The Party Line Live

As always, welcome to episode 28 of The Party Line. [APPLAUSE] Thank you. This podcast was recorded on Indigenous land, and we stand in solidarity with our Indigenous brothers and sisters in their struggle against racism and capitalism. [MUSIC - "O My Darling, O My Darling, O My Darling Party Line"] Oh, I never will forsake thee, or I love this life of mine. So now this is-- well, do you guys want to say hello first? Hello. Hi. So for the people listening to this on Spotify or on YouTube, we're currently at the Sydney Road Festival. Outside is a piñata in the shape of Donald Trump's head that is being smashed by a small child, which I think is very nice. And then in front of me is-- I'll say an Iranian child. Oh, yeah. And then in front of us is a wonderful live audience. So to the audience, there's going to be a bit of audience participation through it. And you guys need to deal with what we have to do, which is both a visual and audio experience. So if I'm asking you to say stuff, you have to be loud so that the microphones can pick you up, basically? Yeah. Oh, we've got a roving mic as well. Microphone as well. Yeah. So, well, by way of starting, O My Darling has some grievances. Yeah, I mean, as you can tell, there's a certain division in the setup here, which mirrors some of the divisions that you see regularly on the pod. And I just want to point out, this is the visual quality of the podcast. Notice Jorie, Jerem and Anika are golden brown, sun-kissed, like, home and away characters. And I am basically green. So there's a continuing kind of racial supremacy on this pod that I'm challenging. And I hope you all support me in that endeavor. Yeah. And you can see today, like, I'm on the shitty stool. They got the comfy couch. Yeah. Anyway, let's try and rectify that. So we wanted this podcast to be mainly bullshit. Actually, let's do a bit of audience participation, because this is another divide that exists on the podcast. So maybe be, like, loud if you prefer more bullshit, and then we'll do one for less bullshit. So more bullshit. More bullshit. And then less bullshit. Yeah. Oh, wow. Interesting. But you know what I think that reflects is more serious people come to in-person events. So I think that's not conclusive. Yeah, that's the core. That's the core. I think it's pretty conclusive. I actually don't remember what else is on here. Oh, OK. So we wanted to do a lot of bullshit on this, because it's like a live event, Sydney Road Festival. There's a pin yada. But yeah, last night I was at the pub for a friend's birthday, and a phone ping goes off. News notification, which is Israel and America bombing Iran. So we thought it was important that we talk a bit about that, which obviously has been really horrific news to sort of follow over the last 24 hours. And it's been sort of, yeah, I guess, started with a massive buildup of planes and fighter jets and ships, naval ships all around Iran. Yeah, I mean, it's just one of those things. People who are old enough to have lived through the war on Sarah, the war on Afghanistan, the war on Iraq. It's that kind of American swagger where fucking going to war the stupid cap with USA on it. Like, there's a certain aesthetic and then the flag with the bold eagle and whatever the Trump has behind him. There's like this military imperial aesthetic that America really leans into every time they're about to slaughter people. And to see that last night, we're shocking. The immediately, of course, we hear about the school that gets bombed over 100 kids dead and still more being counted in the rubble. Of course, this is the targeted phase of the war. And we've seen from Gaza what targeting looks like. So yeah, we have to address this and especially given the comments of our own government here. Yeah. And I think like a lot of people have been saying like online and in person like, oh, this is a weird time to be alive. I just want to kind of return to normal. I guess this is us returning to normal under capitalism. Rise of imperialism, disease, pandemic, like this is normal. We had a brief period of where it wasn't that normal where wages were going up for a small period of time. But yeah, this is just I guess a return to normal. And it's been like multiple times we've all been out. I think both we've been drunk a few times. When America started doing that. It made exactly multiple times. My mother has a kid so he doesn't go out that much anymore. Yeah, I'm a bit of a loser. Sorry, I got it. Sure, your words. But yeah, I think one of the things about the war that started in Iran is that the government in America have tried to come up with a whole bunch of different justifications for why they've launched this war. WMDs? Yeah, well, but I mean, I was watching this video from, do you guys know Tim Heidecker? One cinema at the cinema? No. Anyways, American comedian. And he was like, they haven't even bothered to come up with the weapons of mass destruction lie this time. They haven't bothered to, you know, get it approved or disapproved by the UN Security Council. A dossier. My is right. Like, they're just going to do what they want to do. But they have had some stories. I mean, one of the, I think, big ones that they push is that they need to bomb and kill people in Iran to fight for democracy. Yeah, Trump is famously a Democrat. I mean, everything he's done since being elected has been about expanding the rights of citizens to protest, to organize, to strike, to transit in and out of the country. So, yeah, clearly he's got a deep passion for that. Yeah, and another one of the justifications was, you know, this is we're doing this to protect women in Iran. And then like one of the first targets that they strike was a girl school. Yeah, absolutely. They've killed like 80 people. Yeah, it's like I think pretty clear that it's sort of just so hypocritical. The idea that America could be a bastion for women's rights, for democracy, for freedom. Like this is the country that has just launched, or they term a war on woke, which is equaled, you know, the taking away of rights for women to access abortion. All of the like, like international funding that America used to give out to NGOs and different organizations. Like if you support women's rights, basically you're not getting any of that money any longer. They have locked up Palestinian activists, Palestinian student activists. They have started a raid on like just innocent people in America putting them in detention camps. I think you had something about this, Jordy. Yeah. Yeah, I guess we went through some tweets by these people and their statements about around and stuff like that. And if you read this one, was it saying for decades, the Iranian regime has cruelly detained innocent Americans and citizens of other nations to use as political leverage, which is like, who would imprison people? Not Trump, that's for sure. Like Trump's currently the best at locking up people from America. They've just built all of these new detention facilities to put migrants into like, yeah. But going back to the women thing, I saw a really funny video by Tom Ballard, who's a great left-wing comedian. And he pointed out that initially he was very worried about the war. But then he found out it's being done in the name of women. And of course, given the Epstein files, we know that Trump really loves women and really cares about women very much. And so now he feels fine. Like, it's obviously a totally reasonable legitimate kind of action. I think that other justification that's been put out is like they have to bomb Iran because it's an immediate threat. Like this is the argument, I think, even more than just like relying on democracy or whatever is the argument that Iran is just this power in the region that's going to threaten American lives. So this is, I think, one of the big things that they've been pushing. Yeah, preemptive strike in self-defense. You know, Iran was just about to pull the trigger. But luckily, the Israelis and the Americans jumped in there to save themselves, which is one of the oldest tricks, you know, in the book. And one that like pretty much every imperialist power has used throughout history to justify an invasion of another country, obviously most famously in Iraq, but here as well. And to be honest, like from a socialist point of view, who starts the war is not necessarily the main thing. But in this case, it's just a very clear act of aggression that's totally about expanding Israeli and American power across the region after two and a half years of just doing that totally unchallenged. Yeah. And some of the context is firstly on the preemptive strike thing. Like I like how we come up with different words for the same things like forward defense and preemptive strike and whatever. But like some of the context behind it was like this was during negotiations between Iran and the US where, you know, then negotiating what's going to happen, negotiating peace in the Middle East or whatever. And then they do the largest deployment that they've done since 2003. And then during these same negotiations, start bombing. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the Iranians themselves were saying, like we're moving in the right direction, the Oman Foreign Minister, I think, or one of the guys mediating the talks, put out a tweet like the day, like the day was happening or the date started. Same things are really going well. You know, so some of the speculation is it was going too well. And the Americans didn't want actually a deal without doing some damage first. Like, you know, we'll probably never know. Yeah. But they clearly wanted this war, had been planning it for many weeks. And now they've got what they wanted. Yeah. And on the sort of topic of kind of hypocrisy from America, we did a bit of digging into some tweets from American politicians from a few years ago. So in 2020, Tulsi Gabbard was selling a t-shirt that said no war with Iran. I wonder how her sales on that one went. And then Steven Miller, to anyone still gullible enough to fall for scummy media hoaxes, Trump said warmongering Nearocon's love sending your kids to die for wars. They would never want to fight themselves. Liz Cheney is Kamala's top advisor. Liz wants to invade the whole Middle East. Kamala equals World War Three. Trump equals peace. So that's not that long ago. Yeah. And if you go back to slides back to slides. Yeah. Oh, yeah. That's Trump in 2013, which is a while ago. Right. And he says, yeah, I know you read it in front of you. Remember that I predicted a long time ago that President Obama will attack Iran because of his inability to negotiate properly, not skilled. Yeah. I mean, the thing is that interest determine actions. And what Israel has done in the last two and a half years has, you know, decapitated Hamas, decapitated Hasbullah, you know, weakened the hoothies. And now Iran is more isolated than ever. And so they just feel like, let's finish the job. Let's go for the Jaggilla. Yeah. And so this is higher age and for ourselves. And a lot of the analysis of this online is sort of like Israel is pulling all the strings, but it's just ludicrous. Well, we're going to that, my mother. Yeah. Another one of these, yeah, yeah. We just, we found this video of JD Vance from, I think, last year. But America's interest is sometimes going to be distinct. Like sometimes we're going to have overlapping interests. And sometimes we're going to have distinct interests. And our interest, I think, very much is in not going to war with Iran. Right. And that's a huge distraction of resources. It would be massively expensive to our country. Yeah, so that's JD Vance. I'm just not going to a world of Iran. I think I said in a very early episode of the party line that like Trump, he just tells it truth. He plays it straight. But obviously that was a bit of an exaggeration on my part. But it's like these guys, it's like they'll say anything. And it's very clear now that the thing that America does want to do is to take the opportunity to destroy Iran. They want to make that their interests in the Middle East are the ones that are being protected. And this goes to the point that you were starting to move on to Oramar about the idea that actually it's just Israel is something that people have been talking about. Yeah, I mean, it's very lazy logic. Like how a small country in the middle of the Middle East can control the American Empire with the largest military, the largest economy, the world's ever seen. It doesn't make any sense. And I think it gets things backwards. Yes, Israel can be more aggressive. It's not acting formally in the name of America, you know, in the same way that apartheid. South Africa can be more aggressive and do things that the American couldn't get away with or didn't want to. But ultimately there's limits. And we can see it like LA last year. The Americans imposed the so-called ceasefire on Israel, which allowed them to more or less continue, but at a lower tempo. And clearly there was planning for this war weeks and advance. Israel can't move American aircraft carriers to the Middle East. Israel can't do that, you know. And there was an article in the Independent, a British newspaper which said, "The American advises wanted Israel to launch the first missile because it was more convenient politically to sell it to their home audience." So this is very clearly a joint action led by the Americans, not some Zionist plot with the nefarious fingers on every American and Western government. And you can see how useful Israel is to helping to achieve America's interests and aims in the Middle East just over the last couple of years. Like in Lebanon, Israel helped to take out Hezbollah and take out all of their key leaders. They have been attacking Iraqi militias. They've been, you know, sort of pushing and pushing. And then in the last American and Israeli attack on Iran, Israel was central to help to take out the nuclear facilities that Iran was building. So it's, you can see just how important it is for America to have a state like Israel in the Middle East to help push things. Sometimes Israel does have interests of its own that go further than what America might want them to do. But in this scenario, they're working hand in glove to achieve this. Yeah, because their interests are aligned. On that point though, about like Israel can't move the American Empire's warships into the Middle East and all that kind of stuff. There was a comment. So the Socialist Party last night released a statement on this saying, you know, we oppose imperialist intervention in Iran. Someone commented on that saying that our podcast and manufactured consent for them to do that. And they're quite powerful. If we can manufacture consent for a war like, I think I should be getting a paycheck or something like that. Can we do a colored revolution in America? Come on, American people rise up. So then obviously this has been like a pretty horrific attack. But that's not how it's sort of been felt by politicians around the world. So Al-Banesi came out the first Western leader. He was the first leader to be like, yeah, we love it. I love it, love it, love it. So his statement says that we support the United States acting to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. And that Trump is actually helping to secure peace in the Middle East. Because the Iranians are threatening peace. And so going to war and setting up the whole region. This is a cuous peace. That's right. That's right. And then this is- And by the way, what's 2+2=? 5. So then this is a tweet from Tommy Robinson, who is the fascist in the UK, who just led, you know, a fascist march of like 200,000 people through London. And he says, I don't like this man either, but credit where it's due. Which student just tells you like who the fuck is Al-Banesi's statement like appealing to? Fascists like incredible. And then the German Chancellor Mertz, you know, strongly condemns Tehran's retaliatory strikes. Yeah. The Saudis were the same this morning. They were extremely angry that Iran has, you know, naturally declared war on the region and selling their defend themselves firmly in response to this attack. And the Germans and the French. And this is the line of everyone, even the UK Prime Minister Kirstama desperate, you know, he just had a terrible result in a bi-lection. Desperate for any kind of distraction is now committing UK fighter planes to patrolling the skies in the Middle East to defend. Yeah. So called allies. Yeah, like his thing last night was British planes were in the sky tonight. Like, you know, it's such a romantic. What everyone wants. They're in the sky. Yeah. Like World War II again. So these are, this is the map that I wanted to show before. So the build up that happened around Iran in the lead up to the war was the biggest deployment of American troops and like aircraft carriers, naval ships in anywhere in the world since the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Afghanistan, Iraq. And so you can see just some of the like things that they've got, like just all of these, like the century planes. It's just such an incredible thing. And so in the, this post was from, I think, three or four days. No, last week. Yeah. So this post was from last week. And they say, never has the US deployed this much force against a potential enemy and not launched strikes. And that obviously was a pretty prescient sort of analysis. Yeah. I mean, it's partly just intimidation, but then at a certain point, if you don't act, then the intimidation doesn't count for much, right? So they sort of put themselves into a corner, but now they're taking the opportunity. And yeah, death and destruction is the result. But then this all well again, well, we live in. It's the Iranians that are the threat to world peace. And it's the Iranians who are the aggressors and the Iranians who are inflicting violence and all their neighbors. And obviously we have no track with the Iranian regime. It's a despicable regime. And we'll talk about that later. But the idea that they started this is just so off like the chain. It's so dishonest and so lituriculous. Yeah. Like this, like paints a pretty stark picture. But again, it was a weak old. Like I saw, I was seeing photos from like two to three days ago of like, you know, six F 22s at an Israeli Air Force base. And like, this is just, I guess, an understatement of what actually happened. Yeah. Yeah. So I think we should talk a little bit more about like why is Australia so like supportive of the US's moves. Like, Albanese didn't have to say, you know, this is a move for peace in the war. We love war. Yeah. So maybe we should talk a bit about like why is Australia so into this? Yeah, I saw it at tweet that was like, I'm really looking forward to Penny Wong's concern over the bottom of the school. Yeah. In just a moment. Very sad face. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah, I think like part of the support, Australian support for America. It's similar to actually why they support America like Israel. Australia wants to be firmly part of the Western Imperial Alliance. Australia is just signed this huge orchestra steel like hundreds of billions of dollars to have nuclear powered submarines in our port. Maybe one day. Maybe one day. Maybe one day. But, you know, there's also the fact that they part of like the five eyes intelligence that Pine Gap is used to help American drone strikes happen. This is where Australia wants to be. And so there's no hostility to Trump. Actually, the game that they want to play is actually making it more clear to Trump that they need Australia. Australia doesn't want to just be a bit player in the sort of imperial painting that is about to be unfurled. They want to be a key player and a major part of it. Yeah. I think like one of the things that was concerning to me after they bombed Iran was the. Oh, you're concerned too. You're in the music form a club. I'm going to be late to work. But like, yeah. So the retaliatory strikes on, you know, a man guitar, Bahrain, the UAE, they were all, you know, releasing their little emergency alerts about like, you know, shelter in place. There's an imminent strike blah, blah, blah. These are all places that had US bases that were used, you know, to go and bomb Iran. And our orchestra where we've given them like half a trillion dollars for the privilege of parking nuclear capable planes in our Air Force bases. And you know, a couple days ago, we just got the news that we're testing our own alert system. Like this is us in just a few years because that's the direction the Labor Party and the Liberals want us to go. Yeah. To turn Australia into a forward base for American Empire in the what they call Indo-Pacific now because you want to talk about Asia because Asia is like associated with China. So now we talk about the Indo-Pacific. Yeah. I want Australia to be like the Israel of the Middle East, but in Asia Pacific area. And you know, the plans for the Western shipyards and submarine docks and the Northern Air Force base and Pine Gap of course. And they're also already stashing munitions and equipment in a bunch of Australian states including here in Victoria as part of this preparation because this is, you know, a decade's long preparation. World wars don't just start overnight. They get prepared for a long time. So this is the role that Albanese sees for Australia. And that was the, you know, the rare earth deal that happened a few months ago just celebrated by the press is, oh, this is so great Australian industry, you know, whatever. This is all just part of the war machine. And yeah, these nuclear submarines and nuclear planes and all this kind of stuff are all part of the same thing. So the stronger that we can build a socialist movement and anti-war movement here in Australia the more we can prevent these kind of things from expanding and continuing. Yeah. Like one guy is not just Albanese or anything like we spoke about on the last episode, Peter Mellon-Auskis being like, oh, you know, immigrants over here can have low paying jobs wiping your ass while we have high paying jobs working on nuclear submarines. I'm sorry. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So I guess one question coming out of all of this is what does this mean because it is, I think quite a big escalation. It's too early obviously to say where things are going to go. But it's confirmed that Camani is dead. Camani. Camani is dead. And there's, as you guys have said, you know, a whole bunch of civilian buildings have been bombed and attacked. Trump has said that US troops are going to die in this and they've talked about how regime change is their goal. I think that it is obviously connected to the move that America has been making this year, which is about, well, we're going to extend our dominance and this is the time we're going to fight. So there was the early move in January of kidnapping Maduro in Venezuela and sort of dealing with that. And now they're on to the sort of next move in the background. There's still all the discussions about Cuba. I think that there is just so obviously a, we step closer and closer and closer into a world that is just engulfed by these wars to maintain and extend American dominance. Yeah. On ABC last night in East 24, there were, it was John Lyons and whoever does Saturday night, I presume it's a bit of a graveyard shift, but she found herself in a very interesting situation. And they were just talking about all the different statements from world leaders and they read one from Putin and obviously Putin's a monster, but he said this is a blatant act of aggression, which is appalling and should be condemned by everyone. And the problem is none of that's wrong. Of course, Putin's a total hypocrite, but data says this means that by saying, oh, well, Putin would say that, wouldn't he? And this is the thing. Like, we've just spent the last four years touching over the Russian invasion of Ukraine and condemning them, talking about how they were like bombing energy facilities and so on, all of which is appalling and we are socialists opposed that. But our same government, the same politicians, the same establishment that condemns Putin supports the Americans and the Israelis when they do the same thing. So we saw it in Gaza and now we're seeing it in Iran. So this kind of hypocrisy is just disgusting. And I think the only thing that's on us is socialists to be principled anti-imperialists, which means opposing all imperialism, not just the one that you don't like as much or whatever, but actually opposing all of them because they all feed into the same world. It's normalizing aggression, might make right. What was that quote, Stephen Miller said a few months ago? The world today is just power, you know? And that's what we're always seeing. And Putin was a story in the wind. Gaza was another story in the wind and now this is another one. And I think the takeaway for us is just how urgent it is to be a socialist all over the world because these attacks are quite clearly escalating, but they're also part of a broader global shift in politics to the right. And to the far right. And we can see the rise of the far right all over the world, including here, which we kind of dismissed for a bit, I reckon. But yeah, and it's resulting in these escalating attacks on the working class all over the world, including here with the demolition of public housing and brutalizing protestes in the street to defend a war criminal visiting. It is more urgent than ever to be a socialist and an organized socialist and get involved and I don't know, join the party. Absolutely. Put your hand up if you're a member of Victoria and socialist. All right, that's great. So those of you who are not speak to someone at the front desk on your way out. Yeah. Because we need you. And so I think to end the discussion about Iran, we should talk about what we think the socialist position is around this war that is unfolding. I think the first one is obviously no to the war on Iran. We don't support the Australian government, you know, saying it's a good thing, participating in any way, shape or form. But then I think that connects to some concrete ones. Like, I think we should be saying that Pine Gap needs to close. Yeah, absolutely. And I think we should be saying we need to scrap the US alliance and tear up the Orca steel. Yeah, and stop all military collaboration with the Americans and the Israelis. Like, we are still part of the global supply chains for the F-35s, probably heaps of other things to personnel carriers and so on. Australia has a lot of actually specialist expertise in the supply chain process. So we need to cut from all of that. Like all of those F-35 jets that have been used in this, they're heat treated in a factory in Campbellfield, like just down the road. And the Bombay door openers that let the bloody bombs drop out of those planes are also produced here in Australia. It's, yeah, the Labor government in the UK, the last, anyways, this is the divergence. But the last post that they made before the polls closed in that bi-election was that the Greens positions on drugs is morally unconscionable. And it's like, you've got to want it like if they think that's morally unconscionable. Anyways. Yeah, I think another demand though shouldn't like be silent on the repression. That's right. Of the Iranian working class. Like the Iranian working class and the oppressed in Iran have the right to choose, you know, the direction of their country, not fucking the Itolla or Donald Trump or Anthony Albanese or anything like that. And like it's clear that this will be used as an excuse to continue that repression. Like this is horrific. Either way, we oppose both of these things and it's fine to oppose both of those things. Yeah. But like the people of Iran, the left are in an impossible position because if they come out to demonstrate as they were already and they continue their movement, they'll be accused of being traders. Yeah. And if they don't, well then they're allowing the regime to consolidate itself. So actually foreign imperialism never helps protest movements, popular movements on the streets. It only polarises things in an unhelpful way between ruling classes. Yeah. I saw a post from Tariq Ali who's a socialist from the UK. And there's not much of a socialist. Well, he was. He was a socialist of the UK. And he said that leftists, houses, were being targeted in the bombing campaigns. So it's pretty clear that it's like the people who could actually chart a course for democracy and freedom in Iran. They're going to be people who are targeted in whatever form this breaks out. It's like. We wouldn't back leftists. It just seems like his people. Totally. So yeah, I think there will obviously be more discussions about this. We have to see what will happen in the coming days and weeks and months. But what is clear is we need an anti-imperialist alternative to the bullshit that's being served up to us. Right, in guilt, the party line. Okay, well, usually there's a little song that plays there so then they can be like a tone shift. How's it going? Writing out the volume. Yeah. Do you guys know, hands up if you know what that song is about or from? Okay, very few people. Do people want to know what it's about? Okay, so in America, there was a big, well, small list, but big, like a Trotskiest Movement. And these Trotskiest were very funny, which is good. I think you need a bit of humor. So anti-style and a socialist. Yeah, so they wrote this big album of like folk songs, basically, which were just anti-style andist tunes and diddies. There's one about the cloak makers union, which was controlled by the Stalinist Communist Party of America. And the cloak makers union is a no good union. It's a no good union for the buses. So that, we could go listen to it, Glazer, I think, Robert Glazer. And so the party line is making fun of how the Communist Party was a Stalinist sort of party. And the line always kept changing. So one day it was like we're fighting, you know, Germany, their fascists, or then the next day, actually, we're going to be working with them. We're doing the Hitler-style impact. And then the next day, it's we're going to fight it. And now the Nazis are the bad ones again. So this song is about writing out the party line in Moscow. And they, you know, it's like Trotski's a fascist, da da da da. So it's, we chose that song because we hate Stalinism. Yeah, it's ironic. Okay. We're going to play a game now. Audience participation time. Do you want to do the thing of like standing up, spinning around? No. No. All right. That's the primary school teacher in here. Whatever. So the aim of the game here is you guys have to figure out is the headline. And that we're going to show a real headline that was in a newspaper somewhere, or is it a fake headline that we wrote. So I think when I show the headline, just shout out if you think it's real or if you think it's fake and there'll just be like a cacophony of voices. Because it doesn't really matter, yeah. Yeah. That's good. So our first one. Why Sydney must ban protest marches permanently? Yeah. You're cynics. It's a real headline. Yeah, that's right. So this was written in the aftermath of the protest against Herzog in New South Wales. Totally reasonable. I believe it was from the Harold Sun. What's, who needs to protest anyway? Just obey the government, guys. And they chose like a good photo of the cops sort of, you know, they're like sort of Thomas Swolves. Come on, come on. We can't do that much detail. So is a free paradise. Why Lefty Lovy's boycott is just the ticket? It's a good headline. So what do people think? That's a real headline. So this is from the Australian. And it's all good headlines come from pretty much. And it's about why now that Ronda Fata was like banned from being at the Adelaide Riders Fest and the leftist boycotting it, it was going to be a really, really good event. So good. So good that they cancelled it. Nobody was going to come. I think the thing that pissed me off the most about that was the French spelling of poser. And then like in contrast with the word lovies, they're very multicultural. Just quietly. Oh, they were by the same person. Yes, they were. They were both by the way. Incredible. Okay. That's their like resident. Why the Liberals need less meat and more marco. So. Hold on, let's ask. Who knows who meat is. Right. And then marco. Okay. Okay. So real or fake. So Mitt Romney was like the moderate Republican for those of you who are not old enough to remember. These are like the really good Republicans who love capital, supported the Iraq war. Think all that's great. But just think Trump's a bit gauche. Okay. So less of him. It's more fascism. Time we took Pauline seriously. Real. And the best thing about it is it's by a leadership coach. Professional quack. So but like the by line like it's a sign that the western shift towards consistent raw conviction has reached Australia. Incredible. Thank you, IFR. Respectable journalism. A truly sustainable NDIS must stop autism creep. It's a real headline and it's the Australian. That's an editorial editorial. Editorial. Editorial. Editorial. I saw some funny tweets about this particular one. Someone like quote tweeted it and was like why are they talking about like this. But it actually is just so disgusting because the background to this story is like the government is pissed off. They have to spend too much money on like you know NDIS. So they're trying to stop kids with autism being able to qualify for NDIS help. And the AFR is like yes, this is the right thing. Terrible. Gotta save that money. Why seeers don't need grab a task to be successful. Real. What do you think they need? Psychopathy. It's a real headline from Boss magazine. There's a trend here. This is like their supplement lifestyle supplement kind of thing. How to be a good boss. Okay, intermittent elevated. Why this glamorous, grown pre event is cutting down on influences. What have people been real about? Well, Jordy's upset because he didn't get it in the vibe. This is a real one from I think the Harold's. I just put that in there because it's like this is so sad. This is what they write about. It's an age formatting. Trump kidnapped a dictator and that's a very good thing. That's real. That's real. It's got to be real. That's like the age. Oh, bold. It's bold. It's a real one from bolt.com. That's basically the position of the entire central establishment. So, bold's very happy that Trump kidnapped Maduro. Hassan, Parker, Mogs are the capitalists. What do people think? Real or fake? Hey, you can someone from the crowd define Mogs. Pull your hand up. Don't call out. Someone do it quick. Come on. I only learned about two days ago. No one's willing or no one knows. I reckon show that someone's here. Come, it doesn't microphone here. You can pick up. Oh, yeah. There you go. It's about showing up. Really? It's like you're presenting yourself as better than someone, isn't it? Yeah. So, it's like on the couch right now. Thank you. Give him a clap. Pravery should be rewarded. I think the way you talk about it is like I'm currently mugging Jordan and Omar. How? People can see you. There's a bit of light in you. Also, Omar said he learned about it two days ago. Does that mean you learnt what the word meant when we said pretty much? Yeah. Pretty much. Yeah. Okay. So, that one's a real one. I learned some other ones, shall I? From Teen Jackabin magazine. It's not real. No, it is real. It's like a special edition that they put out. That's real. That's why it's in here. Because they're all real. No. That's what it is. I saw the real picture. That's a real publication. Yeah, no, they put it out. Including such good ones as Lenin or Luxembourg, who's your socialist sweetheart? This is the connected to the same organisation that Renna Valentine's Day event called Thoughts and Trots, a speed dating event. And also, I feel like really aggrieved, is that the word, by this headline, her son, Parker Mogs, the capitalist. Old mate, if people don't know in the room, is a streamer and he's like, well, known, he's like on the left or whatever. Well, that's how he's presented. He just got like a state-sponsored trip to China and is writing a book about how China is an incredibly socialist country. So. Although happy family is living in communism. I really don't think that you can say he's mugging the capitalists with that one. Okay. This city went, won't- This is the best thing you've ever seen. Now it's running out of water. Oh, yeah. Well, yeah, Jordy fucking ruined the joke. Sorry. This is another golden one from Seoul. This is amazing. So, yeah, the city of Melbourne, because we're so work, I don't actually understand the connection, but. I don't think that has to be. It's just like in I'm Melbourne, it's the left with the city. Oh, it's a mass immigration, it's a racist article. Yeah. Yeah, the capital of work is running short of water because we have too many migrants. I'm not enough liberal MPs. Yeah. So, that was my game. I hope people enjoyed it. Um, so. Oh, thanks. Now where's Belle? No, no, no, it's not for Belle yet. It's actually time for Lewis. Oh, okay. So, we wanted to have a brief interlude where Lewis, who is one of the sort of people who organizes red flag books, tell us a bit about the space that we're in. So, Lewis, say hello to the crowd. Hello, crowd. Crowds, say hello to Lewis. So, Lewis, what happens here at 83 Sydney Road? Uh, so we sell books. You might have seen them around. Um, we, yeah, we run a left-wing bookshop, so we have a bunch of books from like, I mean, like, all throughout the last 100 years. Some of them are actually that old. Um, but yeah, a bunch of like old stuff, new stuff, uh, tend not to have too much of the sort of Tony Abbott history of Australia type of content. Um, yeah. Yeah. And so, what's been happening in the Sydney Road Festival today? What have people been up to? Um, I think most of what people have been up to is beating the shit out of Trump, which has been pretty good. Um, I was just out on the street, fliring people and getting an amazing reception, just saying, do you hate Trump? Do you want to beat the shit out of him? It's a nice sunny day. Yeah. Um, yeah. And then, so the space is also shared with Victorian Socialists. So, what Victorian Socialists stuff's been happening here recently? Um, I mean, we've been running a bunch of branch meetings. We've had, uh, like, socialist screen printing events. And I think one of the, I feel like one of the best things the space has done has just been like a kind of activist center, like, um, for a while during COVID, we were running the bookshop just online. Yeah. And that's nine out of your, like bedroom. Out of my bedroom, out of storage unit. Neither of them were great. Um, and yeah, that was sort of useful, you know, you can get ideas out, just sending things out that way. Um, but yeah, getting this space and actually having people come through it has been really incredible, like, especially when the Palestine movement started. Yeah. And we would just like have like every day we would open, we just have person after person after person coming through, picking up posters, picking up flyers, just coming in and being like, oh my god, it's so good that someone's saying something about this. Yeah. Um, when I was here, uh, the, uh, the anti-hurt, sog week, um, there was just students, like hundreds of them in the bookshop every single day, organizing protests. They were like, oh, there's a hundred of us here right now. That's big enough for a protest. And so they marched down to the Sydney, uh, road town hall and like did a speak out, marauded through the streets, went into Barkley, you know, road, Barkley, what is it called? Square. Um, leafletted for the anti-hurt, sog protest. It was beautiful. Yeah. That's glorious. So if you could say one favorite thing about the space, what would it be? Or your favorite book that can be purchased in the shop? Um, okay. Well, I mean, based on how today's gone, I think my favorite thing about the space is that it's in Brunswick. You can ask, you can tell everyone, sorry, you can ask everyone like, do you hate Trump? Like I had one couple say that they loved him and that was about it. Um, and I spoke hundreds of people. Uh, so my favorite thing is that it's in Brunswick and that's left wing area. Um, and it's not fallen down yet. Uh, and favorite book. I mean, I think, uh, like put you on the spot, I think the story of Palestine has just been like a kind of amazing sort of useful resource to have throughout the last, like, what is it, two and a half years? Um, which is just up here on the shelf. It's like an introduction to the issue of Palestine, the history of Palestine and Israel. Um, so that's been spectacular. I would say in the last like fortnight, I think we're soul something like 30 copies of Trotsky's fascism, what it is and how to fight it. Cool. Um, cool. The people are wanting to fight it. Sad that we need to get it. Yeah, grim that you need to get in those quantities. So after the podcast finishes, please feel free to browse the shelves and get a book. And if you're listening, uh, on whatever platform you listen to podcasts on, please come in and say hi to Lewis. Thanks, Lewis. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Our next gag is Wes Charles. Charlie, you're out. Okay. So who saw the other day, Charlie, you want to come sit up here? Um, so this is Charlie, who knows who Charlie is? Hopefully my work just sort of comes through naturally. So Charlie is our, um, our audio and video editor. So Charlie is actually the most important part of the entire podcast. That's very nice. Thank you. That's two hours. Okay. So, um, do people know how Albanese, because people would have seen the thing about how he called, uh, Grace Tame Difficult, yes. People know that I'm talking about. Do people know the context of how he came to call Grace Tame Difficult? Do someone want to come up and tell us what we want to do? Should it be loud and annoying or something? No. Does anyone want to come and say why? Come up, Marali. Get that room fast, fast, fast, fast. The worst thing about podcasts is dead noise. So you're going to say she didn't make him dinner. They're playing a one word association game. A one word association game. And in that same game, uh, Albanese described Trump as president. Yes, that's right. Thanks, Riley. Okay. So we're going to do what we call reverse albo. We're not actually sure why we called it reverse albo, because it's the same thing. No one saw anything misogynist. As long as we don't see anything misogynist. So Charlie has to come up with a list of words for us. And we are going to give a one word response. This is quite high pressure. It is. And I'm like, I say bad stuff sometimes. So we'll see how this goes. We can edit this. Like, great. If you're listening, we want to hear. We love this. We love this. Yes. We love this. Yes. So the first, yeah, so there are words and phrases, but we'll go, the first one is the board of peace. Crap. Trump. Laughable. Okay. I like that. Yeah. And my next one is Tim Wilson. That drunk. That's a bit weird. It's quite good. It's a bit drunk. It's a bit drunk. Is he a drunk? Is he a drunk? He drove his car into a house, didn't he? Yeah. Was that him? Yeah. Was that the other liberal guy? Oh, this is classic Anika. Yeah. Tim Smith. Tim Smith. Tim Smith also loves the guy. Well, I reckon he's still probably a drunk. Okay. He's an Australian. He's almost certainly a drunk. What did you do? Yeah, but it was about the wrong person. Oh, okay. I had to. I came up with these. I didn't know what was going to be spoken about. So it's a bit of a lie. But the next one is preemptive strikes. Oh. Beautiful. Efficient. Unreal. God damn all well-earned as well. I think it's ridiculous. What did you do? Oh, efficient. Oh, that was me. Oh. Wait, is that the exact word that you said? Yeah. Okay, that's strange. All right. Do you want to go first next time? Okay. Next one is Alan Collar. Uh, bold. Not boldie. He's got a little bit of hair left. Uh, community. Capitalist. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Next one, which was discovered we'll go. Carl Stefanovic. Boldie. Fascist. Prick. Prick is a good one. The next one is the New South Wales Rapid Response Unit. Violent. Fascist. Yeah. Yeah. And the next one is the UK Greens, specifically the by-election was what I was getting up. Successful. Yeah, good. Fuck labor. That's too bad. If you're listening to me, yeah. Um, um, uh, Christaam. Wonderful. Difficult. No! No! Shame! Shame! You're just canceled. Yeah, you're swapping. Yeah, that's it. Um, and last but not least, Penny Wong. Difficult. Concerning. Uh, I love that he was like difficult for Grace Tame, but was like, I can't describe Barnaby Joyce in one word that's ridiculous. John. Come on. Yeah. He's such a sophisticated complex character, Barnaby. I was like really, really sure that that liberal guy was the one that was the drum one. I've been like thinking about how we can incorporate it into the podcast for like, uh, two weeks. There you go. They all very much are looking sound the same. So yeah, in my total sense. Um, and just quickly, if people ever have any ideas about like the way the studio should look, or the way it like, as in constructive feedback is always really appreciated, especially like we're trying new things all the time. It's included. Uh, and it makes my job a lot easier when someone says, Hey, this is kind of sucks. Can you do this a little bit better? I'm not going to do that because then I don't have to go soul searching for the week after they're going. So if you want to get in contact with Charlie, you can email the podcast. Yeah, email the podcast. Yeah, yeah. Um, so please, yeah, always. It's always nice to have feedback. It makes it so much better. Alright, well thank you. Can everyone thanks Charlie? Thanks, Charlie. Oh. Turn that off, maybe. Okay, but no, don't turn it off because we have one more special guest who is Bell Gibson. Ah, Bell? And it's not the Bell Gibson that lied about having cats. Yeah, yeah. Come here. Okay, so um, jump up. Good luck. Well, like, isn't there a podcast called barefoot, podcast, bare feet podcast? I think there is one. Bare naked. No, that's a bare, bare naked lady. Barefoot lady stuff. Yeah, that were good. Isn't that what they called? They were. Anyways, Bell is a teacher and Bell is going on strike. No, she's not a teacher. Oh, I'm not a teacher. She's a teacher adjacent. A teacher adjacent. Yeah, close to. Well, anyways, the teacher's going on strike. Yeah. Teachers and Bell teachers. Yeah. Thanks very much. So, well, I didn't actually plan this segment. So, one of you guys can do it. Yeah, tell us about this strike. What's going on? So, on the 24th of March, um, Victorian public school staff. So, teachers, but also ES, which is what I am, which stands for education support. And they're the people that do everything else in schools. Classroom sort of learning aids, but IT admin, all that kind of stuff. So, they're the lowest paid in the country. They're really badly paid. Yeah. Yeah. Gina Reinhart makes in an hour what an ES makes in a year. Well, um, and yeah, on the 24th of March, we're going on strike, providing our, um, vote, the parbo, the, the ballot that's been sent to, um, all A.E.U. members emails, um, endorses the strike. Which is-- which it will. It very much will, yeah, cause, um, for a change, the union is actually, um, taking a lead, um, a fighting lead, somewhat. And has told people to vote yes to strike action was called the date. Yeah, right. Which is really, really wonderful. Because the last, um, EBA that, uh, was agreed upon, like a number of years ago, there was quite a significant no vote. And that, right? Yeah, huge. Um, 39%. Um, and that was up from 18% from the 2017 agreement. So it was, it was huge if you consider the fact that it was basically, you know, with the exception of a couple of notable activists, um, a lot of them in the, the socialist party. It was basically just teachers and ES looking at the agreement that the union was telling them to vote for and then going, no, I don't want to vote for that. So that's 40% of people without being without any leadership. Um, going, no fuck that we don't want, um, uh, a below inflation pay rise. We want like, yeah, meaningful, um, improvements. Yeah, there was heaps of anger, like thousands of people were furious. Um, many of them quit the union, which is always the wrong response. Like when the union leaders do something terrible, um, we believe as socialist, you got to be an union, but you just got to fight. You got to organize, you got to out organize the leadership. And that takes time. It takes effort. Otherwise, you're by yourself and you can't fight against the boss or against the government by yourself, you know, and so I think this time people looking to resist and the fact that union showing a lead means that they can kind of go with it. It's telling that, um, 1500 people are rejoined the union in the first month of this year, um, because the union announced that they were going to ballot for industrial action. And that's 15, it's probably more now actually, um, that's people who said, I'm leaving the union and I'll come back if we go on strike, you know, which, um, it's not what I did. You got to stay and fight, but it's awesome that those people are sticking to their wording coming back to hold the union leadership account. So what are some of the things that people are fighting for? So the thing, this is from socialist since schools, some stuff that you guys have put together. So you're saying we should strike until we win 35% pay rise over three years. What did people get in the last EBA? They got a two percent a year. So not much. That's a significantly below inflation. That's when inflation was like 9%. Yeah. Um, the, when I was talking to one of the union officials about this and saying how, um, they're, they're being of telling people the last agreement was really good. That's why they should rejoin the union is probably not going to work. I was saying actually the best way to get people to rejoin is to say the last agreement was crap. And that's why we need more people involved this time to make it better. And the union official said, well, actually, the last agreement was pretty good. It's just that one, you don't understand. You don't understand how good it was. And two, we don't have a crystal ball. So you couldn't tell. We couldn't predict that Russia would invade youth crisis. And causing inflationary crisis. So the crisis actually started in 2021 and Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022. The agreement was started in July. Like fucking lies. The inflation was going up. Yeah. It was right at the moment it was beginning to accelerate. But like the, the AU has such disdain for its members. Like the people that they invite to their conferences and the way that yeah, it's just like it's actually disgusting. So if people don't know Van Battom, she's a shield for the Labor Party. Labor right, no less. She once told the students who were organizing the campaign that brought down the Tony Abbott government basically. That they should stop doing protests and instead organize parties with the Greek club. And that might be a better, more effective way of campaigning against cuts to education. Yeah, she's also like every time she's invited, she does like a presentation on disinformation. And like she's the same person who tweeted like, "Oh, America is saying that it was Hamas that bombed the hospital." Like beautiful, incredible disinformation. But hey, can I say there was another strike last story about early educators, which I was child care workers on Thursday. And they've been in negotiations for 20 months. And the government still hasn't given them even an offer. Even something to say yes or no to. The government just says, "Buck, you were not interested. You're not important. You don't deserve it." I don't think you would have been able to go if you were working full time. But have you heard any reports about what was the vibe, the energy? I saw some videos of speeches made in the march itself. And it was thousands of kinder teachers and educators who are really, really pissed off. They feel really, really disrespected and overworked. And there was a wonderful speech made by a socialist party member at the mass meeting they had. Danny who drew the link between capitalism and why education is so crap and teachers are paid so badly. Capitalism needs this education, but is not willing to pay the teachers properly. But also that teachers have actually been at the forefront of some amazing struggles in the last little while, whether it's the fight against ICE and Minneapolis or San Francisco teachers on strike for the first time in decades. And she really drew all that together and it got like huge applause. Like, when you listen to the Union Leadership Talk, it's kind of the tone of this could have been an email. And then when you listen to a striking work I talk, it's like, "Oh my God, I believe socialism is possible. I want you to run the world." Well, it's very delivered in the room. Because they want the mood to be flat, boring. And they want to forget one of the not work choices. What was the most recent? Change the rules. Change the rules, remember that? Momentary lapse of reason, like pretending to be a campaign. They got some economist to the Sydney mass meeting. And the economist lectured all that there was like 5,000 people there or something. And they just lectured us for an hour about the economics of penalty rates and so on. And why we should be against the changes of the government's policy. And we were all there to oppose. And then they just moved the motion saying, "All those support against this law, yeah, hands up." And that was the meeting. And it was just like way to destroy the energy of a space. The mass meeting in Melbourne for the change of the rules campaign was like, that sounds really bad. But I feel like the Melbourne one was worse on a different level. The first thing was that they had three steps to change the rules. And one was sign up to campaign for the Labour Party. Then step two was change the government. And then step three was change the rules. So changing the rules was also a step in the campaign to change the rules. And then do people know Will Stracke? She's like it. Another Labour Party, she'll, she works for Trade's Hall. And she treated this crowd of workers who, you know, were at this big protest rally campaign. Like they were attendees at a Wiggles concert. And it was like, "Hey everybody, are you having a good time?" Like, you know, it's like people have come here because they're pissed off about the state of the world. And it's like, "Hi guys, like, you know, there's such a unseriousness from a whole bunch of these campaigns." Because it's like, they're not actually interested in building a movement that could see workers win, you know. As the sort of three steps kind of indicated, they've been more interested in it. Wait one, didn't we? No. Isn't like the union movement right now? Yeah, yeah. But it's like, the whole thing is like campaign for the Labour Party. But what's this? This is a novelty-sized zine. And you can get a zine-sized zine at this, which is a handbook socialist in schools, which is the Socialist Party tip school teachers and whatnot group. It's a lot of answers. Industry caucus. Yeah. Put together this handbook to answer everyone's questions about going on strike. There's some amazing stats and talking points in here. Because people in Victoria or teachers haven't been on strike since 2013. And for many people, that's, they've never been on strike. So the union's not doing any work to educate people on what a strike is, or how it works, or if the government can afford our log of claims, any of that. So we've taken it upon ourselves to produce this handbook, which should just be handed out to everyone at your school. I think this is important, because if people listen to the episode that we did on the CFMU with Jeremy Small, at the end we were sort of discussing what is it going to take to build unions that are radical, militant, that people are engaged in, where there's rank and file participation. And we sort of talked about a bunch of different things. But one of them is actually socialists, who are in their unions, going out there, and just sort of relitigating the lessons that we've learnt from previous struggles. Because there's so much rich history of workers in Australia in this country, shutting the city down, winning things like the eight-hour day, or winning things like equal pay for women, or just everything. But those lessons have been lost, because there hasn't been an active trade union movement. And so I think the stuff that Bell and others are doing is really important in trying to revive and rebuild and relearn some of that history. And to say to those 40% of people who voted no to the last agreement, that we agree with you, and you should be organised, and you should campaign to other workmates to vote no to crappy agreements, to vote for more strikes and stuff like that, to actually give a voice for a lot of the members in the AU, who are really disappointed in the last agreement. Cool. So March the 24th? Yes. What time? 10am meeting at the eight-hour day monument. Great. And then on the 14th of March, socialists in schools is having a meeting here at the VIA Centre at 4pm to plan for our intervention into the strike. And what we want to be talking to people about and what we want to push for in terms of next steps, because one day of strike action is not going to win our really ambitious log of flames. So Brunswick offers, that's the 14th. Check out the page, the Instagram page, socialists in schools. Also, shout out to socialists in healthcare, who did a really cool meeting here recently, and there was a strike of healthcare workers. I think last week as well, the wait before, anyway, like there's quite a bit of industrial action, and socialists really want to be at the heart of that and pushing that. So join your local branch of the social workers, caucus, whatever industry you're in. Thanks so much, Belle. Thanks Belle. Okay. Well, to round us off, make sure Belle doesn't die, careful with the camera. We've got a chance to really wrap things up, by the way. Okay, we've got a chance to wrap things up. So you do your first. My thing is that I don't know if people have noticed, but I say a lot of, I make a lot of claims about individuals. The Tim Wilson mix up is kind of one of, an example of one of those things. A less egregious example. And so I wanted to sort of get a kind of sense from the crowd like. Bit of a fundraiser. Well, how many months until you guys think I'm hit with a like a libel case? Like chance and numbers, defamation case towards me. So how many months, how many years do you think before that comes? Six months. As soon as you win an election. As soon as the hero's son, you know, go back and listen through all of this stuff. And so basically what we're saying is that some legal stuff might be on the horizon. If I can't watch what I say. So this is a plea to please become a Patreon patron of the party line. So that when that happens, I can hire a lawyer and I won't go bankrupt. So please do that. And then I hear we have some audience participation. Yeah. Yeah, come up. So these guys are young activists through. Come on. You have to do it. You can't get shy now. They're coming up. No, I think we lost free. But that's okay. We have one proud young activist. You've been to many protests. Give her a clap. Yeah. Okay. Why are you using that one? That's good. So what Chan are we doing? Go for it. Can everyone get ready to repeat? Come on. Let's go. Three, two, one. Free, free Palestine. Free, free, Palestine. Here we go. 15, a clap. Well, thanks so much everybody for coming to our first ever live recording of the party line. We hope you enjoyed it. And we hope it was worth the money. We'll have mood lighting next time. Thank you.