intelligence experts, including representatives of spy agencies, and so reflect the positions and thinking of specialists in the under-researched field of economic warfare. Their collective view is very clear - 97 percent consider the US to be the foreign power that “most threatens” the “economic interests” of Paris.

UNITED NATIONS – Are 8 billion humans too many for planet Earth? As we reach this milestone on Nov. 15, most experts say the bigger problem is the overconsumption of resources by the wealthiest residents.

“Eight billion people, it is a momentous milestone for humanity,” said United Nations Population Fund chief Natalia Kanem, hailing an increase in life expectancy and fewer maternal and child deaths.

“Yet, I realize this moment might not be celebrated by all. Some express concerns that our world is overpopulated. I am here to say clearly that the sheer number of human lives is not a cause for fear.”

So, are there too many of us for Earth to sustain?