At least 90,000 pro-Palestine protesters walked across Sydney Harbour Bridge and into history through the pelting rain, as a larger crowd than expected used the landmark as a symbol, bringing the city to a standstill and leading police to sound the alarm of a potential crowd crush.

In the face of the sheer size of the protest against the Israeli government’s actions in Gaza, which organisers say drew between 200,000 and 300,000 people, police were forced to ditch plans for the march to end at North Sydney and redirected the crowd.

In understanding history, more is required than just a litany of facts. An explanatory framework is needed—a theory or argument concerning the significance and interrelationships between those facts, or a “model” as Robert Higgs put it:

In black history, as in any history, the facts do not speak for themselves. They require selection, classification, and interpretation, and for these purposes the investigator must employ a model. That any attempt at causal analysis must make use of a model, either explicitly or implicitly, is generally admitted. That explicit models are preferable to implicit ones is a long-standing precept of economists and a principle increasingly affirmed by historians.

Mises Wire
The Complexity of Historical Narratives

It’s been a big week for “the data.” At Wednesday’s FOMC press conference, Fed Chair Jerome Powell announced that the Fed was holding its policy interest rate steady at the current 4.5 percent. Powell noted that there was no need to cut the rate because the job market is “solid.” Powell engaged in the usual song and dance of declaring that the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy is data-driven or “data-dependent” and assured the attending members of the press that FOMC policy is carefully implemented in accordance with federal employment data (among other data points). 

Mises Wire
The Fed Says It Is “Data-Driven.” But the Data Isn’t Any Good.

The United Nations produces over 1,000 reports a year, but most are barely read, according to the organization’s own study into how to make its work more “impactful and coherent.” The revelation comes as the UN marks its 80th anniversary amid a deepening identity crisis.

In March, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres launched the UN80 Taskforce – a reform initiative aimed at reviewing how the Secretariat implements thousands of mandates and at reducing administrative overload.

People in Japan experienced their hottest July on record this year, with no respite in sight for some.

Officials warn that the northern and western regions of the country will continue to see "severe heat" in August.

Japan's average monthly temperature in July was 2.89 degrees Celsius higher than the 1991-2020 average for the same month, the nation's meteorological agency said on Friday.

On July 30, Japan experienced its highest ever recorded temperature — 41.2 Celsius (106.2 Fahrenheit) in the western region of Hyogo.

This is the third record-breaking July Japan has seen. The average monthly temperature reached new heights in 2023, 2024, and now in 2025.

Four weeks after Israel signed the US-brokered Abraham Accords with the UAE and Bahrain on 15 September 2020, Tel Aviv’s Higher Planning Council approved 4,948 new settler units in the occupied West Bank. No public fanfare. 

No tanks rolled in – just signatures authorizing another layer of occupation. The first wave of expansion advanced quietly, legitimized by the language of “peace.”

This sequencing deliberately reflects the core logic of Zionist expansion: Normalize when the region submits, colonize when the world blinks. 

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) has announced it will cease its operations early next year after losing its budget to US President Donald Trump’s cuts.

Operations will be gradually wound down over the next few months, the CPB announced on Friday. Founded in 1967, it has been responsible for stewarding over 1,500 public television and radio stations, including major US broadcasters PBS and NPR. 

“Despite the extraordinary efforts of millions of Americans who called, wrote, and petitioned Congress to preserve federal funding for CPB, we now face the difficult reality of closing our operations,” CPB President and CEO Patricia Harrison said in a statement.

A Republican Party social media post on Friday aimed at promoting American manufacturing has drawn ridicule online after users identified the car featured in the image as a presumably Soviet-made Lada, not a product of the US auto industry.

The image, posted to the party’s official account on X, shows US President Donald Trump standing in front of a bright yellow sedan. The caption reads: “A Big Beautiful Bill will help bring back the great American car,” referencing legislation recently signed by Trump to extend tax cuts and promote domestic automobile production.

Russia Cripples NATO Armor—Australia's Abrams Rushed Into Growing Tank Graveyard!

Despite the catastrophic losses of the first batch of American Abrams tanks in Ukraine—many destroyed by Russian drones and precision strikes—Australia has now delivered a new wave of M1A1s, hoping to change the tide. With 49 units sent as part of a $245 million military aid package, the tanks have been upgraded to survive Eastern Europe's brutal battlefield. But with an 87% destruction rate and new footage showing their vulnerabilities, critics are asking: are these tanks just more targets, or can Ukraine finally use them right? The clock is ticking—and the world is watching.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unRl2Tvm-Ig

LARRY PICKERING WAS A POPULAR RIGHT WING AUSTRALIAN CARTOONIST. HERE GUS MISCHIEF ONE OF HIS MOST INCISIVE TOON ABOUT THE STATE OF THE USA IN THE 1970s.

Senior members of the US Democratic Party and their benefactors are listed in the Epstein documents, X owner Elon Musk has claimed.

On Friday, Bloomberg reported that the FBI agents reviewing the files on the convicted sex offender and financier Jeffrey Epstein had identified numerous references to US President Donald Trump, as well as dozens of other high-profile figures. The agency stressed that the appearance of any name “is not evidence of a crime or even a suggestion of wrongdoing.”

Responding to the report, one X user suggested that “when a Democrat becomes president, they’ll un-redact these names.”

“I do exorcisms now, all day, pretty much,” stated Dr. Michael Cocchini, the author of the book “The War Within,” during a gathering of ‘Christian warriors’ at the late country music star Kenny Rogers’s Copperline Ranch in Nashville on December 11. “I kind of gave up medicine; I felt it was the remnant of Babylonian witchcraft,” explained the medical doctor, further stating that “we see people get healed from schizophrenia … a one hour exorcism and they’ll never hear voices again.”

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said that Delhi's relationship with Moscow remains a "point of irritation" in India-US ties.

Rubio's statement comes a day after US President Donald Trump said he would impose 25% tariffs on Indian goods "plus an unspecified penalty", for buying Russian oil and weapons.

In an interview to Fox News Radio on Thursday, Rubio called India an "ally" and "strategic partner" but added that Delhi's purchase of Russian oil was hampering its relationship with Washington.

Russian oil made up 35% to 40% of India's oil imports in 2024 - up from 3% in 2021.

A reality of our day: The Israeli Government, with the full support of the United States, is conducting genocide in Gaza. Numerous other countries, including Australia, as well as a multitude of corporations worldwide are complicit.

Question: Why are Australian institutions so silent, so quiet, in the face of obvious and evident mass slaughter, another holocaust?

Kevin Liston

Donald Trump says US nuclear submarines are being repositioned in response to "provocative statements" from Russia's former president, Dmitry Medvedev.

In a Truth Social post on Friday, Washington time, the US president wrote: 

"Based on the highly provocative statements of the Former President of Russia, Dmitry Medvedev, who is now the Deputy Chairman of the Security Council of the Russian Federation, I have ordered two Nuclear Submarines to be positioned in the appropriate regions, just in case these foolish and inflammatory statements are more than just that. 

The EU was not “feared enough” during negotiations with the US on the newly-signed trade agreement between the two, French President Emmanuel Macron has said, according to Euractiv. 

The agreement, concluded on Sunday during talks between US President Donald Trump and European Commission head Ursula von der Leyen  sets a 15% tariff on the majority of EU exports to the US. Brussels also committed to investing $600 billion in the US economy and buying $750 billion in American energy over the next three years. The US, however, will not face any EU tariffs on its exports.

“To be free, you have to be feared, and we haven’t been feared enough,” Macron told the Council of Ministers in Paris on Wednesday, according to two attendees present during the meeting.