Fordy

Joined for the scenery, stayed for the #couchpeloton. On Gundungurra Land. All thoughts and ideas are probably borrowed.

[Fordy @SoireeCreative]

Scarily true, and relevant!?!

[Louise Greene @GreeneLouiseAus]

I am absolutely fed up with the relentless targeting of Grace Tame.

Let's be clear. There is a difference between fair criticism and a public pile-on. What we keep seeing directed at Grace is not constructive debate. It is constant scrutiny, personal attacks, outrage cycles and a level of judgment that seems reserved for women who dare to speak too loudly, too honestly or too unapologetically.

Grace Tame survived child sexual abuse. She helped change laws. She gave a voice to countless survivors. She has spent years doing work that most people would never have the courage to do.

Yet the attacks never seem to stop.

A few weeks ago it was the Prime Minister taking aim at her. Now it's Charlie Pickering. Before that, countless commentators, columnists and social media critics. Different names, same pattern.

And frankly, it disgusts me.

No, women in public life should not be immune from criticism. Nobody is. But there is a world of difference between criticism and the kind of sustained public hounding that seeks to diminish, discredit and exhaust someone.

As someone who has experienced public judgment and media attacks, I know how destructive these campaigns can be. They reduce human beings to caricatures. They erase context. They encourage outrage while ignoring the very real emotional toll on the person at the centre of it.

What troubles me most is that women who survive violence are so often expected to be perfect. The moment they become angry, outspoken, political, imperfect or inconvenient, they are treated as fair game.

Grace Tame has contributed more to the conversation about sexual abuse and survivor advocacy in this country than most of her critics ever will.

Maybe it's time some of the men lining up to take shots at her stopped and asked themselves a simple question:

Why are they spending so much energy attacking a survivor instead of supporting the change she helped create?

Enough. #gracetame #charliepickering

[Fordy @SoireeCreative]

@blakandblack The exact same could be said of Trump, she’s see him become President and thinks she is in with a shot 🙄

[Andrea Junker @Strandjunker]

No snark, I genuinely don’t get it. Trump is one of the least masculine, most juvenile public figures out there. He’s needy, whiny, defensive, terrified of strong women, and visibly intimidated by powerful men.

How does his base spin this into the ultimate “strongman” image?

[Daniel Goldman @danielsgoldman]

Donald Trump ran for office for three reasons:

1) stay out of jail
2) exact revenge on his enemies
3) line his pockets

Everything else he says is bullshit.

[Led By Donkeys @ByDonkeys]

“My name is Amos Goldberg. I am an Israeli Professor of Holocaust Studies. For nearly 30 years I have researched and taught the Holocaust, genocide and state violence.

And I want to tell whoever is willing to listen that what’s happening now in Gaza is a genocide.

A year ago when October 7th happened, like all Israelis I was in shock. It was a war crime and a crime against humanity. 1200 people - more than 800 of them civilians - were killed in one day. Children and the elderly were among those taken hostage. Communities were destroyed. It was outrageous, traumatizing, personal. Like most Israelis, I know people who were killed, who lost loved ones or whose loved ones were taken hostage.

But immediately afterwards came Israel’s response and within weeks thousands of civilians were killed in Gaza. It took me some time to digest what was unfolding before my eyes. It was agonizing to confront that reality. I was reluctant to call it a genocide.

But if you read Raphael Lemkin – the Jewish-Polish legal scholar who coined the term ‘genocide’ and was the major driving force behind the 1948 United Nations Genocide Convention – what is happening in Gaza now is exactly what he had in mind when he spoke about genocide.

It does not need to look like the Holocaust to be a genocide. Each genocide looks different and not all involve killing of millions or the entire group. The United Nations Genocide Convention explicitly asserts that genocide is the act of deliberately destroying a group in whole or in part. Those are the words.

But there does need to be a clear intent.

And indeed, there are clear indications of intent to destroy Gaza: Israel’s leaders - including the prime minister and the minister of defence - and many high-ranking military officers, media personalities, rabbis, as well as ordinary soldiers were very open about what they wanted to achieve. There were countless documented incitements to turn the whole of Gaza into rubble and claims that there are no innocent people living there.

A radical atmosphere of dehumanization of the Palestinians prevails in Israeli society to an extent that I can’t remember in my 58 years of living here.

Now that vision has been enacted. Tens of thousands of innocent children, women and men have been killed. Over a hundred thousand were wounded. There is a near total destruction of infrastructure, intentional starvation and blocking of humanitarian aid. There are mass graves and reliable testimony of summary executions. Children that were shot by snipers. All the universities and almost all hospitals are gone. Almost all the population is displaced. There have been numerous bombings of civilians in so-called ‘safe zones’. Gaza does not exist anymore. It is completely destroyed. Thus, the outcome fits perfectly with the stated intentions of Israel’s leadership.

Lemkin - that scholar who coined the term ‘genocide’ - described two phases of a genocide. The first is the destruction of the annihilated group and the second is what he called ‘imposition of the national pattern’ of the perpetrator. We are now witnessing the second phase as Israel prepares ethnically cleansed areas for Israeli settlements.

And therefore, I have come to the conclusion that this is exactly what a genocide looks like. We don’t teach about genocides in order to realize it retrospectively. We teach about it in order to prevent it and to stop it.

But like in every other case of genocide in history right now we have mass denial. Both here in Israel and around the world.

But reality cannot be denied.

So yes, it is a genocide.

And once you come to this conclusion you cannot remain silent.”

- Statement to Led By Donkeys, December 2024
- Photo: Parliament Square, London, 8.40am, 4th December 2024

[Rick @colonelhogans]

Australian values?

Like Barnaby Joyce and Karl Stephanovic?

Betray the amazing, loving, loyal women who stood by them for years and gave up their own careers, to raise the kids that Joyce and Stephanovic walked out on for younger women?

They can both take their “Australian values” and FUCK OFF!

Misogynist right wing hypocrisy on steroids.

[Rushi @rushicrypto]

The sun hits the Earth with 10,000 times more energy than we use.

Every. Single. Day.

We're not running out of power.

We're just stuck using the wrong kind-because billionaires don't own sunlight.

[Peter FitzSimons @Peter_Fitz]

Sickening.

[ً @prinkasusa]

the fact that women could have their nudes leaked and their whole career could potentially be destroyed but men could have a whole ass R@PE ALLEGATION but still be the president of the US... i never wanna hear y'all argue that gender inequality doesn't exist

[Neil Stone @DrNeilStone]

I have a degree in psychology, a PhD, a medical degree and 3 specialist postgraduate diplomas

I've studied and practiced medicine for 27 years

But I guess that doesn't compare to you Googling something whilst on the toilet

[Mike Carlton @MikeCarlton01]

@atrupar Australia doesn’t give a flying fuck.

[Dr Tracy Westerman AM @TracyWesterman]

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.

[Dr Tracy Westerman AM @TracyWesterman]

Every time someone criticises the quality of our politicians, conservatives fire back with ‘but the country’s still a mess.’
What mess exactly?
Australia has universal healthcare. Free public education. A minimum wage. Compulsory superannuation. One of the highest standards of living on earth. We are not at war. We are not in famine. We are not living under authoritarian rule.
By virtually every global measure, Australia is one of the best countries on earth to be born into. That didn’t happen by accident.
Are there real challenges? Yes. Housing affordability is a genuine crisis. Cost of living is hurting people. Those are legitimate issues that deserve real policy responses.
What they don’t deserve is being weaponised by people who have no intention of solving them.
Because ask yourself — when did you last hear Hanson or One Nation offer an actual successful, budgeted policy solution to housing? To cost of living? Not a grievance. Not a target. An actual successful policy.
Their entire business model is convincing you the country is a disaster so you stay angry enough to vote for them. Scared people don’t ask hard questions. Trump still has “concepts of a health plan” -while the entire country can’t afford healthcare.
Every foundation that makes Australia great was built by progressive governments, opposed at every turn by conservatives.
Medicare. Superannuation. The NDIS. The minimum wage. The National Apology. The two biggest back-to-back budget surpluses in history after inheriting a trillion dollars of Liberal debt.
A decade of Coalition government gave us Robodebt. Sports rorts. A delayed national integrity commission. And a senator found guilty of racially vilifying a PhD engineer.
The country isn’t a mess. But we will be when the people running it have no idea what they were doing

[Tuki @TukiFromKL]

🚨 do you understand what Iran just said tonight..

a senior official went on CNN and told the world that Tehran will "determine when the war ends".. and they "will not stop until we teach Trump and Netanyahu a historic lesson"..

read that again..

let me show you every country that looked America in the eye and said the same thing..

Vietnam 1965.. "we will fight until the last man".. America bombed them for 10 years.. deployed 500,000 troops.. spent $840 billion.. and left in 1975 with nothing..

Afghanistan 2001.. the Taliban told reporters "we are patient.. you are not".. America stayed for 20 years.. spent $2.3 trillion.. and flew out of Kabul in the middle of the night in 2021..

Iraq is still burning.. Libya is still split in two..

the United States has more aircraft carriers than the next 10 countries combined.. spends more on defense than the next 9 nations put together..
and hasn't won a land war on someone else's soil since 1945..

so when Iran says "we'll decide when this ends"..
they're not making a threat..

they're quoting a pattern that nobody in Washington wants to say out loud...

[Sandra K Eckersley @SandraEckersley]

David Pocock has achieved more as a single Independent MP in four years than Pauline Hanson and her entire circus of expensive clowns have achieved in 20 years. #auspol

[Belinduh Pyne @belinduhpyne]

@ausstockchick Because majority of Australians aren’t assholes and have consideration for other working Australians.

[Glenn Tunes @glenn_tunes]

REMOVING ONLY DONALD TRUMP AND REPLACING HIM WITH JD VANCE WOULD BE LIKE SHITTING YOUR PANTS AND RUNNING HOME TO CHANGE YOUR T SHIRT 🤷 THE ONLY WAY TO SAVE AMERICA IS BY REMOVING THE ENTIRE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION ✊✊✊✊✊

[Fordy @SoireeCreative]

But it’s silent!!!

[Craig Hill @CraigHill01]

Angus Taylor would like to remind everybody that there is a "g" in his name.

[Peter Girnus 🦅 @gothburz]

I am a diplomatic aide in the Sultanate of Oman's Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

My job is logistics. When two countries that cannot speak to each other need to speak to each other, I book the rooms. I prepare the briefing materials. I make sure the water glasses are the right distance apart. You would be surprised how much of diplomacy is water glasses. Too close and it feels informal. Too far and it feels like a tribunal. I have a chart.

We had a very good month.

Since January, Oman has been mediating indirect talks between the United States and Iran on Iran's nuclear program. The talks were held in Muscat and in Geneva. The Americans would sit in one room. The Iranians would sit in another room. I would walk between them. My Fitbit says I averaged fourteen thousand steps on negotiation days. The hallway between the two rooms at the Royal Opera House conference center is forty-seven meters. I walked it two hundred and twelve times in February. This is good for my cardiovascular health. It was less good for my knees. Both are in the service of peace.

By mid-February, we had something.

Iran agreed to zero stockpiling of enriched uranium. Not reduced stockpiling. Zero. They agreed to down-blend existing stockpiles to the lowest possible level. They agreed to convert them into irreversible fuel. They agreed to full IAEA verification with potential US inspector access. They agreed, in the Foreign Minister's phrase, to "never, ever" possess nuclear material for a bomb. I have worked in diplomacy for seven years. I have never seen a country agree to this many things this quickly. I made a spreadsheet of the concessions. It had fourteen rows. I color-coded it. Green for confirmed. Yellow for pending. By February 21 the spreadsheet was entirely green. I printed it. It is on my desk in Muscat. It is still green.

That phrase took eleven days. "Never, ever." The Iranians initially offered "not seek to." The Americans wanted "will not under any circumstances." We landed on "never, ever" at 2:14 AM on a Tuesday in Muscat. I typed the final version myself. I used Times New Roman because Geneva prefers it. The document was fourteen pages. I was proud of every comma.

Here is what they said, in the order they said it.

February 24: "We have a once-in-a-generation opportunity." — The Foreign Minister, private briefing to Gulf Cooperation Council ambassadors. I prepared the slide deck. Slide 14 was the implementation timeline. Slide 15 was the signing ceremony logistics. I had reserved the Palais des Nations in Geneva, Room XX. It seats four hundred. We discussed pen brands for the signing. The Iranians preferred Montblanc. The Americans had no preference. I ordered twelve Montblanc Meisterstucks at six hundred and thirty dollars each. They arrive on Tuesday.

February 27, 8:30 AM EST: "The deal is within our reach." — The Foreign Minister, CBS Face the Nation. He sat across from Margaret Brennan. He said broad political terms could be agreed "tomorrow" with ninety days for technical implementation in Vienna. He said, and I wrote this line for the briefing card he carried in his breast pocket: "If we just allow diplomacy the space it needs." He praised the American envoys by name. Steve Witkoff. Jared Kushner. He said both had been constructive.

I watched from the Four Seasons Georgetown. The minibar had cashews. I ate the cashews. They were nineteen dollars. The most expensive cashew I have ever eaten. But it was a good morning and we were within our reach.

February 27, 2:00 PM EST: Meeting with Vice President Vance, Washington. The Foreign Minister presented our progress. Zero stockpiling. Full verification. Irreversible conversion. "Never, ever." The Vice President used the word "encouraging." His aide took notes on an iPad. The aide did not make eye contact for the last nine minutes of the meeting. I noticed this. Noticing things is the only part of my job that is not water glasses.

February 27, 4:00 PM EST: "Not happy with the pace." — President Trump, to reporters.

Not happy with the pace.

We had achieved zero stockpiling. Full IAEA verification. Irreversible fuel conversion. Inspector access. And the phrase "never, ever," which took eleven days and cost me two hundred and twelve trips down a forty-seven-meter hallway.

Every American president since Carter has failed to get Iran to agree to this. Forty-five years.

Not happy with the pace.

February 27, 9:47 PM EST: The Foreign Minister's flight departs Dulles for Muscat. I am in the seat behind him. He is reviewing Slide 14 on his laptop. The implementation timeline. Vienna technical sessions. The signing ceremony. The pens.

I fall asleep over the Atlantic. I dream about water glasses.

February 28, 6:00 AM GST: I wake up to push notifications.

February 28: "The United States has begun major combat operations in Iran." — President Trump.

Operation Epic Fury. Coordinated airstrikes. The United States and Israel. Tehran. Isfahan. Qom. Karaj. Kermanshah. Nuclear facilities. IRGC bases. Sites near the Supreme Leader's office. Israel called their half Operation Roaring Lion. Someone in both governments spent time choosing these names. Epic Fury. Roaring Lion. I spent eleven days on "never, ever." They spent it on branding. The President said Iran had "rejected American calls to halt its nuclear weapons production."

Rejected.

Iran had agreed to zero stockpiling. Iran had agreed to full verification. Iran had agreed to "never, ever." Iran had agreed to everything in a fourteen-page document that I typed in Times New Roman.

The President said they rejected it.

I do not know which document the President was reading. I know which one I typed.

February 28, 18:45 UTC: Iran internet connectivity: four percent. — NetBlocks, confirmed by Cloudflare. Ninety-six percent of a country went dark. You cannot negotiate with a country at four percent connectivity. You cannot negotiate with a country that is being struck. You cannot negotiate. This is not a political opinion. This is a logistics assessment.

February 28: The governor of Minab reported forty girls killed at an elementary school.

I do not have logistics for that. There is no slide for that. The water glass chart does not cover that.

February 28: Lockheed Martin: up. Northrop Grumman: up. RTX: up. Dow futures: down six hundred and twenty-two points. Gold: five thousand two hundred and ninety-six dollars. An analyst at AInvest published a note titled "Iran Strikes: Tactical Plays." The note recommended positions in oil, defense stocks, and gold.

The most expensive cashew I have ever eaten was nineteen dollars. The most expensive pen I have ever ordered was six hundred and thirty dollars. The math suggests I have been working in the wrong industry. Defense stocks do not require water glasses. Defense stocks do not require eleven days. Defense stocks require one morning.

February 28: Israel closed its airspace and its schools. Iran launched retaliatory missiles toward US bases in the Gulf. The Supreme Leader promised a "crushing response." Israel's defense minister declared a permanent state of emergency. Everyone is using words I recognize in an order I do not. I recognize "permanent." I recognize "emergency." I do not recognize them next to each other. In diplomacy, nothing is permanent and everything is an emergency. In war it is the reverse.

February 28: The Foreign Minister has not made a public statement.

The briefing card is still in his breast pocket. It still says "within our reach."