Glen Le Lievre cartoons in AFR nails it

"...asking him to investigate after the document written by the Israeli government’s Ministry for Diaspora Affairs was referenced in the Australian newspaper. The dossier, published in September"

"Police have recovered 15 of the most recently stolen vehicles, with some having been traced to the Port of Melbourne. Investigators said they were not yet sure if the thefts were linked to a spate of similar crimes across Victoria."

"A US official said on Tuesday that Russia had sent a submarine and other naval assets to escort the Bella 1, according to The Wall Street Journal, in a sign of rising tensions between the two countries."

Well said..... "David said the family did not want to wade into any controversy after the attack, and only wanted to celebrate his life. But when he heard a very famous Australian say it was not a gun problem but an antisemitism problem, he said he thought, “Why can’t it be two things at once?”

Paramedics, including a helicopter, are tending to 13 patients at the scene.🙏

Our media truly is pathetic - "Dictator chic/style icon" ADD TO CART a dead giveaway 🙄 I doubt he had time to pack his own best tracky dacks when the US army came shooting up the joint The Australia ADD TO CART An hour ago Dictator chic: ousted leader becomes unlikely style icon

see thread bsky.app/profile/byst...

Attention Australia 👇 "Prof. Jeffrey Sachs: When the US has military bases in your country, you are in effect an occupied country."

"In the past, Americans may have been tempted to dismiss the significance of the people whom the president picks for cabinet posts, but this year, we learned a hard lesson about the damage they could do."

Inflation slips to 3.4% Inflation slipped to 3.4% in the year to November, still above the RBA’s preferred range of 2% to 3% but slightly lower than expected. October had seen consumer price increases of 3.8%. The less volatile trimmed mean measure also fell from 3.3% to 3.2%. The Guardian

Plans to tackle 🤔🙄 ->"Water is critical for our region, and I do not support the federal government’s latest 130 gigalitre buyback aimed squarely at the southern Basin and directly at towns across Farrer."

"When Nicolás Maduro appeared in court in New York on Monday, his choice of lawyer quickly raised eyebrows. The captured Venezuelan president was accompanied by Barry Pollack, a top-tier US trial lawyer who spent years representing Julian Assange, .."

But, but - he stopped the boats😱 "What Abbott and Morrison were good at was manipulating the media to believe it was their actions that stopped the boats." 😱

Nearly 150 countries have agreed on a landmark plan to stop large global companies shifting profits to low-tax jurisdictions, but the US will be exempt from the deal, angering tax transparency groups."

Victorian Liberals using the same election "winning" strategies as their Federal colleagues🙄 - ambulance chasers, running around looking for an issue they can capitalise on. Any chance of developing some policies?

Good question Dayne - you might also want to include her recent "private" event on the world's most expensive boat - The World - that Gina has a unit on😉 "What kind of relationship do you expect between a politician and a mining billionaire who share the same talking points on tax and mining"

The MSM is well and truly farked - if he had gone the headline would be something along the lines of - "Albo plays at the cricket while FN Qld drowns" Sussan Ley attended - no outrage that she's not in Qld🙄

"Last Friday, an apparent new trader on Polymarket.com seemed to invest $30,000 on the market: Maduro out by January 31, 2026?. After Maduro’s capture was announced on Saturday morning, that same investor seemed to have made profits of $436,759.61."

"Almost 7 million Australians living on the fringes of capital cities are at a growing risk from fires, according to a new report compiled by former fire chiefs and the Climate Council. The risk could be similar to a major fire like the one that ravaged Los Angeles, killing 31 people last year."

DIFFERENT WARS, SAME PROPAGANDA ...a montage showing the direct parallels between the rhetoric around the Iraq war & the current rhetoric around Venezuela. Jon Stewart 🎥 #IraqNeverAgain

This has to be fake? People walking forward all pretty much white. Those with back turned all middle eastern - some with Arab headwear and there's even some with burqas (facing so that you can see them). Sky News and AdvanceAI production 🙄

Not good if it happens - already too much rain "Last week, several locations in Queensland's north west broke monthly December rainfall records, including Burketown, Normanton, Cloncurry and Julia Creek with 450mm to 550mm. "

Letters to the editor "The anti-immigration stances of Advance and Andrew Hastie represent a populist shift in Australian conservative politics. While they frame their arguments around economic relief (specifically the housing crisis) and social cohesion, ..."

"Venezuela’s revival could threaten Australia’s future Australia prospered from Venezuela’s mining downturns, but we now risk an exodus as policy blunders could drive investment to South America." say Robert Gottliebsen The Australian "Venezuela possesses extraordinary abundance beneath its soil.

New: On the alarming politicisation of the Bondi massacre, and the calls for Albanese to announce a royal commission

And today's group calling for at Bondi RC ar.... "The three MPs join teal independents Monique Ryan, Kate Chaney, Sophie Scamps and Zali Stegall, who wrote to Albanese last month saying a Commonwealth inquiry was the only way.."

"There is no legal difference between Russian President Vladimir Putin’s attack on Ukraine and US President Donald Trump’s attack on Venezuela. Both are acts of aggression, the “supreme crime” according to the judgment at Nuremberg, .."

The rest of the article quotes what the sporting heros said, Mike Pezzullo, Geoff Wilson (of franking credits tax fame) and other business leaders 🙄

Geoffrey Robertson KC “The reality is that America is in breach of the United Nations charter,” he added. “It has committed the crime of aggression, which the court at Nuremberg described as the supreme crime, it’s the worst crime of all."

“One might have thought that this era of naked imperialism – of the US getting the political outcomes it wants in Latin America through sheer military force – would be over in the 21st century, but clearly it is not,” he added."

"President Trump’s brazen attack on Venezuela has violated the most sacred rule of international law – the near-century old ban on use of military force against another country. It returns the Americas to an era of gunboat diplomacy by imperial warlords."

On Saturday morning, Trump seemed giddy with military success. “A lot of good planning and a lot of great, great troops and great people,” Trump told the New York Times. “It was a brilliant operation, actually.”

"Trump and Hegseth say that’s what makes this operation “America First”. They’ll subdue a dangerous neighbour and reap the oily spoils, with not a drop of American blood spilled."

"Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few but what I’d really like to talk about is my disastrous predecessor and some pathetic city mayors,” is what Winston Churchill didn’t say during Britain’s war against Adolf Hitler."

"Mr Oliver said the US intervention in Venezuela was "part of an effort to reduce the cost of living in the US". Rising transport costs have been a key contributor to inflation in both the US and Australia."

By global affairs editor Laura Tingle

The Global Expansion of Authoritarian Rule

Sussan Ley statement 🙄

‘Probably the end of international law’: Expert "Sultan Barakat, professor of public policy at Hamad Bin Khalifa University in Qatar, told Al Jazeera that the US’s actions in Venezuela signal an end to respect for international law and ..." Aljazeera

Don't tell me this is Trump?

And what better place to discuss the "Tasmanian push" than on board The World - nice work if you can get it

"Ms White says politicians need to be mindful not to inflame tensions, following the Bondi attack. "What Australia deserves is a mature discussion about migration levels. Our party has cut migration by 40 per cent in a year. And it is stable now at 185,000 people for permanent migration. "

"Debate Islam all you like. Be critical, robust and challenging. But be dignified. Don’t carry out the work of the extremists who want society to rip itself apart, pitting neighbour against neighbour and worshipper against worshipper, forcing people to build walls and retreat."

"With 13 non-producing platforms, four subsea facilities, and hundreds of kilometres of pipelines and umbilicals all requiring removal by ExxonMobil here over the next few years, the clean-up job, known as decommissioning, will be the biggest ever conducted in Australia

A single red-whiskered bulbul has been on the loose in Adelaide's north for at least several weeks. Authorities are tracking the bird to try and stop it becoming endemic and causing major damage, as it has in other states. .... report it immediately to the Pest Alert Hotline on 1800 084 881.

"I concede it’s unlikely that 2026 will see Farage pay for his starring role in that ongoing act of collective self-harm. But eventually Trump, Netanyahu, Orbán and the others must face a reckoning for the pain they have caused and the damage they have done. Let this be the year."

" UK government warning that Amal Clooney risks US sanctions over her role in the issuing of an arrest warrant for the Israeli prime minister is key among reasons the couple have sought French citizenship"