NINETY-NINE PERCENT of Australia’s international internet traffic travels through about 15 cables on the seafloor. As @RichardMarlesMP put it, they’re the arteries of modern life, and they can be cut by an anchor at night.
Protecting them is one more reason to deepen our cooperation through #AUKUS.
https://t.co/9eLeLSTzpu
BREAKING: US military is finalizing preparations to launch "all-out war" in Iran and resume major combat operations after Trump met with his top national security advisers on Iran today, a US official tells Axios.
"I would rather not destroy the rest of the country if possible, but maybe I'll have to. You'll know soon enough," Trump said hours earlier.
History will show that no one did more to promote left-wing ideas than Donald Trump, and no one did more to advance the Palestinian cause than Benjamin Netanyahu.
JUST IN: French blood bank hit by cyber attack with blood samples being heated to 110 degrees Celsius from their maintained -30, per Le Canard Enchaîné.
Mearsheimer has been telling you all.
At national scale, it’s anarchy. Only strength rules.
Hierarchy is based on military, resource and economic leverages.
Being nice is harmful.
BREAKING: Trump says he may have to kill lots of Iranian civilians after the midterms when he resumes the war.
"I'm not looking to, you know, kill lots of people, but if we have to, we'll have to," Trump said when asked what will happen after the elections on Iran.
"We could finish them off or be nice and let thousands of people live that would get killed in a war," he adds.
BREAKING: Europe is under a massive cyber attack, with supermarket fridges and freezers in Belgium, Sweden, Luxembourg, Ireland, the Netherlands, Finland and Estonia all hacked today by raising temperatures to up to 50°C, destroying huge quantities of food, per Reuters.
"Everything is destroyed," a sales manager in Sweden said, adding that "there has been a cyberattack and all our freezers reached 50 degrees."
More than 40 supermarkets in Belgium and Luxembourg were affected. "I only have two words for them: wake up, please, because there's something going on," a store manager in Belgium said.
This follows a similar cyberattack last month that hit hundreds of supermarkets in France, raising freezers as high as 80°C and causing major food losses.
It also comes after freezers at 6 US military bases mysteriously malfunctioned, spoiling large quantities of food, which the Pentagon is investigating as a suspected cyberattack.
“Water, soil, and oxygen should not be infinitely accessible. They are assets that should be included in global economic balance sheets.”
This is not satire. The World Economic Forum wants to monetise breathing.
Under pressure from Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the Trump administration may be within days of launching a nuclear strike on Iran. The target would be Pickax Mountain in central Iran, where Israeli intelligence claims the Iranian government has restarted its nuclear enrichment program. No conventional weapon in the American arsenal can penetrate 300 feet of solid granite to destroy the tunnels where enrichment is supposedly taking place. The only military option is a nuclear strike. Netanyahu has been pushing hard for one. “Bibi calls Trump about it every day,” says an informed observer.
Netanyahu is cornered and desperate. After last week’s election results, he can’t form a government unless Trump intervenes directly in Israeli politics and brokers a deal with other parties that gives Netanyahu 61 seats in the Knesset. Otherwise, he is out as prime minister and on his way to ignominy, investigations and possibly jail. Netanyahu must stay close to Trump. He needs this war.
To that end, he’s applied maximum pressure to his closest allies in the administration, including Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and CENTCOM commander Brad Cooper. Both oppose a negotiated settlement to the war they’ve so grievously mismanaged; both are pushing to restart major combat operations. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and CIA director John Ratcliffe are also following Netanyahu’s lead, as are leaders of the Democratic Party. In a recent meeting on the subject, former president Barack Obama said he opposes the current Iran peace deal being drafted in Doha.
The rest of America’s longtime allies in the Middle East are terrified by the prospect of more war. On September 27th, Netanyahu flew secretly to Abu Dhabi to enlist the UAE in his lobbying effort for a final attack on Iran. The Emiratis refused. After eight months of conflict, Gulf economies are teetering. So are global energy and fertilizer markets. They won’t recover soon. Globally, there are a total of about 850 supertankers used to transport oil from producers to the rest of the world. In October alone, 11 of them were badly damaged in Hormuz. At this pace, a global depression is imminent. A nuclear strike would radically accelerate the destruction. Fallout from a ground explosion at Pickax Mountain would contaminate the Persian Gulf, poisoning the water supply for 100 million people.
And those are just some of the immediate consequences for the region. The rest of the world is every bit as exposed. No country other than the United States has ever used a nuclear weapon in war. Some would like to. An American nuclear attack on Iran would set a new precedent. The Russians have already told at least two other governments that an American nuclear strike on Iran would free them to use nuclear weapons against Ukraine. Pakistan and India would be tempted to do the same against each other, as would North Korea against Seoul. After the first nuclear strike, World War Three is inevitable. That war would be short and final.
We’ve been sleepwalking toward this moment for months. Since February, the administration has quietly rewritten America’s nuclear doctrine to make first use of so-called “battlefield nukes” easier and therefore more likely. No one in Washington in either party seems bothered by this. Now we’re on the brink of it.
Close observers say Trump is likely to decide by next weekend whether or not to use nuclear weapons. That would be November 7, six days from now. To his credit, he’s hesitating. At the moment, Trump is listening to his vice president, JD Vance, and to his envoy and friend Steve Witkoff, both of whom argue a deal with Iran can be made.
They’re right, though it won’t be simple. The Iranians are famously frustrating to negotiate with under any circumstances, and elements of that government have become more radical since Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his family were killed in February. After decades of isolation, even relatively moderate Iranian leaders seem confused by how decisions are made in the West. (There is a widespread belief in Tehran, for example, that the United States government controls Israel.) But overall, people who have spoken to decision-makers in Iran say there is consensus there that more war is bad for everyone and a deal is worth making.
One group that hasn’t been consulted so far is the global population — the hundreds of millions of people who will be killed along with their children if Trump is pushed by Netanyahu into launching a nuclear strike next week. Now would be the time for them to speak up.
Electric pepper grinders are the gayest of gay!!!! Let me save my wrist some effort while adding some pepper in my gay vegan beef tasting burger patty.
GAAAY!