
Gai
15.8K posts

Gai
@Cubasmum
Escaped bureaucrat. #democracy #sustainability #integrity in politics . (DM me for an instant block!)
Melbourne 参加日 Temmuz 2010
1.6K フォロー中1.6K フォロワー

@AnneEdw45116023 @deniseshrivell Yes, of all the things I saw in China this was the most incredible. Travelling 1600 across China (high speed rail) in six hours, hundreds of clusters of identical apartments rise from the fields.
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@deniseshrivell Wow was my reaction too when travelling from the Airport into Shanghai 20 odd years ago & seeing kilometre after kilometre of high density apartment buildings as far as the eye could see. Crazy to think that Shanghai has roughly the same population as the whole of Australia.
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Today in Shanghai - we’re catching the bullet train to Suzhou. Wish us luck - hard to navigate around a massive train station but the 25 year old daughter is proving very useful at last 💜💜 #auspol #DeniseTravels
Will share pics of the bullet train soon!


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Israel escalates a scorched-earth campaign across occupied Syrian and Lebanese borderlands—this time through chemical warfare against nature itself.
Under the pretext of “security,” Israeli forces are reportedly spraying high concentrations of herbicides over farmland and forests, systematically annihilating vegetation to strip the land bare and deny any form of life or cover. Independent analyses have detected glyphosate levels 20–30 times above normal, devastating crops, poisoning soil, and threatening civilian health and food security .
This is not land management—it is ECOCIDE.
A deliberate assault on ecosystems, agriculture, and livelihoods, designed to render entire areas uninhabitable and forcibly reshape the terrain through environmental destruction. The United Nations has already warned of “serious humanitarian risk” tied to such actions, raising alarms over long-term damage to civilian life and land viability .
What is unfolding is a calculated strategy: erase the green, erase the entire population, erase the possibility of return.
This is #GENOCIDE
#Israel is the CRIMINAL.
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One of the reasons the drive for regime change in Iran failed is because the ethnic minorities in the country have not risen up. This despite a good deal of effort by the Mossad and CIA to get them to do so. This is why:
1) Many Iranians, including minorities, feared that a foreign-led military operation without a clear domestic political alternative would plunge the country into a chaotic civil war similar to Syria or Libya.
2) Kurdish groups in particular were hesitant to act as the "tip of the spear" for the U.S. and Israel, citing a long history of being abandoned by Western powers after their strategic utility ended. The fear was they would allow their people to be slaughtered.
3) The Iranian regime effectively used the threat of ethnic separatism to rally Persian nationalists. This narrative framed any minority-led rebellion as a foreign plot to "dismember" Iran, making many citizens hesitant to join. Many have genuine national patriotism.
4) Deep fissures between various opposition groups, such as monarchists, secularists, and ethnic factions, prevented the formation of a "common political horizon." Groups could not agree on whether a post-regime Iran should be a centralized state or a federalist one with ethnic autonomy.
5) Some minorities have strong ties to the regime. Unlike the Kurds or Balochs, Azeris are deeply integrated into the Iranian state and economy. Both the current Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and President Masoud Pezeshkian have Azeri backgrounds.
6) Many had already been slaughtered in the uprising weeks previously. 50% of those killed had been minorities. That killed many of those who most favored action against the regime and scared others. Families were often forced to pay for the bullets that killed their relatives and were barred from holding funerals to prevent them from becoming new protest flashpoints.
7) The regime employed a dual strategy of physical violence and digital containment to prevent minority regions from coordinating with the capital. Starting January 8, 2026, authorities imposed significant internet and telephone service cuts to hide the scale of massacres and prevent organizers from communicating. This also had a suppressing impact.
Iran's minorities didn't fail to rise, they chose not to be used. What Western intelligence agencies misread as an opportunity was, to those on the ground, a familiar trap: be the blade someone else swings, absorb the wounds, and be discarded when the fighting stops.
But the story is more layered than betrayal fatigue. The regime understood something its opponents didn't: nationalism is a more powerful glue than grievance. By framing every minority restive movement as a foreign conspiracy to dismember Iran, Tehran didn't just discredit the opposition, it conscripted Persian pride into its own defense. Many citizens who hated the regime still loved the country. Those two feelings were never reconciled into a common cause.
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@academic_la I am disturbed that I have very little empathy for Israeli civilians. But having spent the party two years watching Israel brutalising people, hunting down children, murdering and raping people including doctors… and now the law on hanging Palestinians? I just can’t…
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Another night of heavy bombing of Israel, and the country continues to be stunned by Iran's ability to hit every night for over a month. Tonight, the results were particularly tragic with two found dead in Haifa and two more missing and likely dead, and four injured. Israel has proven completely unable to protect its citizens from the consequences of the war of aggression it launched. Just look at these pictures of Haifa on the left and Ne'ot Hovav on the right.


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@Guy_online__ @deniseshrivell My family are 4th gen African. I understand exactly. For me the disconnect with happened in SA in the 80s - I went to uni, joined the anti apartheid movement & realised that everything that I had been told about history in Rhodesia was a lie. It colours my thinking to this day.
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@deniseshrivell I’ve thought so much about that recently. Realising what being Rhodesian actually meant when we came to Australia was a shift, one that’s continued my whole life since, but now it widens to force a rethink of every layer of our colonial past.
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Call me sus - but I’m now thinking everything we were taught and told about WWI and WWII - isn’t entirely accurate 🤷♀️ #auspol
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@clairlemon “Australia sources just 0.7 per cent of its petrol and 6.8 per cent of its diesel from Japan.
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"Japan will provide Australia with a normal level of fuel supply as the Strait of Hormuz remains blocked."
How cool is Japan
🇯🇵🇦🇺
abc.net.au/news/2026-04-0…
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Just popping in to remind everyone the Aussie government saying they’ve secured fuel shipments as far ahead as early May doesn’t mean there’ll be shipments after that because if Trump smashes the hell out of Iranian bridges, schools and hospitals tomorrow (as he’s said he’ll do) then #Iran will destroy oil refineries and docks in the Middle East in retaliation (as they’ve also said they’ll do).
So there’ll be little or no oil to transport to Asia from May onwards let alone get it to Australia, and there will be few or no other places to source replacement fuel going forward.
Just saying.
Nightmare scenario, and who is going to stop it?
So why the hell won’t Americans remove Trump and stop this madness now before the world fully implodes?
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Hey @AlboMP
are these the shared values Labor keeps banging on about?
No sane, decent person wants their country to be associated with this level of megalomanic degeneracy.
For pity's sake decouple Australia from this horror.

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@JuAvrilT @SenatorWong @AlboMP A “special relationship”? “Close allies”? It would be embarrassing if it wasn’t terrifying. 🙄
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UPDATE: Former IAEA chief urges Gulf nations, UN to stop 'madman' Trump
🔴 LIVE updates: aje.news/vtvz59?update=…
GIF
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@latikambourke This is horrifying. Not the swearing per se, but that that the President of the United States can issue this threatening, unhinged tweet.
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@AlboMP @SenatorWong what the hell? Are we in bed with this deranged individual?
ALASTAIR CAMPBELL@campbellclaret
This says to me the Iranians have got him where they want him … Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!! Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell - JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah. President DONALD J. TRUMP
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@AvidCommentator Australia sources just 0.7 per cent of its petrol and 6.8 per cent of its diesel from Japan,
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'Australia given fuel supply assurances as plans in works for visit by Japan's prime minister'
At face value, a very positive development 👍
abc.net.au/news/2026-04-0…
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An obvious lesson from the war on Iran is that hosting American bases unsurprisingly makes the host a target when America goes to war.
We are through the looking glass, needing American military protection because we host American military protection.
michaelwest.com.au/what-would-xi-…
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@SimonBanksHB Australia sources just 0.7 per cent of its petrol and 6.8 per cent of its diesel from Japan.
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“Australia given fuel supply assurances as plans in works for visit by Japan's prime minister”
abc.net.au/news/2026-04-0…
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I’m a family doctor, and I join the call by @drtlaleng in demanding the release of Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya who remains in Israeli captivity for over a year. He has been subjected to severe torture. Our medical colleagues have been targeted for doing their jobs - release them all!

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