Suz Brook

Whoever is cooking up these LEGO videos has the Trump regime completely figured out. While the U.S. fumbles digital propaganda, Iran is dropping AI brick bangers that are actually landing. They’re winning the meme war brick by brick. 🧱 #LEGOPropaganda

I luv this 😍 Aussies in Brisbane showing up against the “river to the sea” ban

I am surprised how my tweet below entered the political spheres of Australians. It means that many Australians actually care about their country. But if you want to do something about it, the first thing to understand is that the answer is not the other party. The two parties run the visible layer. The operators underneath is the same regardless of who is in office. Same mining multinationals. Same four banks. Same supermarket duopoly. Same media owners. Same property speculation engine. Same gas exporters paying almost no resource rent. The faces rotate. The arrangement does not. So voting harder for Labor when the Liberals disappoint you, or harder for the Liberals when Labor disappoints you, is not resistance. It is the trap. It is the pressure-release valve doing exactly what it was built to do. The way to move the operators in Australia, is how you move any operator in any country. Stop voting tribally. Strengthen the cross bench. Vote for community independents and minor parties willing to put structural questions on the table that the majors have agreed never to discuss. A senate full of crossbenchers extracting concessions is worth more than another majority for either side. Learn who owns what. Find out who owns your bank, your supermarket, your toll road, your energy retailer, your superannuation, your media. Most Australians have no idea how much of the country routes back to a small handful of foreign asset managers and resource multinationals. Once you see it, the arguments between the parties stop looking like a contest and start looking like theatre. Build parallel structures. Move your money to a credit union or mutual bank. Buy from local cooperatives where you can. Read independent media. Put solar and battery on your own roof so you stop buying back your own gas at a markup from the people who exported it. Demand specific reforms, not vague good intentions. Ask every candidate, federal and state, whether they will support a real Petroleum Resource Rent Tax. Whether they will support a Norway-style sovereign wealth fund built on actual resource royalties. Whether they will support ending negative gearing and the capital gains discount. Whether they will support breaking up the media monopolies. Whether they will support foreign investment screening with teeth. Whether they will support rebuilding domestic refining capacity and downstream processing of the minerals that's shipped out raw. Vote on the answers. Politicians respond to specificity. They absorb and neutralise vagueness. Tell the truth in your daily conversations. The deepest defense of the system is the conditioning that tells Australians their own sovereignty over their own resources, their own currency, their own land and their own future is the unrealistic option. Norway did it. South Korea did it. Singapore did it. Australia chose, repeatedly, through both parties, not to. That is a choice. Choices can be made differently. Saying so out loud, in private and in public, in conversations with family and friends and colleagues, slowly breaks the spell. Australia is managed. That is the bad news and that is also the good news. Anything that can be managed can be unmanaged. But not by waiting for the next election to deliver a saviour from inside the same recruiting pipeline that produced the current arrangement. The change starts when enough citizens stop voting for the marketing departments and start asking who actually owns the building.

Australia was not established as a nation-building project. It was established as an extraction platform. The British did not colonize Australia to build a civilization. They colonized it to extract l; first convict labor, then wool, then gold, then minerals, then gas. The political architecture was built around that extraction logic from day one, and it has never been restructured away from it. You assume the state exists to serve the population, and therefore bad outcomes must mean the state is being run poorly. Australia is not a sovereign state that happens to have a mining sector. It is a private sector extraction platform that happens to have citizens. Every Australian who “owns” a home is servicing a debt instrument that enriches the FIC. The minerals get dug up by foreign-owned multinationals. The profits get distributed to global shareholders. The taxation office is structured; by design, through decades of lobbying, to ensure the extraction proceeds leave the country with minimal sovereign capture. The politicians are doing exactly what the structure requires of them: absorbing public anger, rotating every few years to reset the pressure valve. Australia is not mismanaged. Australia is managed perfectly, just not for Australians.

The highest quality video of the moon was just released… this is so beautiful.

@CuriosityonX The Orion spacecraft of the Artemis II Mission recorded this video. How can anyone see this and still think God doesn’t exist? 🚀🚀

It's been exactly three weeks since the war on Iran began, and it's easier to tell what's going on militarily than it is politically. Sky's Michael Clarke gives his analysis on the latest developments on day 21 of the Iran war. 🔗 trib.al/vxbsQhi

Can’t stress this enough, do you know how badly a White House has to fuck-up to make ‘Australia’ say “hard-pass” on one of its military operations? The Aussies have followed us into everyone one of our wars since Australia gained full autonomy/independence from the UK. This is like the attached-at-the-hip little brother saying “fam, I love you, but you’ve got a problem”

🌿 It turns out plants have been talking to each other for roughly 400 million years, and nobody thought to mention it to us. Here is what happens. A caterpillar lands on a leaf and starts eating. The plant, which has no brain, no mouth, and no real options, does the only thing available to it: releases a cocktail of chemicals into the air. A signal. An alarm. A tiny molecular cry of distress drifting across the garden. The plant next door picks it up. And this is the part that stops you mid-biscuit. That neighboring plant, which has been attacked by nothing, threatened by nothing, bothered by absolutely nothing this Saturday afternoon, quietly begins producing toxins. Just in case. Because the neighbor said so. No language. No sound. No evolutionary reason to trust anyone. And yet there it is. A conversation so old it was already ancient when the dinosaurs showed up and ruined everything. We built cities. We invented Wi-Fi. We wrote symphonies. The begonias have been doing this since before we had thumbs. Gandalv / @Microinteracti1

“Why do some British people not like Donald Trump?” Nate White, an articulate and witty writer from England wrote the following response: A few things spring to mind. Trump lacks certain qualities which the British traditionally esteem. For instance, he has no class, no charm, no coolness, no credibility, no compassion, no wit, no warmth, no wisdom, no subtlety, no sensitivity, no self-awareness, no humility, no honour and no grace – all qualities, funnily enough, with which his predecessor Mr. Obama was generously blessed. So for us, the stark contrast does rather throw Trump’s limitations into embarrassingly sharp relief. Plus, we like a laugh. And while Trump may be laughable, he has never once said anything wry, witty or even faintly amusing – not once, ever. I don’t say that rhetorically, I mean it quite literally: not once, not ever. And that fact is particularly disturbing to the British sensibility – for us, to lack humour is almost inhuman. But with Trump, it’s a fact. He doesn’t even seem to understand what a joke is – his idea of a joke is a crass comment, an illiterate insult, a casual act of cruelty. Trump is a troll. And like all trolls, he is never funny and he never laughs; he only crows or jeers. And scarily, he doesn’t just talk in crude, witless insults – he actually thinks in them. His mind is a simple bot-like algorithm of petty prejudices and knee-jerk nastiness. There is never any under-layer of irony, complexity, nuance or depth. It’s all surface. Some Americans might see this as refreshingly upfront. Well, we don’t. We see it as having no inner world, no soul. And in Britain we traditionally side with David, not Goliath. All our heroes are plucky underdogs: Robin Hood, Dick Whittington, Oliver Twist. Trump is neither plucky, nor an underdog. He is the exact opposite of that. He’s not even a spoiled rich-boy, or a greedy fat-cat. He’s more a fat white slug. A Jabba the Hutt of privilege. And worse, he is that most unforgivable of all things to the British: a bully. That is, except when he is among bullies; then he suddenly transforms into a snivelling sidekick instead. There are unspoken rules to this stuff – the Queensberry rules of basic decency – and he breaks them all. He punches downwards – which a gentleman should, would, could never do – and every blow he aims is below the belt. He particularly likes to kick the vulnerable or voiceless – and he kicks them when they are down. So the fact that a significant minority – perhaps a third – of Americans look at what he does, listen to what he says, and then think ‘Yeah, he seems like my kind of guy’ is a matter of some confusion and no little distress to British people, given that: • Americans are supposed to be nicer than us, and mostly are. • You don’t need a particularly keen eye for detail to spot a few flaws in the man. This last point is what especially confuses and dismays British people, and many other people too; his faults seem pretty bloody hard to miss. After all, it’s impossible to read a single tweet, or hear him speak a sentence or two, without staring deep into the abyss. He turns being artless into an art form; he is a Picasso of pettiness; a Shakespeare of shit. His faults are fractal: even his flaws have flaws, and so on ad infinitum. God knows there have always been stupid people in the world, and plenty of nasty people too. But rarely has stupidity been so nasty, or nastiness so stupid. He makes Nixon look trustworthy and George W look smart. In fact, if Frankenstein decided to make a monster assembled entirely from human flaws – he would make a Trump. And a remorseful Doctor Frankenstein would clutch out big clumpfuls of hair and scream in anguish: ‘My God… what… have… I… created?' If being a twat was a TV show, Trump would be the boxed set.

A Spanish assembly member just stood up in the Madrid parliament and said what most world leaders won’t: “Do you think the mothers of 160 dead girls would thank Trump for killing their children? You have become a bootlicker of Trump.” The chamber erupted in support. This is happening in Madrid. In Washington, senators are competing to prove their loyalty to a foreign government. In Texas, Ted Cruz told Christians he won’t stand with them if they won’t stand with Israel. In South Carolina, Lindsey Graham is recruiting parents to send their children to the Middle East. In Madrid, an elected official is saying the mothers of 160 dead girls out loud — in parliament — on the record. Spine: 100%. The moral clarity that is absent in Washington is showing up everywhere else.

🚨BREAKING:😱 The Terrifying Realization Iran Had 40 Years Ago 🗺️

Israeli air defense systems are gone as well as the radars & are left with partially working sirens. According to this report, #Isreal told its people that they CANNOT protect them. It’s EMFH (every man for himself). #IranIsraelWar This happened in ONE week. This shows that #iran spent 47 years preparing for this war & the US spent about 47 days after capturing Maduro.

BRILLIANT PIECE on IRAN !!!!! Alon Mizrahi, an Israeli journalist, one of the most worthy Jews in the world: "We are witnessing history. Iran, to everyone's surprise, is destroying American bases so thoroughly, on such a large scale, and so decisively that the world is not ready for this. In 4 days, Iran has managed to expand its sphere of military dominance in the region. Iran has destroyed the most valuable and expensive military bases, property, and equipment in the entire world. The American bases in Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia are among the largest military facilities in the entire world. These facilities have cost trillions of dollars over several decades to build. We are talking about the fact that the bulk of the military spending that has been made over more than 30 years has gone up in smoke. We see radars costing hundreds of millions of dollars each being destroyed in an instant. We see entire military bases being abandoned and burned, looted, and destroyed. And I'm telling you, as far as I know, the U.S. has never suffered such destruction in its entire history, except perhaps for Pearl Harbor, but that was just one attack. No enemy in a conventional war has ever done this to American military forces as Iran is doing right now. It's hard to believe. The military situation is so serious that censorship is blocking almost all new information about this war. If you've noticed, we're getting less and less information every day. Thirty-five years ago, during the first Iraqi war, we were shown endless footage from Iraq. Back then, smart bombs and cameras were a novelty, but every night we were shown night-time footage. Now we hardly see any videos at all. Understand this! Supposedly, this is the world's largest military power, with the world's largest air capabilities, and on the fourth day of the U.S. offensive, supposedly and supposedly breaking through Iranian defenses, we don't see any signs of American dominance in the Iranian sky. Where are all the video recordings of our planes flying over Tehran or any other part of Iran, for that matter? American soldiers can't even dream of setting foot on Iranian soil. And to understand how desperate this war is, on the fourth day you're already hearing the most insane proposals and ideas from the Trump administration. They're proposing sending military escorts for oil tankers leaving the Persian Gulf. What are you even talking about! You want to send American ships into the zone of destruction of thousands of Iranian missiles? NOW no one can get through the Strait of Hormuz. The Iranians have been preparing for this for decades. They're flaunting the idea of arming Kurdish militias to invade Iran. What the hell are you talking about? Have you seen a map of Iran!? It seems the Trump administration has never seen a map of Iran! Do you know how vast it is? What does it mean to invade Iran!? Do you think a militia of 10,000 people could invade Iran!? Or even 50,000? Or 100,000? Iran will swallow them up. The U.S. and Israel have already lost this war. The U.S. and Israel can kill millions of civilians in their homes. They have powerful bombs and can blow up buildings, but they won't win this war. Iran's military infrastructure and weaponry is deep underground all over IRAN. Neither the Americans nor, especially, the Israelis have any chance of reaching any of it. They're in deep shit. They started something they have no chance of finishing. When this all ends, the U.S. will never return to West Asia. There will be no American presence in the Middle East. I'm telling you this now with certainty." t.me/Palestinianspi…

Louise Adler made Adelaide Writers’ Week a cultural institution. Her departure is both a devastating loss and a damning indictment of the board. The board should go, and Malinauskas must explain how a govt-backed cultural flagship was undermined, and whose influence was at work.

Louise Adler: “There’s a history dating back to 2023 of pro-Israeli lobbyists arguing against the inclusion of Palestinian writers…assisted and abetted by the Murdoch press.” 🔥 She called their statement “word salad” that very clumsily linked Randa Abdel-Fattah to Bondi. 💥

important interview with Louise Adler on #abc730 "I wonder where his [Premier Malinauskas] compassion and humanity and sensitivity was to Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah. And the fact that her work as a Palestinian writer, academic, esteemed award-winning writer, and the history that she carries with her, and the recent events where 70,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza. Where is the shared humanity and the understanding and compassion for Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah?" Watch the full interview: abc.net.au/news/2026-01-1…