Robbie Slater muses in the Oz what a coup for Tony Popovic — the fight to get exciting attacker Cristian Volpato in a Socceroos jersey has been going on for years.

We have to give Popovic a lot of credit for the role he played in this.

Volpato adds firepower, which is crucial after the loss of Riley McGree to a hamstring injury.

I've seen a lot of criticism online about the decision but, regardless, we need him.

Volpato has made his choice, it doesn't matter why it has taken so long — everyone needs to support him now because he is a Socceroo.

It will be interesting to see how Popovic plans to use Volpato — will he form part of the starting side or come off the bench?

Everyone wants to be part of that starting XI for the opening match of the FIFA World Cup and this clash with Mexico is their last chance to fight for it.

I think we can safely say that Popovic has locked in seven of his 11 players for the starting side.

That means there are four spots up for grabs, on top of that three other players are fighting to keep their name on that 26-man squad list submitted to FIFA on Monday.

In-form goalkeeper Mat Ryan, who played a big role in saving his Spanish club Levante from relegation, has proven he deserves to keep that No. 1 jersey. He will be coming in on a big high.

Alessandro Circati and Cameron Burgess will take up two of the three centre-back spots with Harry Souttar the most likely third.

Jordy Bos, our best player on the team, will take the left-back role.

The right-back position though will be one of the big areas Popovic uses this hit out against host nation Mexico to test. [click the intro to return other stories]

President Donald Trump said in a social media post that he would make a final decision on the Iran deal on Friday. Tehran earlier said it was looking for action, not words, when it came to an agreement.

Dell surged 32.8% after raising its full-year profit and revenue forecasts on Thursday. The tech sector climbed 1.87%, fueled by gains in chip stocks.

Peers Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Super Micro Computer gained 12.6% and 11.6% respectively. Microsoft climbed 5.4%.

The software services index also advanced by over 6%, erasing all losses since January-end, when concerns over AI disruption had weighed on the sector.

Earlier in the session, all three indexes hit intraday record highs, cruising on renewed optimism around AI and strong earnings growth, despite concerns about the Iran war’s impact on inflation and the global economy.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 363.37 points, or 0.72%, to 51,032.34, the S&P 500 gained 16.44 points, or 0.22%, to 7,580.07 and the Nasdaq Composite 55.15 points, or 0.21%, to 26,972.62.

The small-cap Russell 2000 index was down 0.6%.

For the week, the S&P 500 gained 1.43%, the Nasdaq rose 2.39%, and the Dow climbed 0.9%. The Russell 2000 index rose 1.72%.

For the month, since April 30, the S&P 500 gained 5.15%, the Nasdaq rose 8.36%, and the Dow climbed 2.78%. The Russell 2000 index rose 4.24%.

The S&P 500 registered its ninth consecutive weekly gain, its longest winning streak since December 2023.

There’s definitely euphoric sentiment in the market around AI. The rally has really been driven by earnings, said Ohsung Kwon, chief equity strategist at Wells Fargo.

He suggested investors buy and hold AI stocks, then earn extra income by selling call options at prices much higher than the current stock price.

Melissa Brown, head of investment decision research at SimCorp, said over the past few weeks volume has gone up, which suggests more people are coming into the market.

The S&P 500 communications services sector dropped, as Alphabet declined by 2.5%.

Consumer staples shares were weak, with heavyweights Costco and Walmart down 3.9% and 2.6% respectively.

The S&P automaker index dropped after reports the Trump administration wants North American-built vehicles to have 82% regional content to qualify for preferential treatment under the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement.

Shares of General Motors fell 1.3% and U.S.-listed shares of Stellantis dropped 2.7%.

U.S. economic data on Thursday showed inflation increased at its fastest pace in three years in April, while GDP for the first quarter was revised lower to a 1.6% annual rise.

The Fed’s Kansas City president Jeffrey Schmid warned the energy shock may not be temporary. Vice chair for Supervision Michelle Bowman said a persistent rise in inflation might require tighter monetary policy.

Money markets expect the Federal Reserve to keep interest rates steady for the rest of the year, with expectations of a 25-basis-point hike in December.

Among other movers, Gap shares tumbled 15.4% after the apparel retailer cut its annual sales forecast, while American Eagle Outfitters dropped 11.8% after keeping its annual comparable sales forecast unchanged.

Declining issues outnumbered advancers by a 1.04-to-1 ratio on the NYSE. There were 491 new highs and 102 new lows on the NYSE.

On the Nasdaq, 2,378 stocks rose and 2,486 fell as declining issues outnumbered advancers by a 1.05-to-1 ratio.

The S&P 500 posted 27 new 52-week highs and 12 new lows while the Nasdaq Composite recorded 125 new highs and 54 new lows.

Volume on U.S. exchanges was 23.9 billion shares, compared with the 19.36 billion average for the full session over the last 20 trading days.

On Friday afternoon, as I sat down to work on this column, I honestly didn't know where to focus first.

Was the biggest issue the loss of integrity in our public life, after the Prime Minister ("my word is my bond") admitted saying 50 times he would not change any of the rules around investment properties but did it anyway?

Or was it the reality, confirmed in the budget papers, that under Labor’s record high immigration, Australia will hit 30 million people by 2030, despite nowhere near enough housing for those here now? Or was it the revelation that Labor has just brought in death duties by stealth?

Giggle v Tickle

As I debated all of this, the Federal Court handed down its decision in the long-running Giggle v Tickle case, where Sall Grover, a woman and founder of a women’s online networking app (called Giggle For Girls) was accused of discrimination against a transgender woman, the biologically male Roxanne Tickle, who sought to join the women-only app.

In a devastating blow for the rights of women and girls in this country, the court rejected scientific fact and declared that sex was more than biology (it isn't), and so Grover lost and now owes compensation to Tickle.

The fact that the taxpayer-funded Human Rights Commission was a part of this legal action to deny all women our biological rights is appalling. The fact that Grover now has to rely on donations from ordinary people to defend rights that should not need defending says everything about the state of woke policy and activist courts in Australia.

But what’s perhaps most galling of all is that we are only in this position of denying chromosomal reality because Julia Gillard, ironically the first female prime minister, stripped the word woman from the sex discrimination act. Before then, this case would never have got to court.

Anyone for any toilet

But what this latest decision does (and let’s hope it gets overturned when Sall Grover heads to the High Court), is that women’s sport, toilets, access to medical services, schools, clubs, domestic violence shelters, prisons ∼ the whole box and dice ∼ are open slather to any man who declares he is a woman.

Gender used to be what you called yourself, sex is what XY or XX made you. Not any more, thanks to this decision. And Gillard too, who changed the law just TWO DAYS before she was rolled by Kevin Rudd in June 2013 — how dare she lecture anyone on misogyny.

But on Friday afternoon, the bad news kept coming.

To add Labor insult to Labor injury, dropped out when they hoped no-one was watching was news from the Victorian government that not only was Daniel Andrews going to get a bronze statue in his honour but that it was already being made. You can't make this stuff up, can you?

In memory of stupidity

Given Victoria has a daily interest bill of $24 million, a $130,000 statue is a rounding-error but it’s the attempt to force Victorians to honour the man who locked them up for two years, ruined businesses, blew out debt, kowtowed to China, dialled up woke and made the once-proud state an international laughing stock that’s tipped people over the edge.

Am I the only one asking how the heck did we get here?

And, more to the point, how do we turn it around or, God forbid, is it even possible?

Never trust any leader again

If Albanese is allowed to get away with his massive budget lie, then we will never be able to trust any leader again. And if we can't ask questions before an election and base our decisions on what they tell us and hold them to it, then democracy is dead.

For all of Labor’s talk about intergenerational equity, the budget hits younger Australians the hardest. The PM says breaking his word on negative gearing is about them, but how can it be when they will never be able to use negatively gearing (as he has) to build up a nest egg but those doing it now can keep it up?

Buy a new-build property instead, Labor tells investors. But again, how’s that fair for young people given this is what they typically buy as a first home and, now, they're going to face even more competition as investors move in? Even Labor’s own budget papers admit that these changes will likely increase rents (as they did in the Keating era before he was forced to back down) and do little to increase the stock of available homes.

And then there’s the tax on aspiration (CGT changes) before they get you from the grave (the hit on trusts).

Liberal backbone

Thankfully, the Liberals have finally found a bit of policy backbone, and a bit of political mongrel.

Angus Taylor’s reply to Labor’s budget speech felt like the start of the Coalition getting its mojo back. He made the bold move to end bracket creep once and for all by indexing income tax thresholds, meaning low- and middle-income earners won't get punished for getting ahead. On migration, he went for the jugular and landed a bullseye if the hyperventilating from Labor MPs is any guide. The PM in particular was hysterical, declaring it was un-Australian to divide people between those who are migrant and those who are not.

That is not what Taylor did. He divided them between Australian citizen and non-citizen and said that, under the Coalition, only citizens would get access to the pension, the dole, the NDIS and other welfare.

Help for no commitment

Now what is unfair about that? Why should your taxes carry people who have made no formal commitment to this country? Right now, people can live here for decades, take the money and never pledge loyalty to Australia and its people. Taylor says not any more.

Add in the Treasurer’s announcement of a new Working Australians Tax Offset (a pollster-named handout if ever there was one) of $250 a year (or $4.80 a week) and rightly people are angry. In his budget speech, Jim Chalmers called his WATO meaningful but what’s meaningful about 68 cents a day when the cost of everything has skyrocketed? It’s not meaningful, it’s insulting.

(And I might add, it’s still not even the $275 Albanese promised off their power bills).

Albo's right for a change

Anthony Albanese said that this budget is full of Labor values and it is — the socialist values that attack the fair-go, break trust, and hit middle Australia even harder

For the Liberals, there could be no better ground than this to fight Labor.

If the Coalition holds its nerve and campaigns every day like its life depends on it (because, frankly, it does) then this budget could well be the beginning of the end for the Albanese government.

But only if they work, day and night, to take the fight up to Labor. Labor is the target, not each other and not One Nation.

THUMBS UP

Jacinta Nampijinpa Price: Her emotional, fighting speech in the Senate is a must-watch as she demanded culture takes a back seat to better protect Aboriginal children.

THUMBS DOWN

Military witch hunt: Another $43m in Labor’s budget to investigate soldiers on top of the $350m that the Brereton process has cost taxpayers already.

Yet with so many of its dramatic predictions in tatters, the question is no longer whether the film was right or wrong. It is how a misleading narrative acquired such power that it helped make economic self-harm the West’s supreme moral virtue.

The great thinkers of the Enlightenment would have viewed the spectacle with disbelief. Reason’s march, wrote John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon in Cato’s Letters, was sure to expose the ravings of Oracles and Seers as idle and superstitious Fables.

And by daring to know, added Immanuel Kant, mankind would be released from its self-imposed tutelage to falsehoods, submitting every claim to remorseless examination.

Disappearance of human credulity

Transferring that emancipatory promise from philosophy to science, the 19th century displayed even greater confidence in the disappearance of human credulity. The unveiling of nature’s laws, said Auguste Comte, would inaugurate a religion of humanity that worshipped the scientific method. Freed from the false methods of metaphysics, the human mind would at last possess the key to the truth.

Yet the 19th century’s cult of science hardly banished the supernatural. It merely recast it in scientific form. Even as philosophers proclaimed rationality’s triumph, spiritualism swept the West, with mediums and seances presented as science’s latest frontier. The age that marvelled at electricity and the telegraph proved equally eager to drape mystery in the rhetoric of experiment, observation and empirical verification.

Nor were the period’s most eminent scientists immune to mystery’s lure. Among spiritualism’s ardent defenders were Alfred Russel Wallace, co-discoverer with Charles Darwin of natural selection, and distinguished physicist Oliver Lodge.

Its advocates also included such formidable leaders as William Gladstone, Alfred Deakin, Stanley Baldwin and Canada’s greatest 20th-century prime minister, William Mackenzie King, whose conversations with Franklin D. Roosevelt reportedly continued long after Roosevelt’s death.

Spiritualism’s delusions

But spiritualism’s delusions were comparatively benign, comforting millions of bereaved parents and widowers. It was Marxism that proved to be the most catastrophic product of the 19th century’s gifting of scientific authority to myth.

Marxism’s claims were vast. As Engels declared at Marx’s graveside in 1883, his friend had achieved for society what Darwin had achieved for nature — the discovery of history’s law of development, whose unfolding was as inevitable as a law of physics. But Marxism went even further, combining scientism with 19th-century Romanticism’s apocalyptic imagination.

Marx had said that capitalism would be shaken (erschüttert) by its mounting contradictions; when editing Das Kapital’s third volume, Friedrich Engels changed it to collapsed (zusammengebracht). Capitalism’s destruction was a scientific certainty, he claimed, for it was racing to ruin like a locomotive whose jammed safety valve the driver is too weak to open.

From this emerged Marxism’s moral absolutism. Apocalyptic visions had long envisaged a final struggle between the forces of God and the forces of Satan; Marxism translated that struggle into secular form.

Noxious bourgeois vermin

Those who opposed scientific socialism were worse than merely mistaken: by breaking the higher law of history, they became enemies not just of the proletariat but of humanity. The distance from that to Lenin’s demand for the extermination of noxious bourgeois vermin was alarmingly short.

It was that same moral and psychological absolutism that resurfaced, long after communism’s collapse, in the secular religion proclaimed by An Inconvenient Truth. But its apocalypticism, although also clad in scientific garb, does not belong to the 19th century’s rationalist certainties; it comes suffused with the Middle Ages' prophetic terrors.

Medieval apocalypticism was, for example, obsessed with dating the end times. Joachim of Fiore determined that the Antichrist would appear after 42 generations of 30 years, while Pope Innocent III’s Quia maior performed elaborate numerological exegeses upon the Beast’s number, 666.

Climate discourse’s own numerology mirrors that obsession: 12 years, eight years, 1.5 degrees, 350 parts per million, net zero by 2050. Each figure is freighted with the urgency of revelation and the authority of numerical precision — only to be quietly superseded when the appointed hour passes uneventfully.

Just renew the countdowns

Failed prophecies, Richard Landes showed, didn't destroy medieval apocalyptic movements; they intensified them as the deadline was recalibrated. So too with the ever-contracting windows to climate catastrophe, every expiration yielding not disillusionment but a new countdown, a new threshold and a new call for repentance.

In exactly the same way, medieval apocalypticism divided the world into the children of light and the children of darkness. Those who doubted the end-time’s imminence were Satan’s keepmates; those who questioned its numerological proofs were the bastard offspring of the Antichrist.

Climate discourse reproduces this structure. Sceptics are not people who need to be convinced; they are deniers — a term calculated to demonise them with the moral infamy of Holocaust denial. Rather than meriting a serious reply, they have to be mercilessly exposed as the malign agents of self-interest.

But the consequences of this Manichean outlook, with its demand for an embodiment of absolute evil, are graver yet. The apocalyptic movements of the 12th century drew an ever-tighter circle around the elect, expelling from the community of the saved heretics, schismatics and, above all, Jews — whose continued existence figured in the eschatological imagination as a fatal obstacle to the coming of the heavenly kingdom.

Climate activists' sense of fury

From this sprang an uncontrollable rage that all too readily transmuted into violence.

The climate activists share that sense of fury; what lends it still greater intensity is that fury is almost all they possess.

Medieval apocalypticism held out the promise of a Beautiful Ending: the millennium, the reign of the saints, the New Jerusalem. Marxism preserved that structure: the dictatorship of the proletariat would culminate in eternal abundance.

But in climate catastrophism, the utopian horizon has withered away. And because the positive vision is so threadbare, while the visions of devastation are so overwhelming, the movement’s emotional grammar is saturated with rage: rage at those who refuse to submit, rage at those who continue to doubt, rage at those who stand in the way.

Little wonder climate activists deride democracy. Instead of medieval apocalypticism’s Beautiful Ending, climate catastrophism offers only Dutiful Compliance — the insistence, echoing Marxism, that humanity can be saved solely through obedience to science’s supposedly inexorable laws, as interpreted by its infallible prophets.

The science is in; the messy trade-offs that are democracy’s way of managing complex and contentious issues are out — with raising them akin to apostasy.

These are, in other words, true fanatics, willing, in Voltaire’s words, to inundate the world with blood for the sake of unintelligible sophisms. That the Greens can be climate extremists one day and admirers of Hamas’s death cult the next is therefore hardly surprising.

Therein, 20 years later, lies the tragedy. Science hasn't killed apocalypticism or curbed its dangers; it has merely dressed the apocalyptic delusions in new robes. And the civilisation that believed it had escaped the ravings of Oracles and Seers has ended by canonising them anew — with Al Gore as their most enriched and exalted evangelist.