John Blanchette

Frustrated by the fact that I’m not the leader of the free world, but would love to be so that I can solve problems of inequality and environmental destruction.

[Michael Taylor @AusIndiMedia]

In his quest to have his name on everything, Trump has paid $5 million for the naming rights of The Australian Independent Media Network.

We are now:

“The President Donald J. Trump One Big Beautiful Independent Media Network”. (Satire alert).

https://t.co/BwLWjJnme0

[Mohamad Safa @mhdksafa]

You cannot commit genocide in Gaza, invade Lebanon, bomb Iran, Syria, Yemen, and Iraq, violate Geneva and Vienna Conventions, international law, human rights, and state sovereignty, then hide behind anti-Semitism.

There is no rise in anti-Semitism. There is a rise in the number of people who are very angry at what Israel is doing. Your inability to separate the two is equally problematic.

[Aaron Smith @aaronsmith]

Still one of the greats: Pauline Hanson strides in with all the confidence of a woman who has not yet encountered the next thirty seconds.

Now with added backstory.

[Mike Hudema @MikeHudema]

The wildfire situation across North America just got worse.

Tens of thousands of lightning strikes across the Pacific Northwest has ignited dozens of new wildfires across Oregon and Washington.

No time to waste. #ActOnClimate

#climate #energy #renewables

[Helen Clark @HelenClarkNZ]

I just completed a visit to #WestBank with @TheElders. We said that “annexation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem is occurring in plain sight”. This shocking report of even more planned settlements including in #Gaza is consistent with what we witnessed:
https://t.co/38AcLXHEWZ

[John Blanchette @John_Blanny]

@ACTINOSProject @KellieTranter Careful, David. She might sue you for defamation!

[John Blanchette @John_Blanny]

This may be the silliest statement by a politician this decade, which is saying something given the stiff completion from his boss and other world leaders like Scomo, Boris Johnson and Liz Truss. RFkJr and Malcolm Roberts should become friends.

[Max Uechtritz @plesbilongmi]

Worm. Brain. Say no more.

[John Blanchette @John_Blanny]

@davrosz @mehdirhasan He is. But a box of frogs would be amusing and charming.

[Max Blumenthal @MaxBlumenthal]

Several days ago, I received a threatening letter informing me that I am "moving up on 'the List," and that I am "fucked."

The letter calls me a "kapo," indicating its authorship by a Zionist fanatic, possibly affiliated with an outfit like JDL Brotherhood 613, or from Betar dead-enders who advocate violence against perceived enemies of Israel.

I opened this letter as Israel-backed Trump admin allies like Laura Loomer portrayed me as a national security threat and demanded my persecution for reporting from Iran, and as the Trump admin harassed me by illegally seizing my phones.

I am not the only person to have received these letters. Howard Heath, a state representative in New Hampshire who is campaigning for Congress on a pledge to cut off military aid to Israel, also reported receiving a letter from the same "Yoor Dedmeet."

The return address applied to the letter is the field office of Rep. Rashida Tlaib, the only Palestinian member of Congress. To me, this indicates that she and her staff could also be targets of whichever malicious individual or group sent the letter.

I have filed a report with local police and informed the US Postal Service Inspector of this threatening letter.

[Caitlin Johnstone @caitoz]

The Trump administration has announced a renewed crusade against “far-left terrorism,” which sounds okay if you don’t know that the word “terrorism” only ever means “behavior which goes against the agendas of the western empire.”

The United States has for example placed sanctions on UN special rapporteur Francesca Albanese for calling attention to Israeli atrocities in Gaza, justifying the move by claiming the human rights expert has “expressed support for terrorism”. In the UK, police have been arresting people on terrorism charges just for holding signs which say “I oppose genocide, I support Palestine Action”.

The designation has nothing to do with actual acts of terrorism as the average westerner conceives of that notion. In 2024 the US government removed its $10 million bounty on former Al Qaeda leader Ahmed al-Sharaa (AKA Abu Mohammad al-Jolani) because he facilitated Washington’s regime change agendas in Syria, where he is now the sitting president. You can literally be a leader in the most notorious terrorist network on earth and still see that designation disappear into thin air as soon as you start assisting the geostrategic ambitions of the empire.

The White House announced on Thursday that it has launched “an unprecedented global offensive against the transnational threat of Radical Left terrorism,” under which “far-left extremism will be treated with the same seriousness and ferocity the world has long reserved for jihadist terrorism.”

Journalist Ken Klippenstein reports that according to leaked documents from Marco Rubio’s State Department, groups to be targeted under the new marching orders will include “violent far-left and anarchist networks and other violent extremist actors,” as well as “violent pro-Iranian and antisemitic networks” and “militant anti-tech and eco-terrorist movements.”

The move is premised on a White House memo known as NSPM-7, a directive that critics have been warning about for months due to its dangerously authoritarian implications and lack of congressional approval. In the words of Trump advisor Stephen Miller, NSPM-7 “directs, for the first time in American history, all of our law enforcement and intelligence agencies to work together to disrupt, identify, defund, debank, arrest, and prosecute these political terrorists that are operating in our country.”

This line strongly echoes the language of a 1967 FBI memo describing the goals of the J Edgar Hoover program COINTELPRO to “expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize the activities of black nationalist hate-type organizations and groupings.”

Between 1956 and 1971, the FBI conducted covert operations under COINTELPRO to infiltrate and subvert Black civil rights groups, the Communist Party USA, Vietnam War protester organizations, and feminist groups with the goal of stomping out all meaningful leftward political movement in the United States. The feds never fully stopped running such programs of course — groups like Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter were known to have been targeted by police surveillance and infiltration. But it’s clear the rightists in the White House are aiming for something far more aggressive, and FBI Director Kash Patel sounds super stoked about the chance to become a 21st century J Edgar Hoover.

“Secretary Rubio hosted the Ministerial on the Resurgence of Political Terrorism — under President Trump’s leadership this FBI has been proud to support this important work through National Security Presidential Memorandum (NSPM) 7, focusing federal law enforcement to investigate and disrupt organizations engaging in political violence and terrorism,” Patel said on Twitter regarding the latest escalation.

So it seems the United States is looking at a reinvigorated COINTELPRO for the 2020s, this time with police drones and AI-assisted mass surveillance. As Americans become more and more hostile toward US warmongering, more and more fed up with the state of Israel, more and more convinced that their government doesn’t care about them, and more and more discontented with what unbridled capitalism is doing to their bank accounts, their society, and their world, their rulers are responding with the iron fist of tyranny.

And what makes all this especially threatening is that you know whatever measures they roll out while the Republicans are running things will remain in place when the Democrats are in power, because as we have discussed here many times before, it is the Democratic Party’s job to prevent leftward movement in the United States. This will be one of those many, many times the Republicans did something evil and the Democrats just quietly kept it running in the background to protect the interests of the capitalist empire. Because that is their job.

But the fact that this is happening in the first place should inspire hope, not despair. The empire managers aren’t ramping up authoritarianism because it’s easy and fun; they’re doing it because they need to. They know they’re losing their grip, and they know that they are vastly outnumbered by the ordinary human beings who just want a better world for their children.

They are afraid. And they are afraid because they are losing.

Keep pushing.

[Solo Monk @JJKALE2]

Australian Independent journalist Joel Jenkins @boganintel has put out some really brilliant articles in the past.

His latest offering raises the bar even further. It's so damn good.

Thank you Joel. That was so needed.

https://t.co/Mc3RN1LZo2

[susan abulhawa | سوزان ابو الهوى @susanabulhawa]

Wildfires raging in Canadian forests, a food system that poisons its own supply chain, and a war grinding on in Iran, Lebanon, and Palestine look like separate headlines.

But they're manifestations of the same capitalist colonial greed—a system that treats the planet and life (both human and non-human) as profit to be extracted, not life to be protected.

The wildfires burn hotter and longer because the fossil fuel industry spent decades funding disinformation and lobbying against climate regulation, buying just enough delay to keep extracting profit while the atmosphere destabilized.

The parasite outbreak in our produce isn't bad luck — it's what happens when factory farming and industrial agriculture prioritize yield and margin over soil health, water safety, and worker conditions, and when regulatory agencies are starved of funding or captured by the industries they're supposed to police.

And the war grinding on abroad isn't just politics — it's also profit, linked hand in hand with greedy zionist colonial expansion.

War, like wildfire, like tainted lettuce, is a business line.

None of this is coincidence. It's what happens when decision-making power concentrates in the hands of unscrupulous individuals who are drive solely by self-interest, self-enrichment, and tribal supremacy; people whose loyalty is not to the public, the planet, or the future.

The billionaire class isn't a passive bystander to these crises. They're the authors of the policy environment that makes them worse, because destabilization is cheaper to cause than to prevent, and the costs land on everyone except the people making the decisions.

Those aren't just trees burning, but entire lives of entire nations—whole species who were already endangered by an insatiable capitalist greed slowly devouring us all.

[John Blanchette @John_Blanny]

A shame the US airforce wasn’t more active in the days/weeks/moments* leading up to Malcolm’s conception.

* I apologise for not being across the pseudo-science** of the alleged impact of the supposed chemtrails

** I apologise for the use of a hyphen, now banned in Australia

[bradpsychology @bradpsychology]

It annoys me that I can’t tell if this is performative, or if he is really nuts.

[Environment Centre NT @EnviroCentreNT]

Bulldozing is still underway despite TWO cases challenging Minister Murray Watt’s decision not to assess this deforestation under Australian federal nature laws.

Sign the petition and tell Murray Watt to do his job and stand up for the Territory's nature.
https://t.co/SsEkhqto7g

[John Blanchette @John_Blanny]

@AaronDodd Australia now leads the world in the innovative use of beetroot juice as a skin care product.

[John Blanchette @John_Blanny]

The world would be a better place - safer, more caring, cleaner - if Ms Rachael was POTUS

[Assal Rad @AssalRad]

She adds that she plans to go to Congress to meet reps that “voted to keep funding the Israeli government’s genocide.”

Good luck to them explaining to this woman why they support the mass slaughter of children.

[Mike Carlton @MikeCarlton01]

Jonathan Holmes skewers the errors, distortions, bias and downright incompetence of this Segal character. https://t.co/mesBqJwb5l

[John Blanchette @John_Blanny]

@JimmyBarnes It sounds good :)

[John Blanchette @John_Blanny]

@Peter_Fitz As opposed to Farage, who pledges to make an even bigger mess of little Britain than he achieved with his Brexit ‘leadership’

[Charles Joseph Harvey @CharlesJHarvey]

The greatest threat to civilisation after climate change is AI. What does @AlboMP do? Keep these greedy AI demons highly regulated,say data centres are going to turbocharge global warming so they must be severely restricted? No, Albo says you can have open slather in Australia.