Blogotariat

Oz Blog News Commentary
Peter Martin Monday, December 29, 2025 - 17:04 Source

Much has been written about how, with the passing of the Queen, we have lost one of our last continuing links to the second world war.

We have, but we have also lost something even more profound – the link she gave us back to when the kind of world we know began.

On Tuesday last week Queen Elizabeth appointed a new prime minister of Britain, Liz Truss, who was born in 1975.

Seven decades earlier, Elizabeth II ascended to the role alongside Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who was born in 1874.

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Peter Martin Monday, December 29, 2025 - 17:01 Source

Australians on our humiliatingly-low unemployment benefit are about to get their biggest payday ever.

On September 20, the single rate of JobSeeker will climb A$25.70 per fortnight from $642.70 to $668.40. That’s the biggest automatic increase since the payment began at the turn of the 1990s, and twice as big as the next-biggest.

Read more Views: 92
Your Democracy Monday, December 29, 2025 - 16:51 Source

Who is Susan Miller? She is a recently retired CIA officer who entered on duty in September 1985, began her career in the Directorate of Intelligence and then, sometime after 1989, changed her career path and moved to the Directorate of Operations, where she spent most of career, including a stint as the Chief of Station in Israel. How do I know this? Well, not only am I relying on press reports…

Read more Views: 69
Your Democracy Monday, December 29, 2025 - 15:13 Source

The telephone conversation between the Russian and US presidents was held at the initiative of the US side, and lasted 1 hour and 15 minutes, Russian presidential aide Yuri Ushakov said.

Key takeaways:

— Trump wanted to discuss a number of issues ahead of his meeting with Zelensky

— The tone of the Putin-Trump call was friendly, constructive, and business-like

Read more Views: 72
Peter Martin Monday, December 29, 2025 - 13:04 Source

Wes Mountain/The Conversation, CC BY-ND

Investing in Australians’ education is far more important than immigration in resolving the nation’s skills shortages, according to leading economists surveyed in the lead-up to this week’s jobs and skills summit.

Read more Views: 104
Your Democracy Monday, December 29, 2025 - 11:00 Source

BREATHING THE AIR INSIDE A MICROWAVE OVEN ISN'T GOING TO KILL YOU... BECAUSE YOU CANNOT CLOSE THE DOOR... SHOULD YOU BE ABLE TO CLOSE THE DOOR AND TURN THE MACHINE ON, YOU WILL BOIL TO DEATH... THIS IS WHAT MANY PEOPLE DO NOT UNDERSTAND. DENIALISTS OF GLOBAL WARMING ARE THUS DANGEROUS...

Read more Views: 94
xkcd.com Monday, December 29, 2025 - 11:00 Source

 Ask a crew member to show you how to use the ISS food warmer.

Read more Views: 35
Your Democracy Monday, December 29, 2025 - 08:11 Source

There is a moment in every civilization’s collapse when the instruments of its destruction become visible to those paying attention. We are living in that moment now. But the warning signs are not carved in stone or written in prophecy—they are embedded in source code, amplified by algorithms, and funded by men who speak openly of human extinction while racing to cause it.

 

Read more Views: 88
Your Democracy Monday, December 29, 2025 - 06:55 Source

NATO boss, Mark Rutte, says that Western Europe could be heading toward a war with Russia “like our grandparents experienced.” Which implies that he has a phenomenal memory of World War II, 80 years ago. This is especially impressive coming from a man known in the Netherlands, where he spent fourteen years as Prime Minister – until last year – for routinely insisting that he couldn’t remember what he did just the week before.

 

Read more Views: 68
MacroBusiness Monday, December 29, 2025 - 00:05 Source

My latest podcast with Martin North at Digital Finance Analytics (DFA) explained why Australia is experiencing its worst rental crisis in living memory. To summarise, Australian rents have soared by 44% over the past five years, according to Cotality, adding around $10,600 to the annual cost of renting the median home. As a result, rental

The post What’s causing Australia’s rental crisis? appeared first on MacroBusiness.

Read more Views: 94
Your Democracy Sunday, December 28, 2025 - 10:53 Source

On its final day, St. Anna's is almost full again. A choir is singing and the small organ is supporting them. But this is the last mass in the small Catholic church in Gildehaus, a district of Bad Bentheim near the German-Dutch border. In future, the building will no longer be a place of worship.

 

Germany's empty churches repurposed as congregations shrink

Read more Views: 94
Your Democracy Sunday, December 28, 2025 - 07:49 Source

In 2020, Dutch lawyer Arno Van Kessel realized that Covid-19 was being used by governments to exercise malign influence on populations and began vocally opposing both the Dutch government's pandemic response measures and the subsequent Covid-19 'vaccines'.

 

Despite Lawyer's Detention Under Accusation of 'Terrorism', Landmark Covid-19 Lawsuit Pending Before District Court in The Netherlands

LaursSott.net

Read more Views: 92
Your Democracy Sunday, December 28, 2025 - 06:55 Source

 

The Israel President cannot be welcomed in Australia. The government he represents has been found by the International Court of Justice to have breached international law: the Netanyahu regime has committed a range of international crimes against humanity including war crimes, apartheid, illegal occupation and ethnic cleansing.

 

Read more Views: 88
Your Democracy Sunday, December 28, 2025 - 05:44 Source

 

A key reason why China has, for decades, had the highest annual increases in per-capita GDP PPP (standard of living as experienced by the country’s population — as opposed to pure per-capita GDP, which reflects ONLY the investors) is the Chinese Communist Party’s relentless war against corruption.

 

Read more Views: 86
Your Democracy Saturday, December 27, 2025 - 12:08 Source

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Your Democracy Saturday, December 27, 2025 - 09:44 Source

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky has given a positive assessment of a conversation he had with US envoys on how to end the Russia-Ukraine war.

Read more Views: 98
Your Democracy Saturday, December 27, 2025 - 06:55 Source

Australian law enforcement and intelligence agencies are to be reviewed, in the Albanese government’s latest response in the wake of the Bondi tragedy. 

But Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is still resisting calls for a national royal commission. 

Read more Views: 104
Your Democracy Saturday, December 27, 2025 - 05:44 Source

While browsing through the magazine section at Barnes and Noble recently, for fun, I picked up the September issue of the John Birch Society’s publication The New American.

Read more Views: 95
MacroBusiness Saturday, December 27, 2025 - 00:05 Source

My latest podcast with Martin North at Digital Finance Analytics (DFA) explained why now is a particularly risky time to be utilising the federal government’s 5% deposit scheme for first home buyers, given that the market is so expensive and risks following Canada and New Zealand with a severe housing correction. The long and short

The post Beware a future house price crash appeared first on MacroBusiness.

Read more Views: 106
Your Democracy Friday, December 26, 2025 - 18:11 Source

Across the United States, Democrats and Republicans are demanding that their leaders come clean with the Epstein files and the truth finally be told. What they are getting instead is a massive redaction campaign.

Read more Views: 109
Your Democracy Friday, December 26, 2025 - 15:12 Source

Ukraine is a “viper’s den” rife with corruption, Hunter Biden, the son of former US President Joe Biden, has said, as he reflected on his time as a board member of the Ukrainian energy company Burisma.

Read more Views: 132
Your Democracy Friday, December 26, 2025 - 11:57 Source

While western publics are being demonised as racists, the technology and strategies used today against Palestinians will become the walls of tomorrow’s prisons for us all

Western establishments’ fear of the phrase “Globalise the intifada” has little to do with any danger supposedly posed to Jewish populations from its use.

 

Western elites fear a ‘globalised intifada’ because they are its targets, not Jews

Read more Views: 94
MacroBusiness Friday, December 26, 2025 - 11:00 Source

  Peter Ziehan and the throttling of Venezuela and shadow oil fleets Sam Harris and Peter Ziehan on nation states DW on Trump and Venezuela Mearsheimer on oil Trump and Venezuela Yanis Varoufakis and Gillian Tett on demise of globalisation Rest is politics on the same ABC Australian Housing Morgans Australian economy Leith and Martin

The post Boxing Day Videos: 26 December 2025 appeared first on MacroBusiness.

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xkcd.com Friday, December 26, 2025 - 11:00 Source

Building Inspectors HATE This One Weird Trick

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Your Democracy Friday, December 26, 2025 - 08:42 Source

Playing into Putin's Hands: Europe & Trump /Patrick Henningsen & Lt Col Daniel Davis

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8MgrIpfWDv8

Read more Views: 85
MacroBusiness Friday, December 26, 2025 - 08:00 Source

If you listen to the masters of the financial universe, a revolution is upon us. In his 2025 letter, Larry Fink of BlackRock hailed tokenisation as the path to “democratisation.” The narrative is seductive: every asset—stocks, bonds, art, real estate—will live on a blockchain. Settlement becomes instant. Friction disappears. The gates of high finance are

Read more Views: 115
Your Democracy Friday, December 26, 2025 - 07:15 Source

A passage from Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale has been haunting me: “That was when they suspended the Constitution. They said it would be temporary. There wasn’t even any rioting in the streets. People stayed home at night, watching television, looking for some direction. There wasn’t even an enemy you could put your finger on.” 

 

How the West Unpersons Its Critics:

Or about the Kafkaesque Europe

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Your Democracy Friday, December 26, 2025 - 06:55 Source

There’s no doubt that 2025 has been one of the most politically chaotic years of the 21st century.

Amid the domestic and geopolitical mayhem unleashed by Donald Trump’s return to the White House, powerful interests were busy enacting a radical anti-democratic agenda that has already changed our world and will continue shaping it for years to come.

 

Read more Views: 77
Your Democracy Friday, December 26, 2025 - 05:44 Source

 

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Your Democracy Thursday, December 25, 2025 - 20:03 Source

"I am standing here in this exquisite Chapel of St George at Windsor Castle, so close to where my beloved mother, the late Queen, is laid to rest with my dear father.

"I am reminded of the deeply touching letters, cards and messages which so many of you have sent my wife and myself and I cannot thank you enough for the love and sympathy you have shown our whole family.

"Christmas is a particularly poignant time for all of us who have lost loved ones.

Read more Views: 118

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