On the war’s momentum [September 2022]: It has fundamentally shifted, and I’m normally fairly guarded and cautious about this, but the tide clearly has turned because the success of this offensive, as important as it is itself on the ground, is that it reflects a hugely important development: Ukraine has been incomparably better than Russia in recruiting, training, equipping, organising and employing additional forces. Russia has been struggling to do just that, literally running out of soldiers, ammunition tanks, fighting vehicles and so forth.

David Petraeus

Ukraine will win the war

Now, this is a tricky one, George, because it’s a subject on which my opinion has altered violently. And this is a disaster! My God, everyone knows that newspaper readers cling to the opinions of columnists like passengers on the Titanic fastened on to the few lifeboats there upon the chopping, churning sea.

What are the rules about wearing one’s hat indoors?

BY Hadley Freeman

Australia’s alliance with the United States is no longer reliable, and clinging to it now risks Australia’s interests and values. The case for a deliberate, staged Plan B begins with strategic autonomy – and an overdue reckoning with extended nuclear deterrence.

Michael McKinley

One hundred years ago – in The Sun Also Rises – Ernest Hemingway wrote that some things proceed “at first slowly, and then very fast.” This is an accurate description of the decomposition of the Western Alliance in general and Australia’s alliance relationship with the United States in particular.

Right-wing campaign groups and Coalition MPs are again using Australia Day to drive petitions, wedge politics and anti-elite rhetoric. This year’s campaign is being amplified by paid digital ads, ARC grant outrage and calls to “legislate the date”.

Marian Sawer

Washington and Kiev have discussed several options for ending the Ukraine conflict, including the creation of a demilitarized zone or the deployment of neutral peacekeepers to the Kiev-controlled parts of Russia’s Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), The New York Times has said. The options were reportedly brought up earlier this week at trilateral talks in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) with Russian officials.

In an article on Saturday, the NYT reported that during the negotiations – the first of their kind since the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022 – Kiev once again ruled out territorial concessions to Moscow.

Israel’s reputation is treated as a strategic asset to be managed in Western media and political domains. The Israeli ‘machine’ spends lot of money and effort doing it. The passing of hate laws in the Parliament just switched some of the cost to us. Rex Patrick explains.

Let’s start with some disclosures. 1) I respect people of Jewish faith. 2) I respect people of Islamic faith. 3) Hamas’ 7 October 2023 attacks on Israeli citizens were wrong. 4) Israel’s genocide in Gaza was wrong. 5) Hezbollah and Houthi attacks on Israeli citizens were wrong. 6) Israel’s attacks on Lebanese citizens were wrong. 7) The terrorist attack at Bondi Beach was wrong.

Violence against civilians is wrong.

Some of the responses to the brutal murder of Alex Pretti by federal agents. Pretti, a U.S. citizen and an ICU nurse at a Veterans Affairs hospital known for his care and compassion, was shot and killed Saturday morning near Nicollet Avenue. Family members and colleagues say he was participating in protests against federal immigration actions and was filming or attempting to intervene when federal officers confronted him.

His family speaking this was from CNN’s reporter Brian Setler

The Chinese state-run news agency Xinhua has ridiculed the administration of US President Donald Trump for using the popular ‘Nihilist penguin’ meme to promote its campaign to gain control of Greenland.

On Saturday, the White House’s page on X decided to exploit the hype around the meme, which features a lone Adelie penguin abandoning his colony to walk towards distant icy mountains.

It published an AI-generated picture of Trump leading the flightless bird by his wing along an ice-covered plane towards the mountains, where a flag of Greenland is erected. In his other wing, the penguin is holding a US flag. “Embrace the penguin,” the caption reads.

Trump, more than a decisive player, is a symptom of the changing times.

The world is hanging on the twists and turns of the American president's belligerent, xenophobic protectionist policies. We are at a crossroads, with analyses of the situation rapidly becoming obsolete. Unless he flops, which is possible, and crashes against a Wall Street market crash, or loses control of Congress halfway through his term. But he has already succeeded, whether intentionally or not, in weakening global capitalism through his erratic actions—and in endangering the United States. For that, we can already be grateful.

Trump ou la possibilité de l'effondrement du capitalisme à l'échelle mondiale

He has also succeeded in exposing the predatory and terrorist structure of imperialism, notably through the recent operation against Venezuela.

Iran (1953), Iraq (2003), Libya (2011), Russia (2022), Syria (2024), and now Venezuela (2026). The common denominator underlying the U.S. attacks and economic sanctions against all these countries is America’s weaponization of the world’s oil trade. Control over oil is one of its key methods for achieving unipolar control over the world’s broad trade and dollarized financial arrangements.

Weaponizing the World’s Oil Trade is the Bedrock of the U.S. Rules-Based Order

BY MICHAEL HUDSON

The prospect of the above-mentioned countries using their oil for their own benefit and diplomacy poses the most serious threat to America’s overall ability to use the oil trade to enforce the aims of its diplomacy. 

Trump’s proposed “Board of Peace” is framed as a peace initiative, but it centralises authority, sidelines the vulnerable and rewards coercion. Australia should reject it rather than lend it legitimacy.

Stuart Rees

For centuries, the policies of Imperialism led to the stealing of lands and subsequent control of weaker countries through military force, by economic exploitation and political domination. Across Africa, in South and North America, in India, Southeast Asia, Australia and Palestine, Indigenous peoples were stigmatised, slaughtered and treated as of little consequence.

Australia does not suffer from a lack of empathy. It suffers from selective empathy. And nowhere is that clearer than in the way our political and media class decide who is allowed to mourn. Andrew Brown with the story.

Thursday night at the Opera House was a masterclass in performative sorrow. Premiers, the opposition leader and the prime minister lined up, kippahs in place, voices lowered, faces solemn. Cameras rolled. Statements were delivered. Condolences stacked neatly on top of one another. This was not an isolated moment. It was the latest act in a month-long production of national grief.

“NATO has kept the peace for nearly eight decades and created the conditions for prosperity and democracy to flourish.”
              U.S. State Department

This is a remarkable claim, repeated with near religious reverence by Western leaders. NATO has kept the peace for nearly eighty years. One almost admires the audacity. Because outside a narrow band of white European countries, the postwar world has been anything but peaceful. For much of humanity, the NATO era has been an age of fire.

NATO - Eighty Years of Peace If You Ignore the Rest of the World

Nancy O'Brien Simpson

Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky is facing severe backlash from key international partners after a combative speech at Davos, where he went on a tirade accusing Europe of “indecisiveness” toward Russia and insufficient support for his country.

The backlash comes as Zelensky’s popularity in the West is already on a downward spiral over his constant criticism of Kiev’s European backers while demanding billions in support – while Ukraine continues to struggle with high-level corruption scandals and a dire military situation.

The reactions to his speech at the World Economic Forum from European capitals were swift. Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani called it “unfair to Europe,” telling Corriere della Sera that the continent has “guaranteed Ukraine’s independence” through immense political, financial, and military support.

In the German writer Ernst Junger’s macabre vignette ‘Violet Endives’, a man walks into a gourmet shop where the salesman speaks in matter-of-fact fashion about the delicacies on display – human flesh – and embarks upon a long explanation about the art of preparation. The story is a commentary on a society that accepts the appalling with barely the blink of an eye. 

The monetary system is broken and gold knows why

Central banks have been buying bullion at a record clip because holding dollars has become a losing proposition

By Henry Johnston