Michael Croft

I fear God, love Jesus, study the Bible. Love my family, Trish, Es, Tim & Beth. Self funded surfer, Christian Surfers International volunteer worker.

[The Palestinian @InsiderWorld_1]

Retweet if you think the world will be better without them

[Michael Croft @michaeldcroft]

Indeed

[Nicole Chvastek @NChvastek]

The biggest threat to our lives is not the brown people living next door - it is the blood sucking bullshitting tax free billionaire grifters who own our politicians.
So of course “The Age” bury that mind blowing inconvenient truth somewhere past page 20 in the business section.

[Ricardo @Ric_RTP]

In 1879, JP Morgan paid a man to invent the lie that is the foundation of modern economics.

A billionaire who helped start Amazon just exposed the whole thing on Diary of a CEO, and once you hear it you will never look at paychecks the same way again:

146 years ago, a guy named Henry George wrote a book called Progress and Poverty.

It was the first mainstream book about the rich systematically stealing from the poor, and It literally became the bestselling book in the history of the United States at the time.

The working class was reading it everywhere, and the people at the top of the economy completely lost their minds.

So JP Morgan personally brought a man named John Bates Clark to Columbia University, which was essentially the intellectual headquarters of Wall Street, and told him to fix the problem.

Clark wrote a book called The Distribution of Wealth. In it, he invented something called the "theory of marginal productivity," which claims that because markets are perfectly efficient, the amount of money you earn reflects EXACTLY the value you contribute to the economy.

If you make $15,000 a year, that's because you're providing $15,000 of value. If a hedge fund manager makes $500 million a year moving money around, that's an accurate reflection of the value he creates in the world.

And Clark literally said the quiet part out loud IN HIS OWN BOOK.

He wrote that they had to prove to working people that no matter how much they make, whether it's a little or a lot, it accurately reflects their value, because if workers ever concluded that their labor was worth more than they were being paid, they would revolt and destroy the entire system.

That was the whole point. The theory was built to prevent a revolution.

And it worked so well that it got absorbed into mainstream economics and is STILL taught as a foundational principle to this day.

Every time a CEO tells you "the market decides your salary," they're repeating a framework that was literally commissioned by JP Morgan in the 1800s to convince you not to ask for more.

Nick Hanauer, the billionaire who told this story, also shared the numbers that prove why it matters right now:

The median full-time worker in America earns about $60,000 a year. If that same worker had maintained the same share of GDP they held in 1975, they wouldn't be making $60,000. They'd be making $120,000. That gap goes all the way up to the 90th percentile. If you earn $180,000 today, you'd be earning $250,000 under the old distribution.

The ONLY people who benefited from 50 years of economic growth were the top 10%, and the vast majority of that went to the top 1%. That is trillions of dollars every single year that used to be wages for ordinary working people and now sits in the accounts of the wealthiest people on the planet.

This happened because of policy. Tax cuts for the rich, deregulation for the powerful, and wage suppression for everyone else, all justified by an economic theory that was invented specifically to make you believe you deserve exactly what you're getting.

And the craziest part is that GDP growth rates in America were 4 to 4.5% for decades when workers were included in prosperity. As soon as the neoliberals took over in the mid-1970s and implemented these policies, GDP growth fell to 3% and eventually to 2%.

Including people in the economy doesn't slow growth down. It's literally the thing that CREATES growth. And the theory that convinced the world otherwise was a hit job paid for by one of the richest men in history to keep workers quiet.

What do you think?

[Michael Croft @michaeldcroft]

Ditch the AUKUS @AlboMP

[StarBoySAR 🇭🇰 🇨🇳 🥭 @StarboySAR]

Brilliant piece from Pearls and Irritations. Finally, someone in Australia is saying out loud what the rest of us have been watching for the past five years

Let's be clear about what AUKUS actually is: the greatest military protection racket in modern history. Washington looked at its own crippled submarine industrial base—17 boats short, yards choking, Congress screaming—and found the perfect mark. A wealthy, eager, insecure middle power with a bipartisan fetish for great-power relevance and a defense minister who treats strategic questions like a classified state secret

The deal? Australia pays half a trillion dollars. In return, it gets used Virginia-class hand-me-downs—Block IV boats with a decade of wear already on the hulls, probably smelling faintly of its previous crew

Even more intriguing, the article confirms for what this overpriced second-hand Australian "sovereign" nuclear submarine fleet is actually for:

Hunting Chinese Jin-class and Type 096 SSBNs. Not to protect Sydney Harbour. Not to secure Australia's trade routes. To find, track, and if ordered, destroy the Chinese nuclear submarines that threaten continental America!

That's the job. That's the whole job. Australia just committed A$368 billion to be the US Navy's underwater security guard!

The comedy of "sovereign capability" is almost too rich. Sovereign? The reactors are American. The combat system is American. The weapons are American. The fuel is American. The intelligence feed is American. The maintenance schedule is American. Permanently tethering Australia to U.S. software, maintenance, and logistics, effectively ending any "sovereign" capability. The only thing Australian is the taxpayer—and the Prime Minister standing in front of a camera calling this independence

Australia is not buying a submarine; it is buying a node in a U.S. sensor network. The acquisition deeply integrates Australia into the U.S. military command structure, making Australia a tool for U.S. strategic objectives in the Indo-Pacific — while a massive amount of Australian wealth is transferred into the U.S. military-industrial complex

And the timing is exquisite. Washington just added another half-trillion to its own defense budget while Australia is told to hit 3.5% of GDP. America gets the money, the boats, the basing rights at HMAS Stirling, and a Pacific ASW auxiliary. Australia gets the bill, the dependency, and the warm fuzzy feeling of being taken seriously by the adults.

The U.S. 2025 National Security Strategy (NSS) emphasizes "burden-sharing among allies" and "realist diplomacy." This submarine deal is the perfect execution of that strategy: the U.S. maintains its military overmatch against China by essentially "outsourcing" the financial cost of undersea surveillance to Australia 🤡

Paul Keating called this three years ago. He was mocked, of course. The press club gasped. The security establishment rolled its eyes. But he was right then, and this article proves he's right now. It is worse than he thought. It's not that AUKUS is of little military benefit to Australia. It's that AUKUS is of negative military benefit to Australia—actively diverting resources from actual defense needs toward a capability designed for someone else's homeland

https://t.co/f7lYAMf3JY

[StarBoySAR 🇭🇰 🇨🇳 🥭 @StarboySAR]

Brilliant piece from Pearls and Irritations. Finally, someone in Australia is saying out loud what the rest of us have been watching for the past five years

Let's be clear about what AUKUS actually is: the greatest military protection racket in modern history. Washington looked at its own crippled submarine industrial base—17 boats short, yards choking, Congress screaming—and found the perfect mark. A wealthy, eager, insecure middle power with a bipartisan fetish for great-power relevance and a defense minister who treats strategic questions like a classified state secret

The deal? Australia pays half a trillion dollars. In return, it gets used Virginia-class hand-me-downs—Block IV boats with a decade of wear already on the hulls, probably smelling faintly of its previous crew

Even more intriguing, the article confirms for what this overpriced second-hand Australian "sovereign" nuclear submarine fleet is actually for:

Hunting Chinese Jin-class and Type 096 SSBNs. Not to protect Sydney Harbour. Not to secure Australia's trade routes. To find, track, and if ordered, destroy the Chinese nuclear submarines that threaten continental America!

That's the job. That's the whole job. Australia just committed A$368 billion to be the US Navy's underwater security guard!

The comedy of "sovereign capability" is almost too rich. Sovereign? The reactors are American. The combat system is American. The weapons are American. The fuel is American. The intelligence feed is American. The maintenance schedule is American. Permanently tethering Australia to U.S. software, maintenance, and logistics, effectively ending any "sovereign" capability. The only thing Australian is the taxpayer—and the Prime Minister standing in front of a camera calling this independence

Australia is not buying a submarine; it is buying a node in a U.S. sensor network. The acquisition deeply integrates Australia into the U.S. military command structure, making Australia a tool for U.S. strategic objectives in the Indo-Pacific — while a massive amount of Australian wealth is transferred into the U.S. military-industrial complex

And the timing is exquisite. Washington just added another half-trillion to its own defense budget while Australia is told to hit 3.5% of GDP. America gets the money, the boats, the basing rights at HMAS Stirling, and a Pacific ASW auxiliary. Australia gets the bill, the dependency, and the warm fuzzy feeling of being taken seriously by the adults.

The U.S. 2025 National Security Strategy (NSS) emphasizes "burden-sharing among allies" and "realist diplomacy." This submarine deal is the perfect execution of that strategy: the U.S. maintains its military overmatch against China by essentially "outsourcing" the financial cost of undersea surveillance to Australia 🤡

Paul Keating called this three years ago. He was mocked, of course. The press club gasped. The security establishment rolled its eyes. But he was right then, and this article proves he's right now. It is worse than he thought. It's not that AUKUS is of little military benefit to Australia. It's that AUKUS is of negative military benefit to Australia—actively diverting resources from actual defense needs toward a capability designed for someone else's homeland

https://t.co/f7lYAMf3JY

[Mike Carlton @MikeCarlton01]

Top story, a superb piece of investigative journalism. Australia’s Nazis and their super rich mates. Just like Hitler, they have their very own Berchtesgaden…

https://t.co/4IhR1KXlDf

[Dr Monique Ryan MP @Mon4Kooyong]

It’s a national embarrassment that a former Labor minister is crowdfunding for an independent inquiry into AUKUS, one which the government keeps denying us.

You wonder why people are giving up on the major parties: first they commit us to an extraordinarily expensive deal with unreliable allies and even less reliable deliverables, now they change terms of the deal without real transparency, and tell us we're getting a good deal when we’re paying the same for less. Australians aren't buying it.
https://t.co/hsdlc7r5ql

[Michael Croft @michaeldcroft]

Sure is. Means the the complementarians miss much

[John Dickson @johnpauldickson]

The New Testament has multiple forms of public speech in church. Paul bans just one of them to women (authoritative teaching). He explicitly expects women to do two others (prophesying and praying). He gives no ruling on the others (exhorting, preaching, evangelizing). It's strange that we've come to define the "sermon"—which is just Latin for a "speech"—as always and only the one thing women are not permitted to do.

[John Dickson @johnpauldickson]

The New Testament has multiple forms of public speech in church. Paul bans just one of them to women (authoritative teaching). He explicitly expects women to do two others (prophesying and praying). He gives no ruling on the others (exhorting, preaching, evangelizing). It's strange that we've come to define the "sermon"—which is just Latin for a "speech"—as always and only the one thing women are not permitted to do.

[Hala Jaber @HalaJaber]

Let’s talk about Rania Mallah, killed yesterday in an Israeli strike on Bourj al-Shamali in Tyre.

For 12 hours, Rania was buried beneath the rubble & known to still be alive.

Her family kept calling her mobile phone.

She would switch it on to let them know she was still there. Still breathing. Still waiting to be rescued.
To let Lebanese Civil Defence rescuers know where she was trapped.

Rescue teams pulled others out & kept digging with their bare hands in search of her, until orders came to halt all rescue operations until the following morning.

But they had Rania’s number.

They kept calling her.
And she kept answering.

She never spoke.
But they could hear her breathing.

For 12 hours, Rania lay there alone beneath broken concrete, stones, darkness, dust & fear. Most likely injured. Listening to voices above her, knowing people were trying to reach her but were being prevented from continuing.

Just like in Maarakeh, rescuers were forced to stop searching overnight.

Still, they kept calling her phone to give her hope. To let her know she had not been abandoned.

By around 1:00 a.m., roughly 12 hours after the strike, her phone finally went dead.
The battery had most likely run out.

This morning, rescuers resumed the search.

They found Rania.

Next to her was her mobile phone.

She had died.

Israel killed her twice.
The first time with a bomb.
The second time when rescuers were prevented from saving her.

[Michael Croft @michaeldcroft]

Briefly - for those caught by fear and lies

[Craig Emerson @DrCraigEmerson]

Yes, stand firm ⁦@AlboMP⁩ Without these changes the privileged few will lock young working people out of owning their own homes forever - which is exactly what the Liberals and Nationals want. https://t.co/WgzHBUKRWI

[sarah @sahouraxo]

BREAKING :

The UN accuses Israel of committing EXTERMINATION in Gaza.

EXTERMINATION.

Repeat it. Spread it. Let the world know.

“Israel is responsible for extermination, murder, using starvation as a method of war..”

—The UN Human Rights Council

[Michael Croft @michaeldcroft]

@abc730 Sarah Ferguson has the worst interview technique. Doesn’t gather information just chases dumb gotchas. Switched off

[Michael Croft @michaeldcroft]

Insightful

[Sulaiman Ahmed @ShaykhSulaiman]

JUST IN: Iran's FM Spokesperson Esmail Baghaei:

Iran has proven to be a responsible power in the region, and at the same time, we are not bullies rather, we are anti-bullies. Just look at our conduct.

Were we the ones who launched a military campaign against America thousands of miles away? Were we the ones who killed 170 innocent people in a single day? Are we the ones bullying Cuba, Venezuela, and other countries in the Western Hemisphere? Were we the ones who, during a diplomatic process, committed such a great crime twice?

Is attacking a country, destroying its infrastructure, and assassinating the leader and citizens of a country an example of responsible behavior?

[David Vargas Araujo @DavidVargasA18]

De Putin, para Donald Trump:

Un submarino ruso, propulsado por energía nuclear, ha llegado a La Habana, Cuba hoy, a solo 90 millas de Estados Unidos.

El submarino entró al puerto de La Habana, pasando por la histórica fortaleza colonial, con marineros rusos en la cubierta.
RT👇

[BladeoftheSun @BladeoftheS]

Charlotte Church sang From the River to the Sea at a fundraising event for Palestinians and now all the usual people are screaming antisemitism and trying to cancel her.

RT if you stand with Charlotte Church and Palestine.