Most Sunday’s, weather allowing, I set up a mobile comic book shop at local open air markets. I have done it for the good part of a decade, in doing so you make unique friendships with people who you may only see every so many Sundays over the years, you might not even know their names but you know their opinions on things, what books they read, movies they watch and at times the turmoils in their personal life. In being a fixture, you can be both councillor and sound board or, for some kids, an adult for them to share budding and developing opinions with.

It’s a fascinating thing to see the genesis of a strangers child thrive in social confidence and their ability to conduct themselves in a setting outside of the family or school. At first some approach with tentative unease, they search the comics, or lift up a toy, eyes wavering and when small talk is attempted, they are direct and short in response. Over time, some bring books they have found, or go into great detail about a story they have read, even at times sharing in their own creative expeditions.

This past Sunday, a young lass who when she would first come to the stall with her mother was often in a pink onesie, with buttons and patches she had collected. Most of them were either Care Bears, Strawberry Shortcakes or Pokemon. She would buy whatever comics on those properties, and when I came across any, I would keep them aside for her and her mother. Over the years, the pink she wore had been replaced by black. Leather jackets, the Care Bears buttons now My Chemical Romance album apparel, rings and menacing neck wear more akin on a bikies Rotweiler than a teenage girl. Her face in spots bristles with the barbs of piercings.

Despite that aesthetic, and with greater confidence when she speaks, she is very much that little girl who all those years ago would seek out vintage cartoon books. Outside of the music she listens to, usually alternative, punk and counter-culture, the conversations she likes to raise delves into social commentary. She opened up about her opinions on censorship, social media bans and surveillance with all the in depth analysis I may find in a conversation with a civil libertarian or with a remnant Boomer who retained a degree of humanist dignity. Her passionate words turned into a flurry of gestures and angry repose, perhaps the Gen X lyrics she had listened to had infused her with a defiant dignity. She had after all, that morning asked me if I had Heathers on DVD or the soundtrack on CD. Unfortunately, I had neither.

Her mother rang her mobile, then mine. Some regulars tend to take your contact details for buying and selling, or in their case, trading purposes. She answered, and in the distance sitting on a bench her mother waved and watched on. With health issues, her sweet mother did her best to walk the length of the rows of stalls, opting instead to sit and wait while her much younger daughter picked over thrift and wares.

“I won’t be long,” she said before hanging up.

She turned to me and continued with her extended ability to articulate her words, “I don’t trust any of them to tell me what I can’t watch and listen to. It’s about control.”

I did not express my thoughts on censorship or surveillance, there was nothing to add to the conversation, other than to agree. Her spirit of dissent did not need any further steering.

“I hope you don’t mind me saying this, Mum just nods and when I spoke to a teacher at school they told me not to concern myself with any of it. I have every right to be concerned. It’s nice to speak to an adult who lets me talk about this.”

In that moment, I felt a tinge of pain in my heart. I had gone to university to be a teacher, and I had this naive belief in the, ‘seize the day,’ lie told to us back in the 20^th century. A period where the tug of war between individual rights and humanist morality fought with the collectivist ideological order which has now taken hold.

“You can say whatever you want and so long as you listen to other peoples opinions, they will hopefully hear yours. Never stop thinking and questioning, but always be open to other peoples views as well.”

She nodded, thinking as she did so, “What do you think?”

“I don’t like censorship and surveillance and feel that such coercion are immoral. I agree with what you have said,” I noticed a customer who held in their hands a Spider-Man comic. When I returned to her, she was looking over a pile of books. She put them down, “If you want to find good movies that are uncensored, older movies that are not on streaming or YouTube, check out this site…”

“Thank you and be careful on the internet.”

She said her good bye and ran to her patiently waiting mother. The spirit of ‘68 was certainly inside of her mind. The dissident energy that may have stood alongside a young man holding up a burning draft card, or, held the corpse of a fallen student at Kent State, a Czech protester throwing body or flaming bottle at a Soviet tank in Prague. Maybe still she could just as easily been one of the Red Guards who pulled teachers and counter-revolutionaries from their homes to beat and torture them to death, infected with by a Maoist establishment, anti-establishment revolutionary status-quo tyrannical disorder. Or, I would like to think, with such spirit sh would stand before Type-59 main battle tanks of the Peoples Liberation Army, in 1989 Tienanmen Square. Whatever, the dissatisfaction and energy, her instincts for rights invigorated her.

The unfortunate reality is youth with all their exuberance and idealism, has much of it beaten and educated out of them, so they soon learn to become debt addled, obedient servants of power. What may have once stirred animosity and disdain from within, can become an accepted reality. A free speech advocate who once may have placed Wikileaks stickers about the place, called for the release of Julian Assange, may just as easily support big surveillance and censorship depending on the degrees of cowardice that comes with their age.

A lad around her age once told me, “my parents never want to talk about anything that matters, what colour the new bathroom tiles will be or whether we should renew Disney+, would be a highlight.” Is it an inability to discuss things or, has everything become termed as obscene and hateful, anti-social, dangerous that some people won’t even entertain another person opinion. Even if their own opinions assume coercive violence in order to implement.

“Evil thrives on apathy and cannot exist without it,” Hannah Arendt once wrote. Is it apathy? Or, as she also concluded, “the sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.” ‘Just doing my job’, ‘Be like everyone else’, ‘Don’t rock the boat’, ‘Make money to borrow money, to get a mortgage for a house.’ ‘ban anything that I don’t understand or that scares me.’ “The banality of evil,” after all.

Principles are less important than conformity. Perhaps, it’s a Westernised Confucianism, or as it has always been.

Power no longer promises any Utopian vision, the pseudo-religion of communism and fascism found in the past has little impact, outside of a few radicals and hold outs. Ideologies have in practice become a homogenised pragmatic balance between corporate and State interests, careers and profits perfectly aligning under the pretence of law, order and stability. The public, are in essence viewed as possessions, those to be protected and owned. To be mastered. Obedience and loyalty is an assumed civic obligation which is made possible through the direct means of dependency and debt. The notions of social contract and nationalism, infuse the realities that most accept and think little beyond. Freedom and liberty, individual rights are not firm principles, instead they are compromised away, whether through fear or insecurities.

The minds who may disagree are scattered, and by their very nature do not seek power. They are not politically motivated to use the monopoly of government to coerce their neighbours, so the dissent takes on a rather Ghandi like disorderly dissatisfaction. The politically motivated, tend not to believe anything, other than power and their personal ascent. The process is a lie, the system a status quo for power, liberal democracy has gone from a delusional balance of individual rights ensured by the State, so long as the State has certain monopoly powers. Now, it’s assumed that the State should have powers to command and control all things, it’s accepted and despite the magical legalesse meant to constrain, it only refrains the individuals right to self ownership. Maybe, in time this will include our words, our thoughts.

Perhaps, in time such a simple Sunday afternoon conversation in itself may be illegal. Dangerous. It may sound absurd or an unreasonable forewarning made by a philosophical anarchist, but the sharing of a website in a public place, a legally defined minor not being put in their place, and contraband in whatever form, are all which given time may become outlawed acts. The exchange of cash, a book that is no longer approved or thoughts, all can be seemingly harmless thing to a reasonable mind. To an insecure and power fixated one, they are to be controlled and contorted. Society and the political process, perhaps even the public mob, seem to reward insecure power.

Maybe, even the music she seeks out will no longer be available on playlists, replaced by regionally censored and approved versions. AI generated equivalence, and in a generations time, who would remember. When the older generations become apathetic, give up on principles, assuming they had any, to simply exist in crystal palaces or investment real estate Panopticon’s. Enjoying their careers, or pensions. The youth can suffer the world they destroyed, the one where the past in itself is now a nostalgic Utopia, when feral freedom could be in ways had. Free of prying eyes, and hearing voices, pay walls, and ID checks or softaware which monitored every step and transaction. Where dangerous words could be read, forbidden lyrics heard and conversations happened organically, without fear of reprisal.

This is the future we all built. Be happy with it. It’s what you wanted.

As for the Youth, they pick through records and CD’s to listen to the music some once took for granted, anti-establishment punk bands which now are fashionable shirts for politicians to wear. The spirit of ‘68 may have whispered away, the courage of 1989 when the tank man stopped a column of armour, the Berlin wall crumbled away and Romanians executed a despot and his wife, but to be forgotten remnants. Would such courage exist now, such dignity? Or, did we all just sell out. The price it turns out was pretty cheap. What did you get in return?

Hopefully she does not lose that spirit, and her peers find it too. Because, the adults in her life likely don’t care, sold their kids out and swallow power one eager mouthful at a time.

Trump says he wants a deal with Iran. Netanyahu hints the real goal is regime change anyway. That contradiction is where diplomacy goes to die, and it is also where Americans get dragged into a war they did not vote for. We roll solo and ask the blunt question a lot of people are thinking but few say out loud: is Trump still representing the United States, or is he effectively acting as Israel’s president on the Iran war?

We unpack Netanyahu’s media strategy and why he may be one of the most effective political operators in modern U.S. history, able to keep influence across parties and across administrations. From there, we get specific about the Iran nuclear program: what “enrichment” actually means, why civilian nuclear energy and medical isotopes matter, and how redefining enrichment as a weapons program guarantees a stalled negotiation. We also compare the coherence of Iranian messaging with the whiplash of American statements on ceasefires, blockades, and end goals.

Then we zoom out to the battlefield map and the economy. The Strait of Hormuz, tanker attacks, and regional retaliation all raise the risk of a wider Middle East escalation and higher oil prices that hit U.S. households fast. We close with the House War Powers resolution, why Washington calls it “symbolic,” and why that should worry anyone who still believes Congress is supposed to decide when America goes to war. If you want more clear-eyed analysis of U.S. foreign policy, subscribe, share the show, and leave a review with your take on where this is headed.

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Trump didn’t just get “frustrated” with Netanyahu. He confirmed he told him, “Are you effing crazy,” and that single moment raises a bigger question: if the White House is truly fed up, why does the region still look like it’s sliding toward wider war?

Jim Webb joins me to break down what matters beneath the gossip-cycle headlines. We talk about Israel’s expanding operations in Lebanon, Iran’s promise to respond harder than tit-for-tat, and the messy reality behind CENTCOM messaging and casualty reporting after attacks tied to Kuwait and Bahrain. If you’ve been wondering whether a ceasefire exists when missiles and drones still fly, we define the terms in plain English and map out where escalation pressures are coming from.

We also go where Washington loves to hedge: Israel’s nuclear “non-position” and the legal and political incentives that keep it that way, even though everyone on Capitol Hill knows the score. From there, we connect foreign policy directly to your wallet, from fuel shocks and the Strait of Hormuz risk to what prolonged conflict could mean for inflation and household budgets.

Finally, we dig into domestic politics, including the Thomas Massie primary and what massive outside spending signals to every other member of Congress. If you care about US military aid, the Israel lobby, ending the Iran war, and how this all hits the midterms, this is the connective tissue. Subscribe, share this with a friend, and leave a rating and review, what do you think is the one move that would actually change US policy?

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I spent a lot of time dealing with the victim of violence. That betrayal only a lover can express, the sinister switch from affection or at least the performance required to invent love, to twist into a tantrum of rage. The bruising and cuts, a secondary blistering to a pain that seldom heals. Perhaps can not heal.

“I would die for you, I would kill for you,” such men squirm, maybe they believe it. At least when they are forged inside of their own egotistical certainty. Yet, despite such promises, they don’t protect their lover-victim from themselves. The imbalance is perhaps a calculation of ownership, ‘she’ in this case is a possession, to be owned and kept. No self ownership or agency for herself, just a being to be protected, a prisoner to such affections.

The idea of self owner ship has in itself been eroded by ideological coercion, before that it was defined by a religious one. And in this case it’s enslaved romantically.

When I coached and helped those who had experienced such intimate violence, near all ladies, find their voice from beneath the dried tears, hidden bruises. Help them, as one put it when she saw me bashing the heavy bag, “I wanna be able to do that,” it was with consideration to such betrayal and distrust. If the man who claimed to love, who said. “I do,” and even shared children with could beat, bludgeon and in some cases rape with hateful spite, then how could one trust anyone else?

To sleep with the enemy, or torturer. To share a life and house with an abuser. Was in the past common. It’s less accepted now. It was in the era before women’s liberation and liberal values, it’s an obligation in some cultures for the feminine to yield. In many parts of the world, rape, violence are masculine rights. Whether through culture, religion or even mutations of both are empowered by the writ of law.

Yes, women can and do abuse men. Domestic violence occurs against men. Males have been killed and beaten, or maimed by their female partners. John Wayne Bobbit, was after all for a time a household name. I am well aware of this. That does not relate to the particular interactions that I am about to share.

As an inflection of hearing and doing my best to help some ladies over come their betrayals and experiences, I had a conversation with two men who had been the attackers. I came across each for books that I was writing.

James, seemed likeable enough, a little flabby with a salt and pepper beard and the body shape of a man who liked to lift heavy weights but never said no to a late night snack. Or beer. It was the beer, and other forms of alcohol that he claimed to be his demon. The excuse needed to rationalise a temper and inconsistent arrogance.

“I had a problem, I’m better now,” he mentioned about his drinking.

He never served time for what he did to his wife, now ex. It did make it hard for him to see his two kids. He told me that one of them was present for one of the beatings.

“I can admit now that it was wrong, that’s easy for me to do so. Around the time that it all happened, I would never even think about it. I had so much anger and then I felt ashamed, or I would need to get drunk and feel sorry for myself.”

His wife had a broken nose and black eye after one of the attacks. He said that he only hit her on three occasions, at least that he recalls.

“I was only charged for the time she went to hospital. In some ways, she enabled me. I mean, not to blame her. It was all my fault, I mean she let me do it again and again.”

“What was she meant to do? Fight back?” I asked him coldly.

“I don’t know, not let me come back to her. Not accept my apology. It was when she kicked me out and stopped me from seeing our kids, that’s when I got sober.”

“The violence and abuse was all a self-help exercise for your benefit?”

He chuckled with unease, “no, I mean, you know, I saw who I was really after.”

“Because you faced a consequence for your actions?”

“I guess.”

“And when your eldest daughter saw you hit her, what do you think that did to her?”

He fidgeted, “It happened fast, I didn’t know she was there. Listen, I would never hit my kids. I could never hurt them.”

“But, you could your wife?”

“I’m not that person now.”

I was meant to be interviewing James for my book, Degenerate, he was in the BDSM realm. The violence for him after his ex was now seemingly consensual. He liked it rough, at least to be the one doing the violence, not to receive it. I doubt his pug-like jaw could take a shot. It did not take much for him to open up about his past, his own trauma as he saw it.

“I have so much guilt for what I did.”

“You should.”

He nodded, a cigarette in his fingers, as he stared at the road while we leaned against his car.

“I am not like that now.”

The rest of the conversation ran into subject matter for the book. A conversation that I did not include in the book, and it would be inappropriate to pollute this writing with any of it. For him, perhaps in some way, the sex and violence or at least how he expressed himself was entwined.

Gavin had been in an out of the remand centre for assault, domestic violence and drug related offences. On home detention when I spoke with him, his stories bubbled in and out of any believable truth. I found when someone wants you to like them, they will attempt to finish your sentences in agreement with you, or change what they have already said to align with your words. Gavin did this on a few occasions.

I was going to write a follow up book to, Degenerate, and call it, Dangerous. The premise being I would find and investigate and interview people who indulge in criminal behaviour or, have particular beliefs and world views which go against the societal grain. I had made some contacts and did begin with that expedition but, burn out and an inability to spend money and time on an enterprise that would go unread deterred me from pursuing it.

As for Gavin, he had tattoos crawling up his neck, and inked words on his knuckles and up his forearms. The usual poetic mastery such as “loyalty,” “honour”, “FAFO (Fuck Around, Find Out)” and “I love Mum.” Maybe not, that last one.

At times his eyes held a yellowed hue like egg yolk, his breath puffed with whatever vape he was sucking and with the marinated perfume only green teeth could produce.

“We were having a break, and she betrayed me, was hard to tolerate,” he sucked the kiwi-strawberry scented vape form his couch.

His on again, off again, girlfriend had been seeing him for about six years. He had been charged with assault against her, and she even had a restraining order against him but the romance or co-dependency ensured that she would come and visit him while he was on home detention.

“Was this the first time you assaulted her?”

“Nah, she made all that shit up. I was done because I wrote threatening things to her in text and left a voice message.”

“That’s why you were charged.”

“Yup.”

“And the more recent time?”

“We had a break, and I was seeing a younger bird. She was all messed up and needed to have a hit of the pipe before we fucked. That girl has a head full of mess. Was fun but she was attracted to this,” he pointed to his bikie aesthetic, the tattoos, jewellery, and lifestyle. Perhaps free ‘gear’ also. In her case it seemed to be nitrous oxide. Two bottles stood erect on a nearby bench top.

“And your ex was seeing someone else?”

“No, she was chatting to a bloke from another group.”

I have refrained from mentioning which bikie group he belonged to and the other man was involved with.

“She seems to have a type.”

“I know right,” he began to pack his pipe with the putrid leaf of weed.

“And it was because of this, you felt betrayed?”

“Yeah, she knows what my business is. You can’t fuck around with rivals like that.”

“She doesn’t mind that you were sleeping with another girl?”

“Nah, we were taking a break.”

“And when you found out about this other guy, that’s when you snapped?”

“Yeah, bro. She was pushing me and getting in my face. I just lost it and hit her a few times to calm her down. She left crying and threatening me.”

I really try not to insert myself into such conversations while attempting to be objective, so I let him continue. According to his house mate, a child hood friend of Gavin’s, he had also threatened to cut her head off with an axe as well as break her fingers so that she could not text anyone again. Another reason why writing a book like, Dangerous, was going to be so difficult for me, because retaining any objectivity would be too hard.

I wanted to rip his throat form his head. I am no white knight, just a man. Here, I am trying to pack aside that inclination and use my pen, or keyboard instead.

“Then we were over, I told my mates and they said I had done the right thing. No need to have a bitch like that.”

“Did you or do you still love her?”

“Yeah, I do. That’s why I am so angry.”

“If you loved her, then why can’t you let her go and not keep putting her and you through this cycle of violence and screaming?”

He sucked the pipe, plumes of smoke wafted about his face while he stared at me with glassy eyes, “because I love her.”

“She isn’t your possession.”

“I know what’s best for her.”

“Hitting and threatening her, is best for her?”

“I didn’t want to do that. I just lost control.”

“Are you in control now?”

He nodded.

“And if she walked through the door, and told you what she had been doing and who she had been speaking with and it was not something you wanted to hear?”

“I’d be fucking pissed.”

“And what would you do?”

He rocked back and forth in his seat, “I don’t know.”

“Would you remain in control of yourself?”

He could not answer. I knew the answer. His ex knew the answer. Maybe, beneath the ink veneer, the lies he told himself and the stench of weed, he also knew the answer.