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February 25, 4:30 to 5:00 pm Live Streamed through Zoom


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“Financing Philadelphia’s Future” – Tom Sgouros on the role of pension funds in providing affordable housing”

The Right has a rare opportunity to turn the tables on the administrative state—and also prepare the way for the great re-learning that America needs.

If you’re an American who works for a living, chances are good that between state and federal laws, insurance carrier requirements, and woke corporate Human Resources (HR) departments, you’ve had to endure “anti-harassment” trainings. These are delivered either in live group settings or via online modules that combine videos with quizzes, with only certain responses deemed acceptable. Some of the content has amounted to forced indoctrination in leftism to a captive audience—which was, of course, the point.

I work for the Claremont Institute, which leaders on the Right have called “America’s most consequential think tank”—and which even frequent critics such as the New York Times have had to admit is “a nerve center of the American Right.” Yet even on this island of sanity, we have had to devote multiple hundreds of staff hours to watching training videos that explain what is and is not acceptable to say and do in California’s woke legal environment.

It would be much more appropriate to stop the ideological chicanery and instead require employees in federal agencies to be trained on how to not harass American citizens.

On this episode of After America, Dr Gorana Grgić joins Dr Emma Shortis to discuss Trump’s plans for Ukraine, the MAGA movement’s support for Europe’s resurgent far-right parties, and the new Cabinet’s approach to ‘prioritising’ China.

This discussion was recorded on Thursday 20 February 2025 and things may have changed since recording.

Order What’s the Big Idea? 32 Big Ideas for a Better Australia now, via the Australia Institute website.

Guest: Gorana Grgić, Senior Researcher, Center for Security Studies, ETH Zürich // goranagrgic.com

Host: Emma Shortis, Director, International & Security Affairs, the Australia Institute // @EmmaShortis

Show notes: 

Bridges across regions: the effects of Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific cooperation on European security architectures by Gorana Grgić, International Politics (January 2025)

Even for lawyers, keeping up with all the litigation filed against the Trump Executive Branch is hard. For nonlawyers, I imagine it is harder, especially because many of the suits make similar claims, seeking similar relief: injunctions – specific commands - to halt the conduct complained about. With the caveat that even ultimately successful suits may not produce compliance, I'm going to explain why individuals, unions, consumer advocacy associations, and the states are filing so many similar suits. The short answer is that those opposing Trump's turnover of the executive branch to Musk and the resultant mass firings, threats to data privacy and security, funding halts, and so forth are trying to bring the legal questions at stake to a head and soon.

In my latest open access article Confronting Multiple Global Crises: a political economy approach for the 21^st century, published in the journal Globalizations, I discuss the essential features of a political economy approach, which facilitates the conceptualisation of the internal relations between the current, multiple global crises including a crisis of global capitalism, a crisis of global labour relations, a crisis of global gender relations, a crisis of global race relations and a crisis of global ecology.

NOTE: As of 8:00 CST, I have over 100 responses, so I have to shut the questions down! Thank you for your thoughtful submissions. It is great to see so many folks engaged. I will read them all and answer as many as I can later this week. Stay tuned!

NOTE 2/26: The answers are up!

***

Hello readers! It is time for our monthly Q & A. This will be the last written Q & A I do for a while, because I’m getting ready for the release of my new book, The Last American Road Trip, on April 1.

The book is available for preorder at any major or independent bookstore in print, eBook, and audiobook. Autographed copies are available here! You can read rave reviews at Kirkus and Publishers Weekly.

Introduction

In these hard times find your joy! Here is a collection of podcasts to listen to about finding joy in activism, resistance, and movements.

Listen

How to Find Joy in Activism

There is no one way to change the world. That’s what Karen Walrond realized when she wrote a book about the relationship between joy and activism.

Throughout her life, Walrond has marched in parades, given motivational speeches to thousands and gone on humanitarian trips for efforts against HIV and AIDS. “But in my mind, activism was something that you did and got arrested for, it was something that you did and got tear gassed.”

It’s true, activism can look big, like organizing a march for racial justice or occupying a pump station to protest a pipeline. But after reflecting on interviews and research for The Lightmaker’s Manifesto: How to Work for Change Without Losing Your Joy, Walrond realized it was time to expand her definition of activism.

23 mins, NPR – Listen below or here.

The Climate Change Authority report concludes that additional emissions under the coalition plan would see Australia miss its 2030 emissions target and delay the overall transition to clean energy.

“The Climate Change Authority’s slap-down of the Coalition’s nuclear proposal is welcome, but it is yet another distraction from the big climate issues,” said Rod Campbell, Research Director at The Australia Institute.

“We’re talking about nuclear yet again, not about Australia’s uninsurable regions, massive fossil fuel subsidies and dodgy offset schemes.

“It suits both major parties to have a fake fight about nuclear and avoid these real problems in Australia’s climate policy, on which Labor and Liberals largely agree.

“It would be more useful if the CCA focused on Australia’s subsidised fossil fuel expansion and rising domestic emissions.

“Nuclear is a distraction that avoids scrutiny of Australia’s real climate problems.

The post Fake fight over nuclear a distraction from real climate issues appeared first on The Australia Institute.

Notes on the Crises pivoted on February 1st into around the clock coverage of the Trump-Musk Treasury Payments Crisis of 2025. Today is Day Twenty Two

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This article is read by Eunice Wong, a Juilliard-trained actor, featured on Audible's list of Best Women Narrators. Her work is on the annual Best Audiobooks lists of the New York Times, Audible, AudioFile, & Library Journal. www.eunicewong.actor

Text Originally posted Feb. 18, 2025

This livestream description was provided by Workers Strike Back.

Republicans & Democrats are parties of war & the rich. We need to fight the rich & both their parties to win what workers need.

I sat down with philosopher and artist Sunaura Taylor last month to discuss her latest book, Disabled Ecologies: Lessons from a Wounded Desert. For those who are unfamiliar, Taylor is a master weaver of disparate disciplines, showing us how disability is present and illuminating in animal studies, environmentalism, ethics, and political philosophy in ways that few other philosophers do. Disabled Ecologies brings this interdisciplinary work to the deserts (and aquifers) of Arizona in order to introduce us to the notion of injury environmentalism—namely, the idea that our environments are disabled by the same forces that disable us, and that a praxis of non-abandonment (of people, of animals, of earth) is at the heart of what justice for all beings must look like. Below is the conversation we had about this fascinating intersection.

Introduction

In recent years, climate and animal rights activists have increasingly turned to provocative and disruptive tactics. Actions such as throwing soup on famous paintings or disrupting major sporting events often appear disconnected from their stated goals—what researchers call having “low action logic.”

Activists turn to these methods because they believe they are more likely to capture public and media attention—but are they right? Do these tactics help movements advance their goals?

This new report sheds light on the real impact of these tactics, analysing how different forms of protest influence two key outcomes:

“The strategy is to delay, postpone, obfuscate, derail.”

That was the U.S. Agency for International Development’s approach to protect its autonomy from the president. It had nothing to do with resisting Donald Trump and DOGE—this line was written three decades ago to resist reforms by Warren Christopher, Bill Clinton’s mild-mannered secretary of state.

The career bureaucrats and their aid-industrial complex won out. That marked the last shovelful of dirt on the grave of attempts to rein in USAID.

Until Trump and his DOGE team.

Recent revelations go beyond the imaginations of what many knew but could seldom prove. USAID has become an out-of-control agency spending billions a year in bloated crony contracts, rotten from top to bottom with systemic fraud, corruption, and politicization. USAID has a budget roughly triple the official budget of the CIA, and has become an unaccountable slush fund for a left-wing political machine. For decades, that slush fund paid the salaries and projects of activist consultants, policymakers, lawyers, journalists, entertainers, organizers, think tanks, universities, and NGOs.

Introduction

Interested in activist archiving and radical recordkeeping? Explore this open source book, Archiving The Voices of Change: A radical recordkeeping guide for activists, archivists, and disruptors, by Katherine Jarvie-Dolinar.

Radical recordkeeping is a broad concept for both ways of recording, and part of advocating for change and challenging societal norms. – Source

Contents

The voices in the title of this book can redress the gaps in archival institutional memory. These archives can include the stories of the voiceless, such as animals, to provide a more comprehensive record of activist groups’ impact on society. – Source

Part 1 describes the theoretical grounding for the ideas in this book, stemming from archival concepts and theories and theorists whilst combining sources at the intersection of activism and academia.

A little over a year ago, in January 2024, I wrote about how German workers required a record number of sick days in 2023. That record didn’t hold for long though; it was broken in 2024, according to Germany’s largest health insurer, Techniker Krankenkasse.

Last month, Deutsche Welle reported “Businesses seek to cut sick pay in Germany,” noting that, “businesses suggested that this was because people were skiving off work.” As pandemic denialism remains entrenched in public policy and the public imagination, it’s hardly any wonder that data indicating widespread illness continues to be either suppressed or openly rejected by those in power.

Getting Back on Track: What To Do When the Local Budget Feels out of Control

 — Organisation: Strong Towns — Friday 21st February 2025

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Why Should We Care If the Trump Administration, and Musk’s DOGE, are Acting Unconstitutionally?

 — Author: Nathan Tankus — Publication: Notes on the Crisis — Friday 21st February 2025

Notes on the Crises pivoted on February 1st into around the clock coverage of the Trump-Musk Treasury Payments Crisis of 2025. Today is Day Twenty Two

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Portland’s Housing Policies Are Delivering. Will Other Cities Catch Up?

 — Organisation: Strong Towns — Friday 21st February 2025

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The Bottom-Up Revolution Is…Bringing the Benefits of Passenger Rail to Utah

 — Organisation: Strong Towns — Thursday 20th February 2025

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