Angus Taylor tries to claw back from voters from Pauline with his Australian values policy. Immigration already has a values test. The din of political distraction gets louder as pressure mounts to slap a 25% tax on gas exporters. Elsewhere, in Scam of the Week the Pauline shootings, fossil chipmunks infest social media, another false flag exposed and Chris Minns' dictatorial protest laws whacked in court.
#auspol #scamoftheweek #iran #oil #climate
Click on Michael West 'Penny Wong 'deeply concerned' again. PVO rails against 'the elites'. Who are these mysterious elites? Plus hate speech fury erupts as terrorists wreck the Australian icon The Big Banana. Pauline goes ape over Ben Roberts-Smith and much more' #auspol
Click on Owen Jones 'The United States has suffered its biggest strategic defeat since it emerged as a superpower. This is a worse defeat than Vietnam, Iraq, or Afghanistan. It comes after Donald Trump threatened genocide against Iran, which must never and will never be forgotten. It underlines that his continued presence in the White House is a threat to humanity and he must be removed. But that threat itself is part of a broader story which is the disintegration of American hegemony which has three pillars economic, military and moral.
Now you can tell
the Trump administration is rattled. The White House director of communications
has sent me a let's say sketchy message.
Seriously, it's
absolutely wild. We will come on to it. The dangers are not over but US power
has suffered a crushing blow. It's a defeat for Israel, too, whose elite are
currently overwhelmed with fury and humiliation. We'll certainly talk about
that. A quick reminder, this illegal and unprovoked war on Iran was launched in
order to overthrow the regime and crush its military capabilities. has done
none of those things.
And instead has
handed Iran de facto control over the straight of hummus, one of the main
arteries of the global economy where a fifth of oil passes as well as other
essential resources like liquefied natural gas, liqufied petroleum gas,
petrochemicals, metals and industrial materials. Huge damage, huge economic
damage has been inflicted on the West, including the United States that has yet
to be properly felt, but it will be. The West Gulf allies and Israel have also
suffered huge economic damage and the reputations the Gulf States built as
stable oasis of autocratic calm have been totally shattered and that is their business
model.
The US has depleted a significant amount of its military arsenal which was already depleted. Hence the opposition of the US chair of the joint chiefs of staffs the head of the US army to the war being launched in the first place. So let's just go through this shall we? Last night as the deadline set by Donald Trump before he destroyed Iranian civilization that is committed genocide against Iran as that deadline expired the president posted on Truth Social declaring that based on the request of the Pakistani government to hold off from acting on his threat he agreed to suspend bombing for two weeks subject to Iran agreeing to the complete immediate and safe opening of the Strait of Hormuz . He declared a double-sided ceasefire claiming to have exceeded military objectives. He also said, "We received a 10-point proposal from Iran and believe it is a workable…..’
Click on Anneke Demanuele, Omar Sherrife & Jordan van den Lamb 'The crew went to Marxism 2026, alongside MANY others. We broke the mould of smart and serious talks to present a bullshit heavy episode of the party line. Join us for a game of “defamation or definitely”, where we guess if Anneke has made up stories or if rich men are actually just psychos. Then we do some myth busting (exactly like the TV show) where we take up some commonly held positions on socialism and capitalism
Hosted by Jordan van den Lamb (@purplepingers), Anneke Demanuele and Omar Hassan. Huge thanks to our tireless editors Charlie Wardrop and Persephone Waxman, and our content editor Charlotte Tavan.'
Click on Watch Mehdi Hasan Watch Mehdi Hasan and special guests Trita Parsi, Harrison Mann, and Swin Suebsaeng react to Donald Trump's Iran deadline, backtrack, and ceasefire deal.
Click on Krystal Ball'Basically, they are in this trust Trump cult mindset. So, they
will follow him more or less. But we're talking about like 30% of the country.
So yeah, the rest of the country is already horrified and disgusted with not
only the foreign policy but really I think the economic policy has been the
more dire implication here. And with this war of illegal horrific war of
choice, people also have this sense of like okay once again you've got plenty
of money. You're asking for $200 billion dollar to bomb school girls in Iran
and you're right now what they're proposing is cutting healthcare again to pay
for that. So rather than focusing on all these concerns we've got at home and
our inability to pay the bills and affordability crisis and now we see gas
prices going up and we know the grocery store prices are to follow. Instead of
focusing on any of that you are actively making things worse with this war. So
look at this point to you know to your point Owen there are no good options.
The good option was to not start this war. The good option was
to take the quite generous deal that was on the table from the Iranians. And so
now here's his basically his menu of options. He can walk away and accept a
surrender. Only his base in the entire world, only his base will buy some sort
of a victory narrative, but he can try to sell that. It will likely spell the
end of the US Empire. It will be catastrophic. It will be catastrophic for the
already the damage that's done economically will be devastating for a lot of
the world, especially the Global South. The long term the end of the US Empire
I think will be good for the World but in the meantime there will be you know
devastating uh implications and obviously for America Firsters it will be a big
problem. So that's one option which is really bad. The other option is as you
say to escalate have some sort of take some island or go in and try to seize
this loose nuclear material which is likely to involve massive US service members
death. it is not likely to create the victory narrative that you want,
especially if you're seizing one of these strategic islands, whether it's Kharg
Island or another one. That means you are embedded then in indefinitely in the
region. So all of these are completely disastrous options, which is why, you
know, in the past, like you said, there's always been, oh, how's Donnie going
to get out of this one?........'
Click on Zeteo“Every war Israel has fought is a war of defense. Every war, they were attacked first,” that’s what Bill Maher claimed on his HBO show ‘Real Time.’
Maher urged Democrats to spread this message to younger voters who, according to him, don’t know anything about the history of the region and get their information only from TikTok.
Click on Owen Jones' Just go get your own oil. That's Donald Trump's latest outburst in his so-called true social uh website. He says, "You'll have to start learning how to fight for yourself. The USA won't be there to help you anymore, just like you weren't there for us." And he says it's countries like the UK need to have the courage to go to the Strait of Hormuz i and just take fuel.
Sounds a little bit like some attempt to sort of walk away from this disaster and just leave the straight of homos as is with all the economic consequences. We got a lot to talk about today with the incredible Yanis Varoufakis who doesn't really need an introduction. You know who he is. Brilliant economist, former Greek finance minister, author, great just a great all round guy as well which is helpful. Great to speak to you. How you doing?
Yanis Varoufakis: It's very good to see you on.
I'm very good. I'm, you know, feeling a bit uh sinful and I have this this guilt
that I'm reasonably well in a world that is going down the toilet.
Owen Jones: It is actually. I'm not going to try
and cushion that particular phraseology. It is what it is. We might as well
just be honest. How you let's just say how what's your general feeling right
now about a war which has now go on gone on for a month which Donald Trump
expected to be over in days after they took out the supreme leader. What's your
where where you at with this?
Yanis Varoufakis: Well, it's I have to say that I was very puzzled when he allowed Israel to do to him that which Israel failed to do in his first term because he recall of course and that in the first term of Donald Trump, Netanyahu again tried to railroad the United States like he he had done with other presidents before to try to get them to participate inmIsraeli US attack on Iran. And Trump had said no to that. And he was re-elected on the only silver lining in the thundercloud called Donald Trump was that he was saying no war unlike the Democrats who had consumed or gone into bed with the neocons. And so I have to say I was puzzled that he allowed himself to be dragged into this because once he was dragged into this there's no easy way out. What I do hope he does is that which uh Roman emperors used to do when the Roman Empire was not particularly strong and they would send legions to what is today Germany to fight the Goths and the Goths would kick their backside and then the Roman Emperor would declare victory and hold a triumph in London in London. My goodness, you see a radian sleep in Rome. So, you know, I'm hoping that he would do that but yeah, it would be a major comedown. He's got the midterms, but there is no alternative other than sinking deeper into into the quick sand of his own making. I mean that that's I guess, I keep talking about this, so apologies for those who are bored of my repetition, but you see this is where I get a bit stuck with this one because as things stand, if they just try and walk away, the US has suffered its biggest, I would say, strategic military defeat since it emerged as a superpower. It's worse than Vietnam……
