What happened: Dr. First Lady Jill Biden mouth-kissed Doug Emhoff, father of renowned fashion model Ella Emhoff and husband of Vice President Kamala Harris, before the State of the Union address on Tuesday.

What really happened: In an effort to answer this question, the Washington Free Beacon conducted a frame-by-frame analysis. Enjoy!

Conclusion: A bizarre and unsettling incident. Both parties appear to have initiated physical contact and can be seen expressing a range of emotions following the encounter. Something is going on, we’re just not entirely sure what it is.

The Biden family has a long history of marital chaos, so an illicit relationship would not be unprecedented. It wouldn’t even be the family’s most egregious case of infidelity. That title certainly belongs to Hunter Biden, who cheated on his ex-wife with his dead brother’s widow and her sister.

READ MORE…Kamala Harris: I ‘Haven’t Watched’ Video Of Husband Kissing Dr. Jill

The post EXCLUSIVE: Frame-By-Frame Analysis Sheds Light on Dr. Jill’s Open-Mouthed Make-Out Sesh With Kamala’s Husband appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

China has surpassed the United States in its supply of land-based intercontinental ballistic missile launchers, U.S. Strategic Command informed Congress amid rising tensions between Washington and Beijing.

While many of China’s launchers are just empty silos, the nation’s activities are still “a portent of the scale of China’s longer-range ambitions,” according to the Wall Street Journal, which obtained the Jan. 26 letter from Gen. Anthony Cotton to the House and Senate Armed Services Committees.

The warning comes as China shows heightened hostility toward the United States and its allies, reportedly gearing up for an invasion of neighboring Taiwan. Tensions escalated last week when a Chinese spy balloon was spotted near U.S. military and nuclear sites in Montana. President Joe Biden waited to shoot down the airship until it crossed the continental United States, prompting criticism from Republicans who say Biden’s delay displays weakness to our top adversary.

“He really gave an order to shoot down a spy plane from China on Wednesday and it didn’t happen till Saturday?” asked House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R., La.).

In the State of the Union address on Tuesday, Biden framed America and China’s relationship as competitive. “Today, we’re in the strongest position in decades to compete with China or anyone else in the world,” the president said.

Republicans expressed concern that China is gaining on the United States regarding its nuclear arsenal. Rep. Mike Rogers (R., Ala.), the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said that China’s arsenal is “approaching parity” with the United States.

“We cannot allow that to happen. The time for us to adjust our force posture and increase capabilities to meet this threat is now,” Rogers said.

While the Biden administration has increased its budget for nuclear arms, the U.S. military lags behind China in ballistic missile testing.

“The Department of Defense said China launched around 135 ballistic missiles for testing and training purposes during the previous year—a figure greater than all other countries combined, launches in conflict zones being the exception,” according to Business Insider.

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Twitter “made a mistake” by censoring the New York Post’s reporting on Hunter Biden’s laptop before the 2020 election, the company’s former safety chief testified to Congress on Wednesday.

Yoel Roth, the former head of Twitter’s Trust and Safety division, said the Post’s reporting on Biden’s laptop records on Oct. 14, 2020, “at first glance, bore a lot of similarities to the 2016 Russian hack-and-leak operation targeting the DNC.”

“In that moment, with limited information, Twitter made a mistake,” Roth testified to the House Committee on Oversight and Reform on Wednesday. “Under the distribution of hacked material policy the company decided to prevent links to the New York Post stories about the laptop from being shared across the service.”

The comments were the strongest acknowledgment yet by top Twitter officials that the social media site’s decision to block sharing of the bombshell news story was unwarranted under the company’s policies.

While many former U.S. intelligence officials initially claimed the story had hallmarks of “Russian disinformation,” the validity of the laptop was later corroborated by news outlets.

Roth previously said he argued against blocking the New York Post story, telling colleagues there was not enough evidence that the records were hacked and that the decision seemed arbitrary. He told Congress he was overruled by his boss, Twitter vice president of trust and safety Del Harvey.

The House Oversight Committee is investigating Twitter’s treatment of the laptop story and heard testimony from several senior Twitter employees, including Roth, attorney Vijaya Gadde, and former deputy general counsel Jim Baker.

The post Twitter ‘Made a Mistake’ Censoring Hunter Biden Story, Ex-Safety Chief Tells Congress appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

Though he reportedly spent weeks rehearsing, President Joe Biden made a number of clumsy, strange, or outright ridiculous claims during his State of the Union address Tuesday night. Here are the top nine:

1. Cashiers at Burger Joints Need To Sign Non-Competes

 

Biden took credit for banning burger joints like McDonald’s from forcing employees to sign non-compete agreements. “So a cashier at a burger place can’t cross the street to take the same job at another burger place to make a couple bucks more,” he said. Republicans balked.

“They just changed it because we exposed it,” Biden retorted. “That was part of the deal guys, look it up.”

The president is apparently referring to his July 2021 Executive Order, which encouraged the Federal Trade Commission “to ban or limit non-compete agreements.”

Most fast-food chains have never made any such requirement of their workers, though some did prevent them from working at nearby franchise locations. During his 2020 presidential campaign, Biden made frequent use of this talking point, even earning the rebuke of left-leaning fact checkers.

“Get your facts straight, Jack!”

 

2. Paul Pelosi Was Attacked Because of Election Deniers

 

Biden tied the brutal assault of 82-year-old Bay Area resident Paul Pelosi to the rhetoric of election deniers. “Just a few months ago, unhinged by the Big Lie, an assailant unleashed political violence in the home of the then-speaker of this House of Representatives, using the very same language that insurrectionists who stalked these halls chanted on January 6th,” he said.

David DePape, a deranged 42-year-old who reportedly lived inside a school bus, attacked Pelosi with a hammer inside his San Francisco home just days before the 2022 midterms. He has presented conflicting reasons for the attack since his arrest, including government corruption and the reduction of individual liberties. While legacy media tried to paint DePape as a right-wing extremist, his son told the Daily Mail that his father was a “progressive” and “hardly a right-wing conservative.”

 

3. COVID Shut Down Businesses and Closed Schools

 

 Biden in his prepared remarks blamed an airborne virus for having “shut down our businesses” and “closed our schools,” when referring to the COVID-19 pandemic.

In reality, politicians chose to initiate lockdowns and stay-at-home orders to “slow the spread” of the coronavirus beginning in March 2020. While some Republican governors like Ron DeSantis (R., Fla.) reversed course within months, Democratic governors and lawmakers kept lockdown orders and mask mandates in place for years, damaging many small businesses and harming children’s educations.

Biden has still not lifted the federal emergency declaration for COVID-19, which is set to expire on May 11.

 

4. Republicans Want To Get Rid of Social Security

 

“Instead of making the wealthy pay their fair share,” Biden said, “some Republicans want Medicare and Social Security to sunset.”

The president was referring to an ongoing debt ceiling fight with Republican lawmakers, in which the Republican Party has floated various spending cuts to avoid a default. But House speaker Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.) has said that cuts to both Medicare and Social Security are “off the table.” Many Republicans also stood and applauded when Biden pledged to not cut either program.

 

5. Jill Biden, Ed.D., Came Up With an Obama-Era Education Slogan

 

Biden credited his wife, “Dr.” Jill Biden, with having coined the expression: “Any nation that out-educates us will out-compete us.”

She did not come up with it. The expression has been used before by Biden’s former boss, Barack Obama. During his first year in office, the former president remarked, “In a world where countries that out-educate us today will out-compete us tomorrow, the future belongs to the nation that best educates its people.”

Cameras caught Biden’s wife cheating with more than her words at the beginning of the speech last night, when the first lady stole a kiss from second gentleman Doug Emhoff.

 

6. Biden Takes Credit for Changing the Conversation on China

 

“Before I came to office,” Biden noted in his address, “the story was about how the People’s Republic of China was increasing its power and America was failing in the world. Not anymore.”

Former president Donald Trump has often been credited with changing U.S. policy toward China. Under Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, his administration cracked down on Chinese espionage campaigns and moved to ban TikTok.

Biden made no mention that a Chinese spy balloon traversed the United States just days before his State of the Union.

 

7. Biden Talks Up Smoking Trees

 

In apparently off-the-cuff remarks about climate change, Biden said that “more timber has been burned [due to wildfires] that I have observed from helicopters than in the entire state of Missouri.” He also blamed global warming for “floods and droughts.”

Biden: “More timber has been burned that I have observed from helicopters and the entire state of Missouroh.” pic.twitter.com/rtrmUEKIvE

— Greg Price (@greg_price11) February 8, 2023

Leaving aside for the moment whether the president has indeed observed wildfires from a helicopter, Biden may just have been mixing up his words, as he’s been prone to do. His administration last July greenlit more than 200 helicopters to respond to wildfire incidents, according to the White House.

The claims follow a long tradition of liberals using debatable scientific results to push their agenda. Biden’s prepared remarks, for instance, touted his administration’s green energy initiatives as a response to the wildfires.

“We’re building 500,000 electric vehicle charging stations installed across the country,” he said. “And helping families save more than $1,000 a year with tax credits for the purchase of electric vehicles and energy-efficient appliances.”

 

8. America Needs Oil for ‘At Least Another Decade’

 

As part of a reelection campaign preview, Biden floated the idea that America might “need oil for at least another decade.”

 

Biden: “When I talked to a couple of [oil companies], they say, ‘we are afraid you are going to shut down all the oil refineries anyway, so why should we invest in them?’ I said, we are going to need oil for at least another decade.”

All the Republicans start laughing pic.twitter.com/AYLBI5g7pw

— Washington Free Beacon (@FreeBeacon) February 8, 2023

The apparent olive branch to the oil and gas industry is far from reassuring, given the vast economic and social repercussions of abandoning fossil fuels in just 10 years’ time. The shift would threaten jobs, food supply chains, and the entire global economy. Most progressives are pushing for the United States to have net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 at the earliest.

Early in the pandemic, lefties loved to suggest that a government-forced reduction in travel by fossil fuels could transition to a permanent change. If they stay in power, that idea could go up like a Chinese spy balloon over the continental United States.

 

9. Nobody Wants to Be Xi

 

In another unscripted remark, Biden said, “Autocracies have grown weaker, not stronger. Name me a world leader who changed places with Xi Jinping. NAME ME ONE! NAME ME ONE!”

Biden: “Autocracies have grown weaker, not stronger. Name me a world leader who changed places with Xi Jinping. NAME ME ONE! NAME ME ONE!” pic.twitter.com/MxYUpWGZVY

— Washington Free Beacon (@FreeBeacon) February 8, 2023

The attempt to ape his predecessor’s tough talk on malign foreign powers left more than a few pundits scratching their heads. The reference apparently reaffirmed Biden’s commitment to protecting the fate of democracy amid the rise of authoritarian powers—namely, China, which last week flew unimpeded over the nation to gather intelligence on U.S. military bases.

In fact, tyrants from Kim Jong-un to Vladimir Putin and Kamala Harris would probably kill to have Xi’s absolute power and cult of personality.

At least one person seemed to get what Biden was saying: Lincoln Project alum Tom Nichols, who said Biden’s geopolitical ad lib “was great” for “wonks” like himself.

“I guess I just got it on an intuitive level: ‘Who’d want to be riding that tiger.’ We spend so much time embiggening China when in fact their leaders have to sweat out every damn day and pray for enough growth to keep them in power.”

Whatever that means.

The post 9 Most Ridiculous Claims Biden Made During State of the Union Address appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

Support for Ukraine is a good position that conceals an absence of strategic direction and engagement with the rest of Europe

Foreign policy/UK support for Ukraine is a noble stance that masks a strategic voidIn an audit of Boris Johnson’s time as prime minister, one good decision to be recorded for posterity – perhaps the only one – was unflinching support for Ukraine when it was invaded by Russia.

The importance of that alliance, and Ukrainian gratitude for it, were powerfully expressed in an address to parliament on Wednesday by President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, on what is only his second foray abroad since the war began.

Continue reading…

The president can take pride in real achievements. Can he convince Americans to give him credit?

Few politicians manage, in Winston Churchill’s phrase, to make the weather. Joe Biden was particularly poorly placed to do so when he took office, inheriting a pandemic that was raging unchecked, a struggling economy and a crisis of democracy itself. War in Ukraine and a cost of living crisis soon followed; relations with Beijing continue to deteriorate, as last week’s row over the Chinese balloon demonstrated.

The president’s achievements, laid out in Tuesday’s State of the Union address, are striking, despite disappointments along the way. He passed an enormous stimulus package within weeks of taking office; showed real leadership with his climate change deal; and pushed through bipartisan legislation on infrastructure. Unemployment is at a five-decade low. But while he may be reshaping the economic paradigm, he has not yet shifted the mood. Beaten down by rising prices, more than six in 10 Americans think he has achieved “not very much” or “little or nothing”. It may be, as the administration hopes, that measures such as capping insulin prices make themselves more fully felt in months to come. But hours before Mr Biden spoke, the boss of the Federal Reserve indicated it may have to keep raising interest rates to tackle inflation.

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דער אַרבעטער רינג האָט געמאָלדן אַז מע קען זיך שוין פֿאַרשרײַבן אויפֿן פֿרילינג־זמן, וואָס נעמט אַרײַן אַ צאָל  קורסן פֿאַר ווײַטהאַלטער. אַלע קלאַסן קומען פֿאָר איין מאָל אַ וואָך און ווערן געפֿירט אויף ייִדיש.

דער לינגוויסט יצחק ניבאָרסקי וועט לערנען אַ קורס פֿון ייִדישער גראַמאַטיק, מיטן טראָפּ אויפֿן ייִדישן זאַץ. צווישן די פֿראַגעס וואָס מע וועט באַטאָנען: צי שפּילן אַלע פּראָנאָמען אין אַ זאַץ די זעלבע ראָלע? וואָס איז דער ריכטיקער באַניץ פֿון די פּאַרטיקלען „עס“ און „דאָס“?

דער ייִדיש־פּראָפֿעסאָר אין ניו־יאָרקער אוניווערסיטעט, גענאַדי עסטרײַך, וועט אויסטיילן זכרונות פֿון ייִדישע שרײַבער אין שײַכות מיט דער צעטיילונג פֿון פּוילן אין 1939, אַרײַנגערעכנט די שרײַבער דוד ספֿרד, שיינע־מרים בראָדערזאָן און מרדכי צאַנין.

דער ייִדיש־פּראָפֿעסאָר עמעריטוס בײַ מאַקגיל אוניווערסיטעט, יודזשין אָרנשטיין, וועט אַנאַליזירן די לידער פֿון א. לייעלעס — איינער פֿון די גרינדער פֿון דער אינזיכיסטישער באַוועגונג, און אַ מײַסטער פֿון עקספּערימענטאַלער, אינטראָספּעקטיווער פּאָעזיע.

מײַקל וועקס וועט לערנען אַ קורס וועגן ייִדישן הומאָר און סאַטירע, אויפֿן סמך פֿון די ווערק פֿון אליהו בחור, מענדעלע, שלום עליכם, דער טונקעלער, משה נאַדיר, דזשיגאַן און שומאַכער און אַנדערע.

שבֿע צוקער וועט לערנען וועגן די ליטעראַרישע ווערק פֿון ייִדישע שרײַבערינס, אַרײַנגערעכנט קאַדיע מאָלאָדאָווסקי, אַננאַ מאַרגאָלין, רחל קאָרן, בלומע לעמפּל און הינדע בערגנער.

קאָליע באָראָדולין, דער דירעקטאָר פֿון דער ייִדיש־פּראָגראַם בײַם אַרבעטער־רינג, וועט אַנאַליזירן י. י. זינגערס ראָמאַן „יאָשע קאַלב“ דורך שײַכותדיקע היסטאָרישע געשעענישן, אַרכיוואַלע דאָקומענטן, פּאָעזיע און לידער פֿאַרבונדן מיט די טעמעס באַטאָנט אינעם בוך.

דער קולטור־טוער דניאל גלאי וועט אָנפֿירן מיט אַ וואַרשטאַט פֿון שעפֿעריש שרײַבן, וווּ ער וועט מוטיקן און העלפֿן די סטודענטן אָנשרײַבן זייער אייגענע פּראָזע, לידער, פּיעסעס און זכרונות אויף ייִדיש.

אַבֿרהם ליכטענבוים וועט לערנען אַ קורס וועגן י. ל. פּרצעס עקספּערימענטן בײַם שרײַבן פֿאַרן ייִדישן טעאַטער, ווײַל דער טעאַטער — האָט פּרץ אַ מאָל געזאָגט — איז אייגנטלעך אַ שול פֿאַר דערוואַקסענע.

כּדי זיך צו פֿאַרשרײַבן אויף איינעם אָדער מער פֿון די קורסן, גיט אַ קוועטש דאָ.

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Brazil’s environmental and indigenous agencies have launched an enforcement operation in the Amazon rainforest to expel thousands of illegal gold miners blamed for causing a humanitarian crisis among the Yanomami people, officials said on Wednesday.

Armed agents of the government’s environmental protection agency Ibama, deployed by helicopter and motor boat since Monday, have arrested and removed dozens of miners in Brazil’s largest indigenous reservation on the northern border with Venezuela.

They set fire to wooden shacks and a hangar housing a plane at a clandestine airstrip used by miners to fly in supplies, according to images supplied by Ibama.

By Tuesday, the agency said it had destroyed a helicopter, a plane and a bulldozer, and seized weapons, 12-meter (40-ft) boats and drums with 5,000 liters (1,320 gallons) of fuel, besides generators, internet antennas, freezers and a tonne of food,

The operation was backed by the government’s indigenous affairs agency Funai and supported by military personnel who manned blockades on the rivers to cut off the flow of supplies to the miners, Ibama said in a statement.

“Not a moment too soon. Get the miners out – and keep them out!” said Survival International. The indigenous rights NGO said the miners devastated the territory and caused a catastrophic health crisis that has killed hundreds of Yanomami, especially children, from preventable diseases and malnutrition,

More than 20,000 miners invaded the reservation, bringing disease, sexual abuse and armed violence that has terrified the Yanomamis, estimated to be about 28,000 in number, and led to severe malnutrition and deaths.

President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s government declared a medical emergency for the Yanomamis and said it would have zero tolerance for mining on indigenous reservation land protected by Brazil’s Constitution.

The Yanomami have long lived in isolation on a vast reservation the size of Portugal on the border with Venezuela. Their mineral-rich lands have attracted wildcat miners for decades, especially after a military government built a road through the Amazon rainforest in the 1970s.

Lula’s right-wing predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro, advocated mining on protected indigenous lands, and his government turned a blind eye to a renewed surge in invasions of reservations by wildcat miners and illegal loggers.

“The advance of mining, encouraged by the last government, resulted in a humanitarian crisis in the indigenous land,” the Ibama statement said. “The federal police are investigating the crime of genocide against the Yanomami,” it added.

The agency said distributors and resellers responsible for the irregular trade in aviation fuel for planes supplying the miners would be investigated.

Some of the miners that are beginning to leave the Yanomami reservation are expected to move to other illegal mining areas in the Amazon or head across the border into neighboring French Guiana, Suriname and Guyana.

A miner who had walked for 20 days through the forest to get to the Uraricoera river said the Yanomami were dying of hunger and were desperate for food parcels dropped from Air Force planes.

“The day the parcels arrived, they were gone,” a ragged Joao Batista Costa, 65, told Reuters, holding up a food parcel, as he left the reservation after two days going down river by canoe.

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It came as a surprise to many when, on Feb. 3, Australian regulators announced that medicines containing the psychedelic substances MDMA and psilocybin can soon be used there to treat post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and treatment-resistant depression, respectively. That decision makes Australia the first country in the world to formally recognize the therapeutic use of psychedelics.

Other countries, including the U.S., may be headed toward a similar outcome, some experts say.

Research increasingly suggests that psychedelics can be powerful tools for treating a variety of mental-health conditions, from PTSD and depression to addiction and eating disorders. “I’ve been doing this for 11 years,” says Albert Perez Garcia-Romeu, an assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine who studies psychedelics. “The overwhelming majority of people that I’ve worked with in this process have been helped by their experiences, and the data are remarkably consistent.”

[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

In November 2022, the U.S. nonprofit Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) announced that it had completed a second phase-three trial on MDMA as a treatment for PTSD—a step widely seen as the last hurdle to clear before applying for approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). While the data from that study have yet to be published in a peer-reviewed journal, MAPS says its findings echo the positive results from its first phase-three MDMA trial, published in the journal Nature Medicine in 2021, which found that PTSD patients who took MDMA while also undergoing therapy reported significant improvements in their symptoms 18 weeks after their first dose, compared to those who received a placebo. Rick Doblin, MAPS’ founder and executive director, says his group is preparing to apply for FDA approval based on those data. If all goes well, he says, the drug could be approved as soon as 2024.

Research on psilocybin, the psychoactive component in “magic” mushrooms, may take a little longer to progress to that stage, Garcia-Romeu says, but he expects psilocybin to be considered for FDA approval within the next few years. In Nov. 2022, results from a phase-two psilocybin trial were published in the New England Journal of Medicine. They found that a single 25-milligram dose of psilocybin eased symptoms among people with treatment-resistant depression over a period of three weeks, though it did come with side effects including headaches, nausea, and dizziness.

Australia’s approval of these drugs, Doblin says, may only expedite the approval process in the U.S. “It’s going to help regulators in the U.S. and elsewhere feel more comfortable,” he says. “Regulators don’t like to be the first or the only ones.”

A representative for the FDA did not respond to TIME’s request for comment before press time. But in a May 2022 letter first published by the Intercept, a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services official wrote that FDA approval of MDMA and psilocybin was “anticipated” within “approximately 24 months.”

Read More: Inside Ibogaine, One of the Most Promising and Perilous Psychedelics for Addiction

The FDA has also previously granted “breakthrough therapy” status to MDMA and psilocybin. That designation recognizes a drug’s therapeutic potential and is meant to streamline the road from research to approval. The agency has also allowed a limited number of people to use MDMA under what’s known as “expanded access,” a program meant to help seriously ill patients who have not responded to other treatments try drugs that are still being studied.

Regulators in other countries have made similar decisions. Switzerland, Canada, and Israel allow clinicians to use certain psychedelics under specific circumstances for patients with severe conditions. Jamaica and Costa Rica, among other countries, also already operate legal psilocybin clinics.

Some U.S. states have embraced the use of psychedelics, too. Psilocybin use became legal in Oregon on Jan. 1 when used by adults under the supervision of a licensed facilitator, and Colorado residents recently voted to do the same. Legislation to legalize psilocybin has also been introduced in states including Connecticut, New Jersey, and California.

Australia, however, will be the first country in the world to make psychedelics available for medicinal use at a national level, starting July 1. But access to the drugs won’t be as straightforward as it is for other prescription medications. Despite their decision to make MDMA and psilocybin available to patients, Australian regulators have not approved any medications that contain these substances. To prescribe drugs that are technically still unapproved, psychiatrists must apply to become authorized prescribers—a process that involves securing approval from both Australia’s Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) and a human research ethics committee, and obtaining a permit to import the drugs from Australia’s Office of Drug Control.

That’s a “deviation” from standard process, says Dr. Michael Bogenschutz, director of the NYU Langone Center for Psychedelic Medicine. “Allowing [a drug] to be used as though it already had been approved is what I would be concerned about.”

While Bogenshutz is excited by the advances in psychedelics research, and says it’s “looking more and more like these drugs may find their place in medicine,” he’s concerned about enthusiasm outpacing science. “We hope [psychedelics] will represent a major breakthrough, but we really can’t say that is true until we’ve accumulated and analyzed the evidence that is needed to make that determination,” he says.

Australia’s TGA acknowledged in its Feb. 3 announcement that “there is only limited evidence that the substances are of benefit in treating mental illnesses,” but maintained that “there is a need for access to new therapies for treatment-resistant conditions.”

Doblin says his concern with Australia’s plan is whether authorized psychiatrists will receive adequate training. “The drug is not the treatment,” he says. “The drug makes the therapy more effective, but it’s about the therapy.” MAPS’ leadership has recommended to U.S. regulators that therapists complete a 100-hour training program before they can use MDMA to treat patients.

That caution is primarily to ensure that patients are getting the best care, but also to help the drugs’ rollout goes as smoothly as possible.

“Things that happen in one country are really broadcast around the world,” Doblin says. That means whatever happens in Australia, for better or for worse, could have ripple effects for countries all around the globe.