Before the cock crows, I’m happy to admit I was educated in the Roman Catholic tradition under the largely effective tutelage of the Dominican Fathers. Like the Jesuits, the Dominicans placed special emphasis on study, critical thinking and the pursuit of truth. As I slouch into my winter years, I’m still trying to think critically and pursue truth whatever that is and wherever it might take me.

John Schumann

Many Australian journalists think Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Ambassador Kevin Rudd did a wonderful job this week in handling the corrupt narcissist who runs the United States, Donald Trump.

Of course, forelock tugging to monarchs is an essential in the Australian political leaders’ toolbox (former prime ministers Paul Keating and Gough Whitlam excepted).

Greg Barns

Bob Katter claims Gaza refugees are part of Hamas, as the Queensland MP continues to position himself as one of Parliament’s most outspoken defenders of Israel. Stephanie Tran reports.

Bob Katter marched alongside thousands of protesters in Brisbane on Sunday at a “March for Australia” rally, one of several anti-immigration demonstrations held across the country.

Addressing the crowd, Katter criticised Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke for allowing Gaza refugees into Australia, describing the refugees as “part of Hamas”.

The US not only helped create conditions that brought Cambodia's Khmer Rouge to power in 1975, but actively supported the genocidal force, politically and financially. By January 1980, the US was secretly funding Pol Pots exiled forces on the Thai border. The extent of this support-$85 million from 1980 to 1986-was revealed six years later in correspondence between congressional lawyer Jonathan Winer, then counsel to Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation.

The Long Secret Alliance: Uncle Sam and Pol Pot

by John Pilger (9 October 1939 – 30 December 2023)

Covert Action Quarterly Fall 1997

On the Afghan–Uzbek border, the first thing you notice is the noise. Trains, trucks, and buses move in both directions almost without pause. For the first time in decades, the hum of trade has replaced the sound of gunfire.

How trade is winning the war that armies couldn’t

Trade replaces war on the CIS’s southern frontier

By Timofey Bordachev

Meanwhile, the recent border clash between Afghanistan and Pakistan is unlikely to escalate into full-scale war. Neither side has the resources – or the appetite – for a long conflict. For most regional governments today, stability and commerce are preferable to military adventure. The Middle East and South Asia remain fragile, but they are calmer now than just a few years ago.

The Australian Financial Review’s editorial cartoonist David Rowe has won the Australian Cartoonists Association’s Gold Stanley for best cartoonist of the year for a record-extending 11th time.

Rowe was also awarded the Bronze Stanley award for best caricaturist at the association’s 41st Annual Stan Cross Awards, held in Hobart on Saturday night. It was the 15th time Rowe had taken out the award.

It is Rowe’s third consecutive Gold Stanley, an award he first won in 2002.

The price of partnership with the United States has changed. Washington is now using  assurances of defence and trade access to pressure allies in Europe and Asia to buy more of its fossil fuels under decades-long contracts.

Christoph Nedopil

English: This cartoon depicts a representation of Rudyard Kipling's famous poem The White Man's Burden. Originally published in February, 1899 the poem's philosophy quickly developed as the United States response to annexation of the Philippines. The United States used the "white man's burden" as an argument for imperial control of the Philippines and Cuba on the basis of moral necessity. It was now the United States' moral duty to develop and modernize the conquest lands in order to help carry the foreign barbarians to civilization.

A senior Pentagon spokesperson has responded with a “your mom” joke when asked about US War Secretary Pete Hegseth’s choice of tie for a recent meeting with Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky.   

Hegseth opted for a white, blue, and red striped tie during Zelensky’s visit to the White House on Friday.

While the colors are also found in US national symbolism, media outlets noted that the arrangement of the stripes on Hegseth’s garment mirrored that of the Russian flag. Other members of the US administration, including President Donald Trump, wore solid-colored ties for the meeting. 

Visit many areas of state forest in parts of Victoria and you might get a shock – the forest isn’t there.

It used to be there — logged four, five, six or ten years ago — and once stood as tall, straight trees, sometimes more than 50 metres high. Now, no longer. The forest has failed to regenerate after being logged by former Victorian Government agency, VicForests.

Chris Taylor,  David Lindenmayer

Paenitentia, Solitudo et Silentium

"The universe contracted; at its exact geometric center floated that sandy tidbit of dark bread and pale cheese.*"

While Fukuyama lauded "the End of History", it should be obvious to anyone who turn stones upside down to seek cool sand in a furnaced desert, that history never ends, appears cyclical though it evolves from single cells to monkeys and humans who resent their unfinished nature in search of blessed documents. 

Former Trump national security advisor John Bolton has been indicted in Maryland on 18 federal counts of violating the Espionage Act, which is kind of poetic for a guy who’s spent a career demanding that everyone else get indicted for leaking things.

Bolton pleaded not guilty and will now enjoy the same due process that he’s long tried to deny whistleblowers, journalists, and the occasional sovereign nation.

John Bolton bombs himself in a blaze of poetic justice
The man who was so eager to destroy whistleblowers faces prison for leaking classified intel

BY Rachel Marsden

The EU is doing everything in its power to undermine the upcoming summit between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his US counterpart, Donald Trump, the Russian Foreign Ministry has said. 

Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told TASS on Monday that the bloc is carrying out “active subversive actions” ahead of the planned meeting in the Hungarian capital, Budapest.

Her comments followed a report by Spanish outlet El Pais, which said Brussels viewed the talks as “a political nightmare.” Citing diplomatic sources, the newspaper reported that the summit put the EU “in an awkward and unpleasant position” because Putin and Trump would discuss a potential settlement to the Ukraine conflict in an EU country without the bloc’s participation.

In the workshops of the Ruhr, where the fire of blast furnaces was once considered Europe’s eternal companion, today reigns a cold more expensive than any raw material. An economic pause has descended in icy silence. A tombstone rests on the grave of industrial greatness, signed by Europe’s own leaders.

Europe’s Economic Winter Transfers the Workshop of the World to Asia’s New Furnaces

Rebecca Chan

European capitals increasingly resemble branch offices of an American headquarters. Decisions on industrial policy have long turned into ritual acts of loyalty rather than independent steps.

Whether it’s the Israeli Government, an international peacekeeping force, or a post-conflict reconstruction authority for Gaza chaired (grotesquely) by Donald Trump, the fate of Palestine still rests in the hands of outsiders.

John Feffer