At last year’s Conservative party conference, prime minister Rishi Sunak declared the UK government planned to increase, year by year, the legal age of smoking to achieve a “smoke-free generation”.

The announcement gave the impression the prime minister was taking on Big Tobacco. 

However, the UK has consistently failed to rein in the activities of Britain’s biggest tobacco company, British American Tobacco (BAT), which predominantly operates overseas.

BAT is a blue-chip company, one of the few genuinely transnational British businesses. Operating in some 180 countries, BAT says it is “one of the world’s most international businesses”. 

BRUSSELS — European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen's top team is piling the pressure on her to explain the selection of an EU business envoy from the German political group of which she's a member.

MEP Markus Pieper's recent appointment as the bloc's "Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises Envoy" has sparked unrest among von der Leyen's most senior colleagues in the European Commission, who are now demanding answers about how Pieper — a German Christian Democrat — was appointed. 

I congratulate Samantha Mostyn on her appointment as Governor-General. Such an appointment is a great honour.

Ms Mostyn has given much service to public life as she has to both community and business life. This service marked her out as a distinguished communitarian with a complex range of interests. And with those interests, experience.

Accordingly, that experience and those interests additionally qualify her beyond her innate ability, values and sense of the world for such an exalted position.

I am certain Samantha Mostyn will bring much credit to the office of Governor-General.

PJ Keating
3 April 2024

https://johnmenadue.com/appointment-of-samantha-mostyn-as-governor-general/

Membership of NATO is no guarantee of democracy

It was early September in 1971. My mother had taken me in a taxi to a boutique hotel in a leafy northern Athenian suburb to visit my favourite uncle, her beloved brother. Before we got out the car, she put her arm around me and whispered words of courage in my ear. You see, Hotel Pefkakia had been commandeered by the ESA, the Greek military regime’s version of the Gestapo, which had turned it into a holding cell for VIP dissidents. What I saw inside, including my uncle’s tortured face, ensured that, from the age of 10, I understood what it meant to live in a brutish dictatorship.

WE IN THE WEST SEE DEMOCRACY AS A BATTLE BETWEEN TWO SIDES. IT SHOULD NOT BE THIS WAY. IT ALWAYS ENDS UP IN THE DITCH OF COMPROMISES WHEN ONE SIDE HAS THE UPPER HAND BY A FACTOR OF ONE MORE VOTE THAN THE OTHER. BUT MORE OFTEN THAN NOT, DEMOCRACY ENDS UP FASCIST.

FOR EXAMPLE:

Ukrainians target Australian politician over Moscow trip
A neo-Nazi-linked activist wants the town councilor fired for observing Russia’s presidential election

The Australian Federation of Ukrainian Organisations has demanded that a small-town councilor be fired for traveling to Russia to observe the country’s recent presidential election and congratulating Vladimir Putin on his “transparent and comprehensive”victory. 

MORE TO COME.

NATO marks 75 years

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization was created on April 4, 1949, as the Cold War began. Sweden became the defense alliance's 32nd member on March 7, 2024, and Ukraine hopes to join amid the ongoing war with Russia.

NATO perpetuates an imaginary Russian threat because having an external adversary is vital for the military bloc’s survival, a top diplomat has told RT.

In an exclusive interview, Russian deputy foreign minister and former permanent representative to NATO, Aleksandr Grushko, commented on the billions of dollars allocated by the US and EU to help Ukraine in its fight against Russia.

“The IDF has an affirmative responsibility to know what it is dropping bombs on,” said former Biden official Jeremy Konyndyk. “Kirby confirms they ignored that.”

JULIA CONLEY

Apr 03, 2024

A former official of the Biden and Obama administrations was among those expressing shock late Tuesday at the Biden administration’s comments on Israel’s conduct in its continued bombardment of Gaza, in which a U.S.-Canadian citizen is now among the tens of thousands of victims.

STUTTGART, Germany — Secretary of State Antony Blinken and other leaders this week will review a proposal to make NATO the planning hub for arming Ukraine as the alliance looks for ways to shake up an effort that’s been spearheaded by the United States at Ramstein Air Base for the past two years.

NATO mulls $100 billion allied fund for arming Ukraine, takeover of US-led planning

By JOHN VANDIVER

Rami Abou Jamous writes his diary for Orient XXI. This founder of GazaPress, an office which provided assistance and translation to Western journalists, had to leave his apartment in Gaza City with his wife and his two-and-a-half-year-old son Walid. He now shares a two-bedroom apartment with another family. He recounts his daily life and that of the Gazans of Rafah, stuck in this poverty-stricken and overpopulated enclave. This space is dedicated to him.

Rami Abou Jamous

Sunday March 31, 2024.

The purchase of nuclear submarines via AUKUS is turning into an open–ended nightmare in terms of cost that will deliver nothing positive for Australia’s security. Meanwhile, the need for action both on disarmament and on nuclear risk reduction has never been more pressing. Even at the height of the Cold War, the metaphorical hands of the Doomsday Clock have never been at 90 seconds to ‘midnight’, writes John Hallam in an open letter to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.

Dear Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, Foreign Minister Penny Wong, and Defence Minister Richard Marles:

AMERICA HAS BEEN THE MOST SUCCESSFUL COUNTRY BECAUSE IT IS THAT WHICH HAS PRACTICED DECEIT THE BEST — OFTEN USING STOOGES LIKE VOLODYMYR ZELENSKYY... FOR THOSE BORN IN THE LAST SHOWER, HERE IS A REMINDER ON HOW THE EMPIRE OPERATES... WHAT IS HAPPENING IN UKRAINE IS MASSIVE DECEIT FROM THE AMERICAN EMPIRE, TO SERVE ITS PURPOSE: CONQUER THE WORLD... ALWAYS WITH THE HELP, ONCE MORE, OF A SYCOPHANT MEDIA EAGER TO PROPAGATE THE PROPAGANDA LIKE WEEDS....

Over and above industrial-scale mass murder of individual people—Israel is engaged in the eradication of Gazans as a People ~ilana

Inarguably, to condemn Israel’s industrial-scale campaign of slaughter and starvation in Gaza ought to be ethically straightforward. Basic really.

That Israel is committing the “the crime of all crimes” against the Palestinians of Gaza is not within the realm of opinion.

That the Global North is standing stock-still in the face of this meticulously documented holocaust is not in dispute.

"Until a certain day, Germany was the largest and most powerful military force in the world War. For an instant the colossus touched the ground; but the mortal wound did not come from outside, it came from within. (Arbeiter Zeitung of Vienna March 26, 1919).” Austrian postcard against democracy that some consider Jewish.

THEN WW2 AND THE HOLOCAUST BECAME SOMEWHAT INEVITABLE...

THE CARTOON ABOVE TELLS OF THE END OF WWI... SINCE LUTHER, THE JEWS HAD BEEN VILIFIED IN GERMANY. 

AS ISRAEL BOMBED THE IRANIAN CONSULATE IN DAMASCUS, WE CAN SEE MORE ANTI-SEMITISM ON THE HORIZON... IT'S A BIT AS IF THE JEWS WERE "ASKING FOR IT".

West helping Ukraine attack deep inside Russia – CNN
Kiev’s foreign backers are coordinating the flight paths of kamikaze drones, a report says

Western countries are helping Ukraine to fly kamikaze drones deep inside Russian territory, CNN reported on Tuesday, citing a Ukrainian source close to Kiev’s drone program. 

An unnamed official who spoke to CNN described how Kiev uses UAVs with longer ranges and “more advanced capabilities” to strike targets located more than 1,000 km (621 miles) from the border. 

“The flights are determined in advance with our allies, and the aircraft follow the flight plan to enable us to strike targets with meters of precision,” the source said.