Free Republic

ANKARA, March 6 (Reuters) - Turkey, with the second largest army in NATO after the United States, could contribute to a potential peacekeeping mission in Ukraine, a Turkish defence ministry source said on Wednesday. "The issue of contributing to a mission will be considered if deemed necessary for establishing regional stability and peace, and will be assessed mutually with all relevant parties," the source told reporters in Ankara.

Australia’s Anthony Albanese claimed a historic second term as prime minister on Saturday in a dramatic comeback against once-resurgent conservatives that was powered by voters' concerns about the influence of U.S. President Donald Trump. Peter Dutton, leader of the conservative Liberal party, conceded defeat and the loss of his own seat - echoing the fate of Canada's conservatives and their leader whose election losses days earlier were also attributed to a Trump backlash. [snip] Albanese would be the first Australian prime minister to win a consecutive term in two decades. He said Australians had voted for fairness and "the strength...

MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) – Early vote counting in Australia’s general election Saturday suggested the government was likely to be returned for a second term. The Australian Electoral Commission’s early projections gave the ruling center-left Labor Party 70 seats and the conservative opposition coalition 24 seats in the 150-seat House of Representatives, the lower chamber where parties need a majority to form governments. Unaligned minor parties and independent candidates appeared likely to win 13 seats. Senior government minister Jim Chalmers said the early results pointed to volatility and different contests across the nation. Opposition Sen. James McGrath expected the result would...

This is a big week for anglosphere elections: Canada today, Australia on Saturday, and, in between, England's local elections (except for the ones Sir Keir has cancelled) on Thursday. Don't worry, you sensitive types, in none of the three is there the remotest danger of a Trump or an Orbán, a Le Pen or Meloni ascending to power. Incredible as it seems, the Aussie campaign has been even more dispiriting than the Canadian one, with the so-called "right-of-centre" leader, Peter Tweedledutton, alternating between huffing indignantly at the very suggestion that he as any policy disagreements with the leftie incumbent and...

~In a shrewd assessment of the current campaign Down Under, Paul Collits cites a certain "niche Canadian"": Mark Steyn says that we cannot vote our way out of the Western mess. The 2025 Australian election is living proof of the truth of his claim. Whoever wins here will inherit an unholy mess, and will not have the will to address it. Of course, he could be talking about next week's Canadian election or last month's German election. As we have noted, Fred Merz, the incoming chancellor in Berlin, has yet to take office but what Americans call the honeymoon is...

Thousands gathered across Australia and New Zealand on Friday for Anzac Day, a public holiday commemorating military service members who fought and died during wartime. Anzac Day originally marked the nations' role in an ultimately unsuccessful campaign to capture the Gallipoli Peninsula in Turkey during World War One, which resulted in 130,000 deaths on both sides of the conflict. In a key episode on April 25, 1915, thousands of troops from the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) took part in an ill-fated amphibious invasion by British Empire forces on the area's narrow beaches. "It is now a century...

President Donald Trump's love of gold has extended from the inside of Trump Tower to the decor of the White House... to a new island in the Pacific? The president has been offered the island of Bougainville — complete with its large gold mine — as the 'deal of the century'. Currently part of Papua New Guinea, Bougainville voted overwhelmingly for independence in a 2019 referendum — but the result wasn't legally binding. However, Bougainville's president, former rebel commander Ishmael Toroama, remains undeterred. 'Bougainville is for independence. It is only a matter of time,' he told The World in October,...

Bad news for environmentally conscious pet owners: cats’ and dogs’ eating habits are responsible for dumping as many as 64 million tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere every year — roughly the equivalent of driving over 13 million cars. That’s due to all the meat our furry friends gobble down, according to new research. There are more than 163 million dogs and cats in the US, and they just love to eat. In fact, cats and dogs in the US consume about 19 percent as many calories as people do in the US, or about as much as 62...

Australia’s cattle industry is experiencing a significant boost in exports to China as US beef shipments have ground to a halt amid escalating trade tensions between the world’s two largest economies. The US’ $2.5 billion beef trade to China has effectively ceased after about 300 abattoirs failed to have their export licenses renewed, creating an unexpected opportunity for Australian producers. Statistics from Meat and Livestock Australia show Australian grain-fed beef exports to China have surged nearly 40% in February and March compared to the same period last year, with 21,886 tonnes shipped during those months. “Australia is now the lone...

Australia's largest mosque could begin broadcasting the Muslim call to prayer from loudspeakers every week under a proposal lodged with a Sydney council. Lakemba Mosque, also known as the Masjid Ali Bin Abi Talib, has proposed to affix four loudspeakers to its minaret in a new bid to the Canterbury-Bankstown Council in Sydney's west. According to planning documents, nearly two thirds of the Lakemba population identified as Islamic in 2021 while nearly one quarter spoke Arabic at home. The proposed development would be permissible under zoning restrictions with council's consent, according to the application. The mosque is owned and operated...

Australia rejected China’s offer to work together to combat President Donald Trump’s tariffs. "We’re not about to make common cause with China," Australian Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles told Sky News on Wednesday. "We are not going to be holding hands with China in respect of any contest that is going on in the world." Trump issued a 90-day pause on tariffs for nations across the globe — except China. Australia is among the countries that, for the next 90 days, will face only the baseline 10% tariff. Australia’s trade relationship with China puts the country in the middle of...

Large-scale solar farms, wind turbines, and associated infrastructure are touted as solutions to the climate crisis, but their development comes at the cost of native forests and critical habitats.” “Until conservation charities disentangle themselves from government funding and corporate influence, they risk becoming complicit in the very destruction they were created to prevent.” ... One of the great ironies of our age is the double standard of Big Environmentalism toward wind and solar, which commit numerous eco-sins that would not be tolerated otherwise. Dilute, intermittent, and thus inefficient? Yes. Energy sprawl requiring service roads and transmission lines in the wild?...

Australia has rejected China’s plea to “join hands” against U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs, declaring Thursday it is happy to keep negotiating with its long-term ally rather than join Beijing’s chorus of aggrieved opposition to Washington. The White House recently imposed an import tax of 10 percent on Australian goods, but for China – Australia’s biggest trading partner – it raised tariffs to 125 percent. China’s ambassador to Australia Xiao Qian argued joint resistance is “the only way” to stop the “hegemonic and bullying behaviour of the U.S.”, appealing for Canberra’s cooperation in an opinion piece on Thursday, the BBC...

A natural cyclone devastated the reef in 2009. Climate activists blamed CO2. Now that the reef has recovered, they’ve moved the goalposts. The coral cover on the Great Barrier Reef is as expansive now as it has ever been recorded, with coverage nearing 40%. In fact, the coral cover has nearly tripled in the past dozen years. Despite this record expanse of coral off the coast of Australia, the climate community and mainstream media outlets unrelentingly push the narrative that the Great Barrier Reef is dying. For example, CBS News ran one of its periodic pieces on the reef a...

Virginia Giuffre, the most prominent victim of Jeffrey Epstein who accused some of the world’s most powerful men of sex trafficking, says she had just days left to live after being hit by a bus. The mother-of-three, 41, who was sex trafficked by Epstein as a teenager, shared a battered picture of herself from a hospital bed covered in bruises. She said she was suffering from kidney failure after a bus crashed into her vehicle. -snip- “I’ve gone into kidney renal failure, they’ve given me four days to live, transferring me to a specialist hospital in urology. I’m ready to...

There has been considerable debate about Trump’s plan to incorporate Greenland into the American “empire,” something which I think has great strategic and security advantages. There has even been trolling, perhaps half serious, of Canada being absorbed as the 51st state of the U.S. But so far nothing has been said about Australia, which is of even greater strategic defense interest to the United States than Greenland. Many Americans may think that there is no problem here as we have the AUKUS treaty for defense. However, in this brief note I would like to ignite a debate about Australia/U.S. relations,...

If you've been driving around any major city in Australia lately, chances are you've probably already spotted a new BYD Shark 6 plug-in hybrid electric ute on the road. In the past week, I've personally counted at least 15 on the road in the Sydney area, and they certainly stand out. The first BYD Shark 6 – an all-new model never previously sold in Australia – arrived in local showrooms in mid-January 2025 and already has given the long-standing best-selling utes, the Ford Ranger and Toyota HiLux, a run for their money. According to February VFACTS data, 2026 examples of...

If you find yourself wondering, wait, what, why are we funding Australian universities? You are likely not alone.Apparently, the U.S. government has been sending $6oo million/yr to universities in Australia to subsidize various college research programs. The Trump administration has told Australia the funding will likely end.The Australian university system is in a state of panic, telling their government to declare a “state of emergency”.One particular quote from within the Sky News article below seemingly encapsulates the mindset of the situation in the land down under:AUSTRALIA […] Last week after it was revealed the universities had been asked to justify...

Australian universities are crying foul after the Trump administration asks questions that put $386 million in research grants in jeopardy. The bone of contention was a questionnaire sent to Australian grant recipients asking if the institution had "ties to communist or socialist parties, receive funding from China and it only recognises male and female sexes." The grants were frozen in January, shortly after President Trump was inaugurated, but were unfrozen at some time thereafter. This new round of questions is the second time the universities were queried, but this time, it has their attention. Seven days after the Trump administration...

Australian politician Chris Minns inadvertently said the quiet part out loud when he admitted that the existence of true “free speech” is incompatible with a multicultural society.The Premier of New South Wales tacitly admitted that in order to uphold the myth that ‘diversity is our greatest strength’, the freedom to say it isn’t must be censored.“I recognize and I fully said from the beginning, we don’t have the same freedom of speech laws that they have in the United States, and the reason for that is that we want to hold together a multicultural community and have people live in...