Guest editorial by Philip Frazer
There is no reason to keep drilling for oil or gas. The whole world could power everything we need from the sun, wind, tides, hydro and geothermal.
But so long as we keep burning oil to power our machines, we are at the mercy of rival powers in the Middle East, the richest being the Saudis, led by the murdering Prince Mohammad bin Salman, who has a deal with the crooked Prince Trump of America.
The world’s second largest oil stash is in Iran, which is run by another breed of patriarchs, the Ayatollahs, who refuse to kowtow to America, which is why Trump is hell bent on nuking it out with them.
We the people of the world watch this insanity even as Australia’s bushfires rage, worse than they ever have, owing in large part to the exhaust fumes from burning oil.
Trump acts as if exploding nuclear bombs is a fair response to challenges to his ego, he’s unaware of how much Iranians resent the US for overthrowing their most democratically elected government ever (in 1953), and cares nought that drone-bombing Iranian hero General Qasem Soleimani would destroy a global convention against assassinating a government leader who’s visiting a third country, when no state of war has been declared.
The only other foreign leader Trump and his sidekick Pompeo consulted, before firing four missiles into the Iranian military leader’s convoy, was Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel.
Our Australian government was, of course, out of the loop, even though our PM shares Trump’s empathy-deficiency and his my-dick’s-bigger-than-yours guiding principle of foreign affairs.
Tragically, almost every other member of our parliament, plus the Murdoch media, and far too many of our fellow citizens will agree that we must back-up our great American ally, because… why? We’re brain-dead and suicidal?
Next year’s US presidential election is also rearranged by Trump’s slide toward an invasion of Iran.
Independent Senator Bernie Sanders, the most determinedly anti-invasion candidate, now has, for the first time ever, a fair chance of winning the Democrat‘s state primaries that start next month – obliging the party to nominate him at their convention in July.
That doesn’t mean he’ll beat Trump, because Murdoch and most of corporate America will do everything they can to destroy him.
The US failed to ‘win’ its invasions of Iraq and Syria.
Beating Iran will be incalculably harder – it’s a far bigger country with far better defences, and a relatively unified population of 80 million.
In the event that the US invades Iran, everyone on the planet will lose because the most devastating environmental disaster of all is war.
Some good news?
There are over a billion teenagers in the world, and over 40 per cent of the world’s adults are under 25 – is that good?
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
