Annie Hoban

Visual artist

[Annie Hoban @saltandashes]

‘The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.’
Antonio Gramsci

[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

[Leyla Hamed @leylahamed]

We all knew these situations were going to happen, and so did FIFA. Yet they still allowed the World Cup to go ahead in the U.S. They are not receiving anywhere near the level of scrutiny they should.

[Craig Murray @CraigMurrayOrg]

I am relieved that Iran has finally fired back at Israel.

The impunity with which Israel constantly violates the ceasefires in Lebanon and Gaza has to end.

Iran is standing up for all of humanity against the zionist supremacists.

[IRAN Embassy in Austria @IraninAustria]

The United States reveals itself as not only a criminal regime but also a cowardly one.
Having failed to secure any military victory in #Iran—despite committing documented war crimes—it now seeks a base form of revenge.
Unable to dominate on the battlefield, it attempts to compensate on the football field: abusing its duties as the World Cup host, denying visas to Iranian team members, and creating a hostile environment for the national squad.
Its apparent goal is to wound the pride of the Iranian people where it cannot win on the ground.
From the very beginning, we have maintained that the USA—particularly under Trump’s leadership—is unfit to host the #FIFAWorldCup2026 or any other major international event, sporting or otherwise.

[Antifa_Ultras @ultras_antifaa]

Iraqi footballer Aymen Hussein issued a statement after being detained and questioned for seven hours upon entering the United States:

“If America is so hostile towards foreign nationals, why is it hosting the #2026WorldCup?”

[Richard @ricwe123]

On this day in 1967, Israeli forces attacked the USS Liberty, killing 34 American servicemen and wounding 171.

[Fútbol Iraní @damavand1921]

Irán es el único equipo de los 48 del Mundial al que EEUU prohíbe quedarse en su territorio antes o después de cada partido.

Llegas el día del partido. Juegas. Y esa misma noche, de vuelta a México.

Sois una mafia @FIFAcom

[William Dalrymple @DalrympleWill]

"Pete Hegseth’s D-day speech on immigration condemned as ‘grotesque stupidity.’ Historians and campaigners accuse US defence secretary of desecrating memory of soldiers who fell in Normandy"
https://t.co/VFtZCfZKJS

[Thomas Fazi @battleforeurope]

Crazy that this is getting barely any coverage. This year’s European Press Prize was just awarded to an investigative report by the Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant. It is entitled “What the Wounds Tell” and in it the journalists Maud Effting and Willem Feenstra document the cases of 114 children in Gaza under the age of 15 who were struck by a single bullet to the head or chest. Almost all of them died or were left severely disabled. They chose to document only the cases of boys and girls under the age of 15 (though often much younger: aged 3, 4 or 7) because these are children who can be immediately identified as such. “A single bullet in these parts of the body is a clear indication that these children were deliberately targeted“, the two journalists write.

This is the article: https://t.co/YkZrpqBWBQ

[Anna @AnnaDeMilanese]

Das ist kein Luxusresort. Sazan – die albanische Insel an der Straße von Otranto – ist das maritime Tor zwischen Adria und Mittelmeer.
3.600 atomsichere Bunker. 15 Kilometer Tunnel. Ehemalige sowjetische U-Boot-Anlegestellen.
Die Insel kontrolliert wer die Adria kontrolliert. Und wer kauft sie?
Kushners Affinity Partners – finanziert zu 99 Prozent von Saudi-Arabien, UAE und Katar.
157 Millionen Dollar Gebühren von ausländischen Staatsfonds.
Das bestätigt der US-Finanzausschuss unter Senator Wyden.

Und wer leitet das Team? Kein einziger Hotelmanager. Ausschließlich Ex-Geheimdienstler und Ex-Regierungsbeamte der Trump-Administration. General Miguel Correa – ehemaliger Direktor für Golfangelegenheiten im Nationalen Sicherheitsrat. Mitarchitekt der Abraham-Accords.
Kevin Hassett – ehemaliger Vorsitzender des Wirtschaftsberaterstabs im Weißen Haus.
Chad Mizelle – ehemaliger amtierender Chefsyndikus des Heimatschutzministeriums. John Rader – ehemaliger Nationaler Sicherheitsrat. Nick Butterfield – ehemaliger stellvertretender Koordinator für Politik im Weißen Haus.
Senator Wyden: Die Anwesenheit von General Correa „wirft Bedenken hinsichtlich der Emoluments-Klausel der Verfassung auf."
Das ist kein Resort. Das ist eine geopolitische Operation – finanziert von Golfstaaten – auf einer ehemaligen sowjetischen Militärbasis – im Herzen Europas. 🇦🇱🇸🇦🇦🇪🇶🇦🇺🇸🇪🇺

[Annie Hoban @saltandashes]

@Mo7ammed_jawad6 ❤️Rafif

[Mike Levin @MikeLevin]

This is really stupid, and it’s not getting enough attention.

The Trump administration is pulling a working $368 million ocean monitoring system out of the water, equipment taxpayers already bought, built, and sank into the deep ocean.

And they are doing it right when the oceans are behaving in ways that alarm the scientists who study them.

Record-breaking temperatures.

A system of Atlantic currents that may be lurching toward collapse.

The response?

Yank out the instruments and walk away.

That is not budgeting. That is smashing the gauges while the engine is on fire and calling it efficiency.

For what? The Trump administration dressed it up as a “nimbler approach” and “smart lifecycle management,” which is fancy nonsense for “we shut it off and hoped nobody would ask why.” There is no return-on-investment analysis. They cannot show taxpayers save a dime, because the gear is already paid for and the science it produces protects real money and real lives.

The kicker: the same people killing the monitors want to mine the deep sea for minerals. So they are destroying the only tools that could measure what that mining does. That is not an accident.

That is the point. You cannot see the damage if you break the instruments first.
https://t.co/MzE4AW1QBv

[Mark Carney @MarkJCarney]

Il y a 82 ans, 14 000 Canadiens ont débarqué à Juno Beach. Beaucoup d’entre eux ne sont jamais rentrés chez eux.

À l’occasion de l’anniversaire du jour J, nous prenons le temps de rendre hommage à ceux qui ont servi et consenti des sacrifices. Nous nous souvenons que nous devons nos droits, nos libertés et notre mode de vie à ceux qui ont répondu à l’appel et qui se sont battus pour les acquérir.

[Daniel Mayakovski @DaniMayakovski]

"Nada es más importante que detener al fascismo o el fascismo nos detendrá a todos. Debemos luchar sin descanso, porque a la gente a la que le pedimos paz, son una banda de belicistas megalómanos".

Fred Hampton, líder revolucionario del Partido de las Panteras Negras, en 1969.

[Andrea Junker @Strandjunker]

On this 82nd anniversary of D-Day, remember: The way we wonder why Germans didn’t stop Hitler is exactly how the rest of the world views Americans and Trump today.

[Prime Minister of Canada @CanadianPM]

Today, we remember the Afzaal family, whose lives were taken in an Islamophobic terrorist attack in London, Ontario.

As we honour their memory, we reaffirm our commitment to combatting Islamophobia and hate in all its forms – and to building a safer and more inclusive Canada.

[Bill Madden @maddenifico]

The Albanian uprising against Trump crime family grifters Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump is truly remarkable.

[luka @Lukadiarde]

Il popolo albanese sembra l’unico a opporsi al tentativo di Israele di governare il mediterraneo

[Saganism @Saganismm]

“I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness...

The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance”

― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

[Daniel Mayakovski @DaniMayakovski]

"Si el Mossad aún no les ha informado, me tiemblan las piernas de estar aquí, ante uno de los mejores oradores del mundo, el primer ministro Netanyahu. Haré lo mejor que pueda, querido Bibi, para sobrevivir a tu juicio".

Recordemos el infame discurso servil de Edi Rama, primer ministro de Albania, en el parlamento del apartheid de "Israel" hace unos meses, uno de los discursos más arrastrados y ridículos que jamás escuché.

Este tipo está vendiendo su pais al sionismo mientras dice que los enemigos de "Israel" quieren destruirle.