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“Living within a lie”: Carney’s eulogy to the international order

— Organisation: The Australia Institute — Monday 26th January 2026

On this episode of After America, Allan Behm joins Dr Emma Shortis discuss the global “rupture” identified by Prime Minister Carney, President Trump’s petulant response, why Trump’s apparent climbdown over Greenland may not save NATO, and what this all means for America’s allies, including Australia.

This discussion was recorded on Thursday 22 January 2026.

A time for Bravery: what happens when Australia chooses courage is available now via Australia Institute Press. Usually available for $34.95, use the code ‘POD5’ to get $5 off – offer available for a limited time only.

After America: Australia and the new world order is available from Australia Institute Press for just $19.95.

Guest: Allan Behm, Advisor, International & Security Affairs, the Australia Institute

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

Show notes:

Special Address by Mark Carney, Prime Minister of Canada | World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2026, World Economic Forum on YouTube (January 2026)

Heide Gerstenberger, Market and Violence

— Publication: Progress in Political Economy — Monday 26th January 2026

What can a sepia-toned postcard of Lüderitz Bay (pictured), formerly a German South West Africa naval base, teach us about the dynamics of global capitalism? The answer is a great deal, according to the central argument of Heide Gerstenberger’s Market and Violence: The Functioning of Capitalism in History. For Gerstenberger, Karl Marx and Marxist theoreticians have fallen into a key misunderstanding regarding the role of violence in capitalism, an oversight they share with liberal figures like Adam Smith: namely, the optimistic interpretation of capitalist accumulation as a historically progressive social development that would ultimately eliminate direct, explicit forms of violence. The link between colonial violence and exploitation in German South West Africa is thus mobilised by Gerstenberger as one of several prime examples of the pervasiveness of overt violence in the “concrete historical developments” of capitalism. However, how plausible is this sepia-toned understanding of violence, as it were, in the face of increasingly digitalised forms of social life? With all the rich historical detail it provides, Gerstenberger’s book seems to shine more as a retrospective account of earlier forms of violence than as a prospective analysis of the sharply colourful and AI-mediated violence of contemporary market transactions.

Gerstenberger’s vocabulary of violence

The Fed’s War on Young Homeowners

— Organisation: The Claremont Institute — Monday 26th January 2026

President Trump began the first full week of 2026 with several announcements, one of which was likely to get missed in everything that’s been taking place: he committed his administration to “ban[ing] large institutional investors from buying more single-family homes,” because “[p]eople live in homes, not corporations.” A fair enough observation.

However, according to the Brookings Institution, large institutional owners account for less than 3% of home ownership nationally. Yet home prices are still absurdly high.

Affordability is a key topic for young people who lived through the post-CARES Act inflation and resent many of their elders for owning homes they don’t think they’ll ever be able to afford. Zohran Mamdani soared into the New York City mayor’s office in part because he repeatedly spoke on this issue. While it is a positive sign that the Trump Administration is looking to tackle exorbitant home prices for young Americans, its ban on institutional investing may miss the forest for the trees, that great expanding forest being the Federal Reserve.

The Revolution Is On in Minnesota

— Organisation: The Claremont Institute — Monday 26th January 2026

The deaths of Alex Pretti and Renee Good, who was shot after hitting an ICE officer with her car according to video footage, have many asking the question, “What exactly do these anti-ICE activists think they are doing?”

The seemingly incomprehensible decision by Good, a mother with stuffed animals in the glove box of the vehicle she used to obstruct the enforcement of federal law, is leaving people scratching their heads. Reporting that Good became an activist through a peer group at her child’s progressive, social justice-focused charter school has not provided many answers. Media outlets like CNN have sought to demonstrate that the work Good was involved in was more like a side project of the local Parent Teacher Association than domestic terrorism.

But reality was something else.

Current ScholarshipThe Political Economy of Credit: The Unidad Popular and the Chilean Central Bank (1970-1973)

— Organisation: Just Money — Monday 26th January 2026

Paula Ahumada Franco

Canada is Betting on AI for National Economic Growth: Here’s Why Working-Class Canadians Lose

— Publication: Perspectives Journal — Monday 26th January 2026

Amid heightened political and economic uncertainty with the United States, neoliberalism continues unabated in Canada with the election of former central banker Mark Carney as Prime Minister in 2025. Despite today’s crisis stemming from decades of erosion under the neoliberal economic paradigm, through austerity, wage suppression, and cuts to public benefits, the Carney government’s push to make artificial intelligence (AI) a central part of Canada’s economy would accelerate that erosion.

In the name of protecting Canada’s economic integrity from U.S. instability, Carney has increasingly positioned AI as a pivotal piece of Canada’s future economic growth. Canada’s bet on AI, only if successful as an inflator of growth, would represent another manifestation of trickle-down economics: hype-driven, top-heavy, and disconnected from the lived realities of Canadians.

What’s On Jan 26 – Feb 1 2026

— Organisation: Free Palestine Melbourne — Monday 26th January 2026

What’s On around Naarm/Melbourne & Regional Victoria: Jan 26 - Feb 1, 2026

Imperial Boomerang [VIDEO]

— Author: Chris Hedges — Monday 26th January 2026

The murders of unarmed civilians on the streets of Minneapolis, including the killing today of the intensive-care nurse Alex Jeffrey Pretti, would not come as a shock to Iraqis in Fallujah or Afghans in Helmand province. They were terrorized by heavily armed American execution squads for decades. It would not come as a shock to any of the students I teach in prison. Militarized police in poor urban neighborhoods kick down doors without warrants and kill with the same impunity and lack of accountability. What the rest of us are facing now, is what Aimé Césaire called imperial boomerang. Empires, when they decay, employ the savage forms of control on those they subjugate abroad, or those demonized by the wider society in the name of law and order, on the homeland. The tyranny Athens imposed on others, Thucydides noted, it finally, with the collapse of Athenian democracy, imposed on itself. But before we became the victims of state terror, we were accomplices. Before we expressed moral outrage at the indiscriminate taking of innocent lives, we tolerated, and often celebrated, the same Gestapo tactics, as long as they were directed at those who lived in the nations we occupied or poor people of color. We sowed the wind, now we will reap the whirlwind.

Lincoln’s words, for Alex Pretti and Renee Good

— Author: Heidi Li Feldman — Sunday 25th January 2026

Today has been a wretched day in a sea of wretched days for the United States of America. I organized, protested, raised money for an Immigrant Rapid Response Fund in Minnesota, read news and legal filings, shared whatever I could on Mastodon. No matter what I was doing, Abraham Lincoln’s words at Gettysburg kept ringing in my mind. I repeat them here, emphasizing the ones I dedicate tonight to Alex Pretti and Renee Good.

Imperial Boomerang

— Author: Chris Hedges — Sunday 25th January 2026

What the heck’s going on with Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom?

— Publication: Progress in Political Economy — Saturday 24th January 2026

Originally written in 2014 for my personal blogsite, For the Desk Drawer that no longer exists, this post missed a transfer over to Progress in Political Economy (PPE). I have dusted it off without any major changes so that it can appear on PPE.

Activists Make History: From the Ground Up with Tony McQuail

— Publication: Perspectives Journal — Saturday 24th January 2026

Listen to the full conversation on the Perspectives Journal podcast, available to subscribe on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Amazon Music, and all other major podcast platforms.

Stay tuned for future episodes with other candidates in the 2026 NDP leadership race.

Tony McQuail is an organic farmer and candidate running to be the next leader of the federal NDP. A lifelong activist, he has run for office multiple times, served on the Huron County Board of Education, and spent decades organizing around sustainable farming, rural issues, and green progressive politics.

A Nation on Thin Ice

— Author: Sarah Kendzior — Friday 23rd January 2026

Thank you, subscribers, for your thoughtful questions! I answered most of them and tried to address the main points of the rest. If you can afford to become a paying subscriber, please consider it. It keeps my articles open to all and feeds my family of four! You also get the perk of submitting a question for the next Q & A:

Space Law for a Space Republic

— Organisation: The Claremont Institute — Friday 23rd January 2026

In mid-December, the White House released an executive order establishing the second Trump Administration’s space policy. In the order, the president outlines a policy to “secure the Nation’s vital economic and security interests” and “unleash commercial development” in the stars.

The EO follows on the Department of Energy’s “first-ever government purchase of a natural resource from space” last May. If successful, the procurement of lunar helium-3 by 2029 promises to be the first nugget in a 21st-century gold rush. With the value of the isotope reaching $20 million per kilogram by some estimates, prospecting and settlement of the final frontier—a goal of President Trump’s order—might soon follow.

Withdrawing from the Outer Space Treaty (OST) might help secure that frontier for Americans. Ratified by the Senate in 1967, the treaty was born of the Cold War. After the Soviet Union launched Sputnik in 1957, the global community focused on how to prevent preexisting terrestrial tensions from spilling over into space.

Pavlina Tcherneva: the 'enshittification' of jobs and the shifting politics of the US working class

— Organisation: Modern Money Lab, YouTube — Friday 23rd January 2026

Play stupid games, win stupid prizes | Between the Lines Newsletter

— Organisation: The Australia Institute — Friday 23rd January 2026

The Wrap with Amy Remeikis

You didn’t have to be a political savant to see what was going to happen this week from the moment Sussan Ley decided to open the door to negotiations with Anthony Albanese on the hate group bill almost no one wanted.

One of the first rules of politics is if the other side are knocking on your door asking you to negotiate with them, then what you’re negotiating is only ever going to benefit those knocking.

It was the worst of politics – civil liberties used as bait to hoist the Liberal leader by her own political petard. Ley’s lack of principle, experience and political instinct saw her rush to politicise the antisemitic Bondi attack, demanding a royal commission, for parliament to be recalled and a suite of hate speech legislation to be rushed through. After a united media and political class frenzy, Albanese gave Ley everything she wanted. She was, in every sense, the architect of her own downfall, egged on every step of the way by a rightwing media apparatus that has sent the Coalition backwards for the last two elections.

Thousands of affordable homes axed this year sparks call for more social housing

— Organisation: Everybody's Home — Thursday 22nd January 2026

National housing campaign Everybody’s Home is urging the federal government to make 2026 the year it significantly stumps up funding to plug the social housing shortfall, as an affordable housing scheme comes to an end.

The National Rental Affordability Scheme (NRAS), designed to provide affordable rentals to people earning low and middle incomes, has been winding down since 2018 and is set to end in June 2026.

The latest federal figures reveal more than 4,500 affordable homes will exit NRAS this year – the final lot of the more than 36,000 affordable homes that have phased out of the scheme over the past decade.

The NRAS rentals will take years to be replaced by the 40,000 social and affordable homes set to be built under the federal government’s Housing Australia Future Fund (HAFF).

According to Housing Australia, as of November 2025, 889 homes under the HAFF had been completed, with a further 9,501 described as under construction.

How Anti-Majoritarianism Became the Global Language of Legitimacy

— Organisation: The Claremont Institute — Thursday 22nd January 2026

We are accustomed to thinking of political power as a binary: you either have it or you don’t. But in his 1945 masterpiece On Power, Bertrand de Jouvenel imagined it as an organism. Power is like a creature in a nature documentary, adapting, sensing opportunity, and slipping into the cracks. And it grows not because tyrants seize it but because people invite it. “Power is continually being summoned by the weak to save them from the strong who are close at hand,” de Jouvenel wrote. It expands not through violence but through promises. If one has heard the phrase “high-low vs. the middle,” this is how power operates. A higher power uses the low, whether for bodies, justifications, or clients, to attack the middle.

Here is where de Jouvenel’s argument becomes truly interesting. Power does not grow randomly: it grows toward legitimacy, toward righteousness, toward whatever moral vocabulary the age supplies. In medieval France, that vocabulary was justice. In the 20th century, it was security. But in the 21st century, the moral vocabulary of legitimacy is something different. Today’s most potent political ideal is anti-majoritarianism.

How to re-Ausify the Hottest 100

— Organisation: The Australia Institute — Thursday 22nd January 2026

Last year’s Hottest 100 featured just 27 Australian songs, the lowest number since 1994.

This contrasts with the years 2014 to 2022 when Australian artists produced more than half of the songs in the Hottest 100.

The analysis shows that the decline in Australian songs in the Hottest 100 is mirrored in data from streaming services – the number of Australian songs and artists featuring in global streaming services like Spotify is declining rapidly.

This is because Australian artists are crowded out by other English-speaking acts, particularly those from the USA.

The analysis concludes that Australian music can be rejuvenated with policy support focused on increased funding and better regulation of streaming services.

“The decline of Australian songs in the Triple J Hottest 100 is caused by lack of funding and governments’ failure to regulate streaming services,” said Rod Campbell, Research Director at The Australia Institute.

“When it comes to Australian music, streaming has changed everything.

“Whereas once the main source of music for Australian listeners was Australian radio stations, audiences are now listening through global streaming services. These work on algorithms that filter for language but not for geography, so Australian artists are competing against American artists, which the streaming services are biased towards.

Gender norms and access to education

— Publication: Advancing Learning and Innovation on Gender Norms (ALIGN) — Thursday 22nd January 2026

Gender norms and access to education ESubden Thu, 01/22/2026 - 17:58 22 January 2026 ALIGN guide Rachel Marcus ALIGN View Module Global 64

Decolonizing The World (w/ Amin Husain) | The Chris Hedges Report

— Author: Chris Hedges — Thursday 22nd January 2026

This interview is also available on podcast platforms and Rumble.

Palestinian professor and activist Amin Husain knows what Western settler colonialism looks, sounds and feels like. Growing up in Palestine, Husain experienced the iron grip of Israeli force and came to understand how important it was to struggle against such a powerful imperial entity, even in the face of defeat.

In the United States, Husain applied his learned experience to organize and educate about how colonialism and imperialism not only exists in the modern world, but is intertwined in the economy and culture of the global capitalist world order. Husain joins host Chris Hedges to chronicle his story and his approach to fighting settler colonialism, which, after October 7th, led to his firing from New York University.

Just Answering Questions: Unemployed in Greenland

— Author: Sarah Kendzior — Wednesday 21st January 2026

UPDATE, Thursday, 8:00 AM CST: I’m closing questions because there are a lot! Thank you all for your interest. I’ll be back as soon as I can with the answers in a separate article!

UPDATE, Friday 4 PM: The answers are up! Check your mail or here.

Hello subscribers (and future subscribers!) Are you clinging to the cliffs of insanity? Finding our new world order inconceivable? Then it’s time to drop a question in the Q & A! For those new to this feature, here’s how it works:

1) To ask a question, join as a paying subscriber, and post your question in the comments section below:

Activists Make History: Stories that Change the World with Avi Lewis

— Publication: Perspectives Journal — Wednesday 21st January 2026

Listen to the full conversation on the Perspectives Journal podcast, available to subscribe on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Amazon Music, and all other major podcast platforms.

Stay tuned for future episodes with other candidates in the 2026 NDP leadership race.

Avi Lewis is a journalist, documentary filmmaker, and candidate running to be the next leader of the federal NDP. Born in Toronto, he built a career telling stories about movements for economic and social justice, from worker-run enterprises to global climate campaigns.

Professor Tim Foxon: A Green New Deal and the Wellbeing Economy - January 2026 lecture

— Organisation: Modern Money Lab, YouTube — Wednesday 21st January 2026

Morally Responsible IVF

— Organisation: The Claremont Institute — Wednesday 21st January 2026

The debate over IVF has revealed a deep fissure inside the pro-life movement—not over whether life is sacred, but over whether we trust human beings to act in accord with that truth.

When President Trump announced a suite of policies to subsidize and support some forms of IVF, the fiercest criticism didn’t come from the Left. It came from those who consider themselves the most devout defenders of life. They denounced IVF as inherently immoral, condemned those who use it as selfish, and warned that creating embryos outside the womb violates the natural order.

This reaction was characterized more by moral discomfort than by moral clarity. Though the modern pro-life movement has done inestimable good, there are some among its number who conflate the misuse of fertility technology with the immorality of all fertility technology per se. It’s a reactionary posture that treats human innovation as a threat rather than a tool—one that, if guided rightly, can aid nature in its sacred purpose of bringing new life into the world.

I know this because I’ve lived it.

Bribery “Diplomacy” Is Over

— Organisation: The Claremont Institute — Wednesday 21st January 2026

Since the end of the Cold War, the United States has attempted to hold Pax Americana together with a simple, deeply flawed strategy: pay everyone off and hope they behave. Allies, adversaries, neutrals—it didn’t matter. Subsidies, aid, trade asymmetries, security guarantees, sanctions waivers, and diplomatic indulgences were handed out on the assumption that gratitude would follow. It didn’t—entitlement did.

Bribery diplomacy rests on a childlike premise: if you keep paying, people will stay in line. In reality, when money flows freely and consequences never arrive, it stops being leverage and becomes reverse tribute. Nations don’t become loyal. They become resentful, arrogant, and defiant. And the moment you threaten to turn off the spigot, the outrage begins. “How dare you?” “You’re betraying us.” “You’re imperialist.” “You’re fascist.” The language is predictable because the psychology is.

Europe is the archetype. After World War II, the United States rebuilt the continent and underwrote its security. That made sense at the time. What didn’t make sense was continuing to subsidize Europe indefinitely while tolerating trade imbalances, defense freeloading, and open hostility toward American interests. When Trump demanded NATO countries pay their share, it was treated as the end of the “world order.” When he demanded reciprocal trade instead of one-way free trade, elites panicked. The system wasn’t collapsing; the subsidy was.

01/21/2026 Market Update

— Organisation: Applied MMT — Wednesday 21st January 2026

Questions Remain, a Year After the Antioch High School Shooting

— Author: Betsy Phillips — Monday 19th January 2026

Opinion: We failed Josselin Corea Escalante, who was killed in a school shooting a year ago this week

Does the government understand its own hate laws?

— Organisation: The Australia Institute — Wednesday 21st January 2026

Amy Remeikis and Bill Browne join Ebony Bennett to discuss how having fewer guns in the community will make Australians safer. However, the complex anti-hate legislation that was rushed through at the same time could have serious consequences for Australian society.

A time for Bravery: what happens when Australia chooses courage is available now via Australia Institute Press. Use the code ‘POD5’ at checkout to save $5 off the price – available for a limited time only.

Where it all went wrong: the case against John Howard by Amy Remeikis is available for pre-order now.

Guest: Amy Remeikis, Chief Political Analyst, the Australia Institute // @amyremeikis

Guest: Bill Browne, Democracy & Accountability Director, the Australia Institute // @browne90

Host: Ebony Bennett, Deputy Director, the Australia Institute // @ebonybennett

Show notes:

Fewer guns will make us all safer

— Organisation: The Australia Institute — Tuesday 20th January 2026

Australia Institute research shows the number of guns in the Australian community has surged to more than 4 million and a gun is stolen every four hours in Australia. The theft of legally owned guns is the biggest single source of new firearms on the black market in Australia.

The laws establish the infrastructure for a new national gun buyback scheme, make it illegal to import the kind of rapidly reloading rifles and shotguns used in the Bondi massacre, and enable states and territories to consider intelligence gathered by Commonwealth agencies like ASIO as part of firearms licensing decisions.

“Gun law reforms can’t stop hate or antisemitism, but these reforms will help stop hate from turning into the kind of horror we saw in Bondi,” said Ebony Bennett, Deputy Director of The Australia Institute.

“Australia Institute research has repeatedly shown that the most straightforward way to keep Australians safe is to reduce the number of guns available in the community.

“Not only are there at least 800,000 more guns in the Australian community now than before the Port Arthur massacre, but they are being kept in large numbers in our cities and suburbs.

“Thirty years on from Port Arthur and there is still no National Firearms Register up and running, something that needs to be accelerated as a matter of urgency.

Fixes for American Special Education

— Organisation: The Claremont Institute — Tuesday 20th January 2026

In the town of Howell, Michigan, Andrea Lee has been trying to secure special education resources for her children through lawsuits. According to local reporting, she’s filed “more than two dozen complaints and four legal grievances over the Howell Public Schools’ treatment of her three children with disabilities.” Special education policy in North Carolina’s Cumberland County is also being determined by way of lawsuit: A new lawsuit claims that the county’s school district “systematically violated federal disability law by delaying special education evaluations for children who showed clear signs of needing help.”

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), after all, makes it so that special education policy is essentially created lawsuit by lawsuit. It puts mandates in place and then, according to Miriam Kurtzig Freedman in the University of Chicago Law Review, sets up “an adversarial private-enforcement system for the rights it created.”

An Impressive Year One for Trump 2.0

— Organisation: The Claremont Institute — Tuesday 20th January 2026

MAGA world seems to be down at the mouth lately. Though still months away, the latest polling seems to portend defeat in the upcoming midterms. And yet, looking back over the past year since January 20, 2025, I see not gloomy defeat but an America that has—for the first time in decades—a fighting chance.

The first year of President Trump’s second administration gives me hope that America will not continue on the path that seemed inevitable just over a year ago: tyrannical censorship, weaponized government agencies, and a Rubicon as heavily trafficked as the Rio Grande. Instead, the Trump Administration has racked up a series of clear victories in several major areas of policy that they can build on in the years ahead to inaugurate a new American golden age.

Monumental Immigration Enforcement

No issue was more central to Trump’s ascent than finally getting immigration under control, a demand from American voters that both parties had previously ignored for decades. In his first administration, Trump controlled the border. But in his second term, he’s done far more than that (crossings these days are virtually nil, something the political class said just a couple of years ago required an act of Congress). He’s taken massive steps toward removing the many millions who reside in the United States illegally.

US extorts Europe in effort to acquire Greenland

— Organisation: The Australia Institute — Monday 19th January 2026

On this episode of After America, Matt Duss joins Dr Emma Shortis to discuss the Trump administration’s new tariffs against Europe, what if anything it might do in Iran, and its threats to prosecute political opponents.

This discussion was recorded on Friday 16 January (AEDT) 2026.

A time for Bravery: what happens when Australia chooses courage is available now via Australia Institute Press. Use the code ‘POD5’ to get $5 off – offer available for a limited time only.

Guest: Matt Duss, Executive Vice President, Center for International Policy // @mattduss

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

Show notes:

‘Shorter America this week: everything is gender’ by Emma Shortis, The Point (January 2026)

‘How Marco Rubio Went from “Little Marco” to Trump’s Foreign-Policy Enabler’ by Dexter Filkins, The New Yorker (January 2026)

The Last Election

— Author: Chris Hedges — Monday 19th January 2026

Briefing: Inequality and the Child Poverty Strategy

— Organisation: The Equality Trust — Monday 19th January 2026

On 13 January 2026, our Co-Executive Director Priya Sahni-Nicholas spoke at Public Policy Exchange’s event to discuss the recently published Child Poverty Strategy, Tackling Child Poverty: Improving Welfare, Security and Future Prospects. Inequality and child poverty are deeply linked. Her analysis of the strategy found that, although there’s evidence of a welcome shift in beliefs […]

The post Briefing: Inequality and the Child Poverty Strategy appeared first on Equality Trust.

Current ScholarshipPlurality, Entanglements, and Empire in Early Modern Monetary Relations – Special Issue

— Organisation: Just Money — Monday 19th January 2026

Andrew David Edwards, Ellen M. Nye, Joshua Batts, and Shweta S. Banerjee

Narco-Myths and Neoliberal War: Why Colombia’s Conflict Escalated

— Publication: Progress in Political Economy — Monday 19th January 2026

For decades, politicians and journalists framed Colombia’s civil war (1964–2016) as a narcotics problem, collapsing its political and social dynamics into the claim that the FARC was nothing more than a drug cartel – a narco-terrorist organisation masquerading as a political movement. This ‘War on Drugs’ narrative served as the major pretext for extensive U.S. intervention from the late 1990s onwards, under which Colombia became one of the largest recipients of U.S. military assistance globally.

Drawing on my recent article, War of Movement, published in the Review of International Studies, I explain why this framing fundamentally misunderstands how and why the conflict escalated.

The article rejects the idea that Colombia’s war can be understood as an ‘internal conflict’ – the dominant category in security, conflict and peace studies. Instead, it reinterprets the escalation as fundamentally internationalised, shaped by the uneven and combined dynamics of global capitalism and Colombia’s violent process of neoliberal reintegration during the 1990s. This reframing shifts the focus away from the dubious moral tale that the FARC ‘degenerated’ into a drug cartel toward the deeper political-economic dynamics shaping the conflict.

Our Trash Could Help Us Defeat China

— Organisation: The Claremont Institute — Monday 19th January 2026

In his escalating attempts to cut ties with China, President Trump has aggressively employed tariffs, threats, and embargoes. But there’s one potentially powerful tool the Trump Administration has yet to leverage fully: trash.

Hidden among America’s trash heaps and mining waste are potentially rich accumulations of critical materials that China currently monopolizes—and that the United States desperately needs. Capitalizing on those materials will remove one of China’s greatest sources of leverage over American national and economic security.

After decades of allowing domestic production of critical minerals to flatline, policymakers and industrial partners have finally woken up to the dangers of the Chinese critical mineral monopoly. The country controls 60% of critical mineral production and 85% of the world’s processing capacity. Yet these often-cited numbers can obscure even more frightening vulnerabilities.

Kaleidoscope: Branding Iron

— Author: Zoe "Doc Impossible" Wendler — Monday 19th January 2026

The Age of Democracy Promotion Is Over

— Organisation: The Claremont Institute — Monday 19th January 2026

In 1983, under the guidance of Ronald Reagan, Congress created the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) to “foster the infrastructure of democracy.” Reagan had used the phrase a year before in an address to Parliament to describe the building blocks of liberty: a free press, unions, political parties, and universities. The president’s stated aim was noble, even high-minded—to advance democratic norms without the blunt instruments that had characterized earlier Cold War interventions.

The institutional form chosen to achieve this aim, however, was peculiar from the start. The NED was conceived as a government-organized non-government organization—a GONGO—deliberately positioned at arm’s length from formal diplomacy while remaining entirely dependent on congressional appropriations. This structure allowed U.S. officials to exert political influence abroad while maintaining a veneer of non-intervention and plausible deniability. The result was not independence, but ambiguity: foreign policy without clear accountability to either Congress or the president.

American Civil War II and its aftermath

— Author: Heidi Li Feldman — Monday 19th January 2026

Historians will, I predict, deem the current situation in the United States the American Civil War II.

This is a civil war instigated by the federal government when it began sending unnecessary and militarized forces into American cities. I date the start to the weekend of October 4, 2025 when Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth secretly ordered U.S. military troops to Chicago and Portland, Oregon, to aid and abet violence by federal agents against peaceful civilian populations. The militaristic federal invasion and occupation of Minneapolis is a continuation of this war.

Civil wars do not follow a template. Secession is not a necessary condition for an American civil war. In the current one, the American Democracy side and the Republican Fascist side are in existential disagreement over the following constitutional questions.

Whether the executive branch of the federal government is constrained by the U.S. Constitution, laws passed by Congress, and judicial branch reiterations of either or both.
Whether the executive branch may ignore the Constitutionally-defined sovereignty of states.

These are now live issues. The Trump regime has made them live by adopting the view that the federal executive branch is not constrained by the Constitution and relevant federal laws and using militaristic force against Americans in states whose voters have rejected this position and whose governors side with American Democracy.

What’s On Jan 19-25 2026

— Organisation: Free Palestine Melbourne — Monday 19th January 2026

What’s On around Naarm/Melbourne & Regional Victoria: Jan 19-25, 2026.

The Way In: Representation in our Parliament – Wesa Chau

— Organisation: Per Capita — Monday 19th January 2026

“Everyone gets a fair go” is one of Australia’s most cherished values. We often pride ourselves on being a country where diversity is a strength and where anyone — with enough passion, hard work and persistence — can rise to leadership. But The Way In, Per Capita’s latest analysis of the 48th Parliament, reveals a more complicated truth. While we have taken meaningful steps forward, the pathways into federal politics remain narrow, elite, and far from reflective of the nation our parliamentarians are elected to serve.

Before diving into the findings, I’m reminded of a moment that crystallised the power of assumptions. When I was invited to speak at a leadership conference, I arrived at a venue hosting two events: one on leadership and the other on childcare. Other participants were asked which event they were attending – I wasn’t, staff directed me straight to childcare. It showed how assumptions about who looks like a leader still shape how people are seen and treated.

How can a NEW Transit Line be THIS BAD!? (Finch West LRT)

— Publication: Not Just Bikes — Sunday 18th January 2026

No signs of heat going out of Coalition’s summer of discontent

— Organisation: The Australia Institute — Friday 16th January 2026

Ley, and others in her increasingly small circle, mistook Josh Frydenberg’s win in forcing the Albanese government to call a royal commission into the events that led to Bondi as a personal victory.

It became obvious that was a mistake almost as soon as it happened. The Liberals may have found brief unity in a feverish lust of blaming the government, and anti-genocide protesters, for the actions of deranged terrorists, but that unity was never going to hold.

After losing the summer, Anthony Albanese is playing the long game. In throwing together a little of what everyone wanted into a bill no one wanted, he got to say he tried.

It is a well-worn Australian political tactic – wielding power through failure: “We tried to do something, and just couldn’t and that’s someone else’s fault” becomes the narrative, with the focus then shifting to who is not letting the government do as it wishes, rather than the government’s failure to find the support it needs to get it through.

In this case, Labor itself didn’t want the “something” it was attempting to do. It played a high stakes game with liberties to own the right, aided by the Greens, who saw the lay of the land and made the smart choice.

Now Ley must own the Coalition walking away from legislation it said it wanted, while the government gets to pretend it tried to meet its expectations.

In more crass terms, Ley f–ked around. Now she’s finding out.

Burning homes and rising premiums: why fossil fuel companies must pay the bill

— Organisation: The Australia Institute — Friday 16th January 2026

Just days after hundreds of homes were destroyed and tens of thousands of livestock died in Victoria’s bushfires, across the state hundreds more people were evacuated and multiple cars washed out to sea due to flash flooding following an intense storm.

Fossil fuel companies cause the climate change that turbocharges extreme weather events, but ordinary Australians are paying the price. It’s time that changed.

Global warming means extreme weather events like storms, floods, and bushfires are more frequent and more intense. But these disasters are still too often framed as tragic but unavoidable acts of nature, rather than the inevitable consequence of Australia being the third largest exporter of fossil fuels on Earth.

Gas, oil, and coal companies are let off the hook, while the true costs of climate-fueled disasters keep landing on the wrong people, again and again. It’s well past time Australia implemented a climate disaster levy on fossil fuel companies.

Because the costs of climate-fueled disasters are enormous. Homes and properties are destroyed. Businesses shut down. Cattle dead. Farms damaged. Local infrastructure – roads, power, water – wiped out in a matter of hours.

Following a string of major floods across the east coast of Australia in 2022, Australians claimed more than seven billion dollars on their home insurance – almost double the previous record.

What is a Woman?

— Author: Sonja Black — Saturday 17th January 2026

What Trump Should Learn from Old Hickory’s Succession Plan

— Organisation: The Claremont Institute — Saturday 17th January 2026

Almost immediately after he came down the golden escalator in 2015, Donald Trump was being compared to Andrew Jackson. From his anti-establishment tenor to his breaking of norms to his raucous times in office, media observers and even the president himself have highlighted their similarities. “It was during the Revolution that Jackson first confronted and defied an arrogant elite. Does that sound familiar to you?” Trump asked in 2017 during a speech marking Jackson’s 250th birthday.

But less discussed is the comparison between Jackson’s own revolution and Trump’s, particularly the endings. While this is understandable—Trump has in many respects served as America’s past, present, and political future for the last decade, and an ending to his time at the center of American life is difficult to fathom—as 2028 draws near, those who wish for Trump’s revolution to extend past his presidencies should look to how Jackson handled his own movement after he exited the White House.

Though Jackson left office in 1837, he did not leave the political scene. In fact, his political revolution was only half over. In managing the second half, Jackson would go on to become the most powerful former president in American history—and would see his revolution through to its conclusion.

Media Release: Free Palestine Melbourne rejects Labor’s draconian bill

— Organisation: Free Palestine Melbourne — Saturday 17th January 2026

16 January 2026: Free Palestine Melbourne rejects Labor’s proposed hate speech bill as a dangerous and anti-democratic measure that will stifle free speech and Palestine activism.

Grand Illusion - Read by Eunice Wong

— Author: Chris Hedges — Friday 16th January 2026

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 published January 8, 2026.