Gaye Demanuele

"You have to act as if were possible to radically transform the world. And you have to do it all the time." Angela Davis

Good news! This RMIT student should never have been subjected to disciplinary action - she simply stated the truth. Weapons companies have no place in our universities & schools! Fund education, no more public grants for weapons manufacturers! theguardian.com/australia-news…

Maybe it's not so crazy... Analysis by The Australia Institute found Australia could have funded free childcare and university if a 25% gas export tax had been introduced after LNG prices surged following Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Read more ➡️ theaus.in/3PZDmuk

Genocide grants. They hid it. Government has given $78m in grants to Australian F-35 suppliers. Used in Israel slaughter in Gaza and probably now in illegal bombing of Iran @sstephanietrann #auspol michaelwest.com.au/genocide-grant…

There is now substantial research — both in Australia and the United States — on who engages with political detail and how that shapes voting behaviour. The findings are striking and consistent across both countries. In the 2024 US presidential election, pre-election polls found Americans who consumed no political news at all said they’d vote for Trump over Kamala Harris by a whopping 20-point margin — 60% to 40%. The more engaged they were in politics — the more likely they were to support Harris. Data for Progress found that support for Harris decreased as a voter’s news consumption decreased. In other words: the more people knew, the less likely they were to vote for Trump. The Australian data tells the same story. Australian Election Study research found that Greens voters decided their vote disproportionately on the basis of policy issues, while Liberal voters were more likely to decide based on whether they liked party leaders or the party brand as a whole. One Nation voters were found to have the lowest institutional trust of any party’s supporters — consistent with international research on the rise of socially conservative populist movements. Australian research also found that voters with negative economic expectations are significantly more likely to support minor parties — and this association has strengthened since the mid-2010s. ANU research on political knowledge found that consumption of political information online is narrowing among a younger, better educated and politically interested group — meaning the internet is reinforcing the advantages of the most knowledgeable while increasingly failing to draw in the most politically disengaged. This connects to something deeper and more disturbing. Belief in conspiracy theories has increased dramatically over the last decade — and the research is unambiguous about why. A study published in Nature Human Behaviour across 26 countries found that conspiracy thinking is significantly more prevalent at the extreme right of the political spectrum, strongest among supporters of populist parties not in government, and amplified by feelings of political powerlessness and low institutional trust. Multiple peer-reviewed studies confirm that right-wing populist politicians don’t just attract conspiracy believers — they actively cultivate them. Research found that populist radical right parties deliberately use conspiracy rhetoric to frame politics as corrupt elites against ordinary people — a simple story that requires no engagement with evidence and is nearly immune to facts. Trump’s “fake news” rhetoric accelerated this dramatically. By systematically attacking credible institutions — media, science, courts, electoral systems — he created a permission structure for dismissing any inconvenient fact as manufactured. The result is cult-based politics: a closed information loop where the leader is the only trusted source, where evidence is irrelevant, and where loyalty replaces analysis. Australia is not immune. The same pattern — institutional distrust, grievance, simple explanations for complex problems — is the entire operating model of One Nation. Populism — whether Trumpism in the US or Hansonism in Australia — is not a coincidence. It is specifically engineered for low-engagement, high-grievance voters. Simple slogans. Single scapegoats. No policy detail. No accountability. The moment you examine the actual voting record, the actual economic data, the actual legislative outcomes — the whole platform collapses. This is why detail matters. This is why the threads I’ve been posting matter. Engagement is the antidote. Which is exactly why the people who profit from grievance work so hard to keep it simple.

"What the Zionist model has shown us is that it ends in genocide." "As the Bundists knew, “it’s either solidarity across difference or savagery.” theguardian.com/world/2026/apr…

“I think it’s a problem that RMIT would take more issue w/ a student standing under a sign, talking about the weapons companies it partners with, rather than the fact that the weapons companies it partners w/ are essential in facilitating war and genocide” theguardian.com/australia-news…

The story of Easter didn’t begin with Jesus. It began with the first humans who watched the earth go dark and cold and dared to believe, in their bodies, that it would open again. open.substack.com/pub/theherstor…

Dawn raids by riot cops in NSW & VIC, women taken from their beds, arrested & interrogated. What were cops looking for? Weapons, kgs of cocaine, fake cash? No, an apron, liquid chalk pens, umbrellas. What they wanted most of all - to silence & scapegoat. Dissent is contagious.

This is so goddamn evil. I’m so fucking tired of this evil apartheid colony’s atrocities - it is beyond the pale that we support this horror. Albanese needs to be tried for his complicity in crimes against humanity.

Police raided the homes of eight women and brought criminal charges for the apparently heinous crime of draping a statue with an apron at a protest. #sydneycriminallawyers #police #waca #protesters sydneycriminallawyers.com.au/blog/escalatio…

Moments after Qesser is released from court after being arrested by masked police officers, she speaks out for the Palestinians in Israeli dungeons facing execution.

This is such a poignant video that clearly gets the message across minus the usual pollywaffle. Explains class solidarity without saying those 2 words! Everyday people are not to blame for how fckd up the state of the world is, it’s the billionaires! youtu.be/VPsR1hfTaAA

Israel is destroying water and sanitation infrastructure in Lebanon, echoing a genocidal tactic it used in Gaza as part of its attempt to destroy the civilian population, Oxfam has said. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has attacked reservoirs, pipe networks and pumping stations since escalating its aggression against the country on 2 March. “In a span of four days in the first weeks of the latest escalation, Israel damaged at least seven critical water sources… that supplied water to almost 7,000 people in the Bekaa area alone,” the charity said in a statement. “The destruction of civilian infrastructure has not been limited to critical water facilities,” Oxfam added. “Israel has also destroyed electricity networks and bridges, cutting off vital supplies and services for entire towns and villages.” Depriving civilians of water has been a key part of Israel’s strategy in Gaza. In October 2023, then-energy minister Israel Katz wrote on social media that no “electrical switch will be turned on, no water hydrant will be opened and no fuel truck will enter” the enclave. British prime minister Keir Starmer supported this strategy, despite it being a war crime, telling LBC at the time that Israel had the “right” to cut off water and electricity from the population of Gaza. Israel has killed over 1,000 people and forced more than a million to flee their homes in Lebanon this month. Katz, who is now the Israeli defence minister, said this week that the IDF would control a “buffer zone” in southern Lebanon, which critics interpreted as confirmation that Israel has illegally annexed that land.

“I knew that the penalties meted out by society were very severe on women, for men could do anything, but women couldn’t.” -Zelda D’Aprano, Zelda spinifexpress.com.au/backlist/p/978…

“I knew that the penalties meted out by society were very severe on women, for men could do anything, but women couldn’t.” -Zelda D’Aprano, Zelda spinifexpress.com.au/backlist/p/978…

The Greens sometimes cop flak for saying there's no meaningful difference between Labor and the Libs. Well here they are voting - together- against lifting welfare payments above the poverty line and abolishing the parental and partner income tests. Maybe we're onto something?

If you think a bit of 'city chaos' is bad, wait until you hear about the impact on society of decades of underfunding of public education and overstretched and underpaid teachers in our public schools!

The hardship in the Gaza Strip is intensifying: According to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, aid to the Gaza Strip has decreased by 80% since the beginning of the war, and the crisis in Gaza is worsening. Following the decline in aid, there has been a sharp increase in the prices of basic food items, and hospitals are reporting a severe shortage of medicines and medical equipment.

The Reserve Bank is an instrument of class war against workers. Inflation is being driven by profiteering by big corporations and the spending of the super-rich. But the RBA's solution is always to make workers pay the price through higher mortgage rates and unemployment.

Israel has forcibly displaced over 800,000 people in Lebanon - 1 in 7 people. Including 11,600 pregnant women - with 4,000 expected to give birth in the next 3 months.