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Who needs world-changing, life-saving science when you’ve got rugby league?

 — Organisation: The Australia Institute — 

And it’s a wake-up call for government. At precisely the time you would expect Australia to be building its ability to conduct cutting-edge public science, our premier scientific agency is sacking people.

CSIRO tried to characterise the cuts as “a renewed emphasis on inventing and deploying technological solutions to tackle national problems”, but it’s blatant cost-cutting. The news of the 350 full-time-equivalent researcher jobs being cut comes on the back of another 800 jobs being cut in the past 18 months.

Australians have always been fiercely proud of the CSIRO – and rightly so.

Few public institutions anywhere in the world can boast a track record like it. CSIRO is globally respected. From fast Wi-Fi, the polymer banknote, the Hendra virus vaccine, breakthroughs in radio astronomy, and world-leading climate modelling, CSIRO has repeatedly punched above its weight. The debt of gratitude Australians owe CSIRO for Aeroguard alone can never be repaid.

Which is why it’s so alarming to watch its funding – and its people – bleed away.

The timing of these cuts couldn’t be worse. With the United States gutting its universities and medical research sector – Trump’s America has become a terrifying place to do science – Australia has a once-in-a-generation chance to attract some of the world’s top researchers. Instead we’re sacking researchers by the hundreds.

What are they waiting for? | Between the Lines Newsletter

 — Organisation: The Australia Institute — 

The Wrap with Amy Remeikis

Fifty-three years ago, Gough Whitlam swept to power with the slogan ‘it’s time’.

Looking at this Labor government, you now have to wonder what are they waiting for?

It’s past time for fair tax reform. Past time for an end to fossil fuel expansion. Past time for the government to start governing for people, and not vested interests.

And yet, as we enter the last sitting week for the year (unless Labor gets its way on the environment laws, in which case the government will probably try and drag everyone back for one more sitting), with Labor walking away from gambling advertisement reforms recommended by the late Peta Murphy, we have to ask again, what is it Labor is waiting for?

The gambling reforms are a perfect example of how hesitant Labor is to use power. Because what does it have to lose? The public supports it. Unlike the under-16s social media ban, there is evidence it will reduce harm. There are a multitude of ways for Labor to address the roadblocks of free-to-air television and media suffering a loss of gambling ad revenue, including by putting a levy on the gambling companies which trade in people’s hope and addictions. But they won’t do it.

Remembering John W. Danford

 — Organisation: The Claremont Institute — 

Dr. D, as I called him, was a scholar and a gentleman. He earned his PhD from Yale after writing a dissertation on Plato, Aristotle, Hobbes, and Wittgenstein, published as Wittgenstein and Political Philosophy by The University of Chicago Press in 1981. Later he wrote David Hume and the Problem of Reason, from Yale University Press, and a book published by ISI called The Roots of Freedom, based on lectures he gave for Radio Free America. After starting his career at the University of Chicago, Dr. D moved to the University of Houston and then to Loyola University Chicago in 1993, just as I was enrolling there in graduate school.

Why it’s the perfect time for the Albanese government to defy the mining lobbies

 — Organisation: The Australia Institute — 

It has a big majority in the lower house, an easy Senate and an opposition in a shambles.

Less widely remarked is that, outside of Parliament, some key potential critics are also at a low ebb, and it’s not just the traditional media critics that are no longer able to influence elections.

The mining and gas lobbies are also historically weak.

This might not seem obvious, given the Albanese government’s tendency to do whatever the resource sector asks – whether it’s approving carbon-bomb gas export projects for Woodside, putting environment law reform on the go-slow for the mining industry, or doing as little as possible to end the “great gas giveaway”.

But the government’s subservience to the resource lobbies stems more from the personal preferences of Anthony Albanese and his ministers, rather than the power of the lobbies themselves.

Long-gone are the days of 2010 when, the mining industry could claim – apocryphally or otherwise – to topple prime ministers and governments. These days it can hardly organise a meeting in a conference centre.

Last week the Minerals Council of Australia and the gas lobby Australian Energy Producers hosted Australia’s first Energy and Minerals Tax Conference.

Two of the country’s most powerful industry groups were teaming up to “highlight the significant economic and tax contribution of the natural gas and mineral resources sectors”.

Why did they need to have three-day conference with government, opposition and media invited to talk about how much tax they pay?

Legal Conservatism for All Time

 — Organisation: The Claremont Institute — 

Jesse Merriam has inaugurated this symposium on the future of the conservative legal movement with a provocative essay arguing that the movement needs to reassess itself in light of our current political and cultural moment. He argues that it should shed its technocratic “focus on how precedents are interpreted and distinguished” in favor of a broader project “that conceives of law as a way to sustain the American way of life.” Legal conservatism, Merriam continues, should “develop a constitutional morality that reflects the larger project…of constitutional and…civilizational restoration.” He does not want to abandon originalism but says that the conservative legal movement needs to mount a positive project to meet today’s considerable challenges.

I agree.

In order to clarify Merriam’s argument, it is important to point out that the movement has always needed, if it has not quite always had, at least three separate but overlapping projects.

The American Mind Podcast: The Roundtable Episode 294

 — Organisation: The Claremont Institute — 

The American Mind’s ‘Editorial Roundtable’ podcast is a weekly conversation with Ryan Williams, Spencer Klavan, and Mike Sabo devoted to uncovering the ideas and principles that drive American political life. Stream here or download from your favorite podcast host.

I Will Be Your Tootsie-Nuzzi | The Roundtable Ep. 294

The Wage Price Index shows pay packets are up. So why doesn’t it feel that way?

 — Organisation: The Australia Institute — 

The Wage Price Index was released on Wednesday and is a measure of how fast wages are increasing.

It showed that wages increased 3.4 per cent over the past year, the same as the annual increase from last quarter.

An annual growth rate of 3.4 per cent is reasonable. The long run average is 3.1 per cent, so it’s slightly above average.

However, as the graph below shows, the growth rate in wages has fallen since it peaked at the end of 2023.

The Reserve Bank will certainly be happy, as it firmly believes that higher wages are a cost for businesses, who will push up prices in order to protect their profits. For the Reserve Bank, higher wages lead to higher inflation.

Is the cost-of-living crisis over?

Not so fast. Wages growth is only part of the picture. What people should really be focused on is what economist call real wages.

Real wages is a measure of how much stuff you can buy with your wage.

The gas industry’s “huge con”

 — Organisation: The Australia Institute — 

On this special episode of Dollars & Sense, Liam O’Brien from the Australian Council of Trade Unions and Dr Ingrid Burfurd from The Superpower Institute join Dr Richard Denniss to discuss taxing the gas industry more effectively.

This discussion was recorded on Wednesday 29 October 2025 at the Australia Institute’s Revenue Summit at Parliament House in Canberra.

A time for Bravery: what happens when Australians are courageous is available for pre-order now via Australia Institute Press. Use the code ‘SAVE5’ to get $5 off.

Aiming Higher: Universities and Australia’s future by Professor George Williams is also available now.

Guest: Liam O’Brien, Assistant Secretary, Australian Council of Trade Unions // @lbobrien

Guest: Ingrid Burfurd, Carbon Pricing and Policy Lead, The Superpower Institute

Host: Richard Denniss, co-Chief Executive Chief, the Australia Institute // @richarddenniss

Host: Greg Jericho, Chief Economist, the Australia Institute // @grogsgamut

Show notes:

Chris Hedges on the 28-Point Ukraine Peace Plan (w/ George Galloway)

 — Author: Chris Hedges — 

The Chris Hedges Report is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Facts are among the biggest casualties in the war against renewable energy

 — Organisation: The Australia Institute — 

He had no evidence for this – just some spurious numbers around what he said a carbon price would cost – but it didn’t matter. As he wrote himself in Weatherboard and Iron, the claim took off.

Australia dumped the carbon price under the Abbott government and lamb hit record prices in 2025 – because of drought.

Joyce also claimed in 2014 that the “country would go broke” if the 2014 budget wasn’t passed (much of it wasn’t) and – surprise, surprise – the country is not broke.

But we never go back and check what is right or wrong in these debates, which is why people like Joyce can continue to make outrageous claims and have them reported as having the same weight as actual facts, with no responsibility or accountability for when it’s revealed as bullsh-t.

The Coalition did the same with the carbon price, a tax that was never a tax as admitted by one of the architects of the successful scare campaign, Peta Credlin herself years later.

Because that’s the thing – the people who deliberately muddy the waters through misinformation, cherry-picking facts or straight-up falsehoods then brag about their success, admitting they knew it was wrong, but hey, “that’s politics”.

They can do it time and time again, because every time they change the lie, it’s treated as a serious input into the debate.

State Leaders Should Not Further Trump's Agenda When It Comes to Children

 — Author: Betsy Phillips — 
Tennessee Secretary of State Tre Hargett has ordered an 'age-appropriateness review' of children's books in state libraries

There’s no saving the Coalition – and that should be a warning to Labor

 — Organisation: The Australia Institute — 

Leader (for now – those who wanted net zero gone will wait for the polls to officially end her career) Sussan Ley was particularly egregious, answering the question of “what will you tell your grandchildren?” with:

“The other thing that I want to be able to say to my grandchildren is that you should inherit a better standard of living than my generation and your mum and dad’s generation. Right now, they are set to inherit the worst standard of living since the Second World War.”

Now, enough words have been written on this most recent bout of stupidity, but those particular words lingered.

The same week the Liberal Party sucked up any and all political oxygen, the Victorian Labor government made a mockery of evidence-based solutions and research by capitulating to populist scare campaigns and announcing that children as young as 14 could be treated as adults in court.

This is happening as the federal government makes a big song and dance about banning under-16s from social media. Too young for TikTok but apparently old enough to face the adult incarceration system.

But we don’t care about children when there are tough-on-crime headlines to be made.

Just as we don’t care about children when setting climate policy – even as the consequences hit us. Both major parties have voted against having a duty of care for future generations included in legislation, as well as having fought against it in court. Children are to inherit our consequences, but have no say in the decision-making.

‘Whinge and win’: We mustn’t mistake loudest voices for a majority

 — Organisation: The Australia Institute — 

Shortly after I started, the printing press was closed and that magic became a memory, a period of time I was lucky to experience in an industry that has been in flux since.

But when I was lucky enough to get to stay around and watch the paper get put to bed, you would also get the benefit of learning from the salty news dogs who’d spent decades in journalism and learnt some universal truths.

They were usually on the night shift because they were no longer fit for human consumption, but also because they’d spot the errors others wouldn’t even know to look for (like an ad for funerals on the same page as a horror car smash or a story on air mattresses across from a sky-diving accident) and if they liked you, they’d tell you how little your university degree had taught you.

That was where I was told about “whinge and win”. It’s not specific to journalism, and it’s also known as being the loudest voice in the room.

Whinge and win is how the bullies, the incompetent and the plain annoying seem to always get their way. It’s easier to give in than to stand and fight, because the whinging winners have enough audacity to outlast all but the most staunch.

It’s how issues that aren’t issues end up dominating everyone’s agenda. How the worst people you know seem to always have victories, reinforcing their delusions the world is there to bend to them.

Because the flip side of whinge and win is suffering in silence. Which is what most people do, because the fight seems so overwhelming.

How private job agencies are capturing welfare payments

 — Organisation: The Australia Institute — 

This is despite an increase in public funding through Workforce Australia, a Commonwealth Government service which pays private job agencies to help people who are unemployed find jobs.

The involvement of private agencies in the unemployment benefit system began in 1998, when the Howard Government replaced the government-run Commonwealth Employment Service. It instead contracted private or community-run job agencies to help people find jobs.

This was combined with the “mutual obligation” requirement for those receiving the benefit. This became known as the “Work for the Dole” program. Those receiving payments are required to do “work like” activities for a certain number of hours and/or to demonstrate an effort to find employment. Jobseekers sign up with private job agencies as a way of showing they are looking for a job. An agency claims “outcome payments” from the government when a client has completed 4, 12, or 26 weeks of work (the latter being considered long-term).

In short, instead of helping some of its most vulnerable citizens directly, the Commonwealth Government makes them jump through hoops to receive Jobseeker payments, and private companies who capture handsome profits in the process.

Over one-in-four of Jobseeker payment recipients have disability or health conditions which affect their capacity for work, as recognised by the Albanese Government’s employment whitepaper from September 2023.

Speech: Remarks at the Australian Industry Group Executive Luncheon

 — Organisation: Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) — 
Remarks and Fireside Chat by Assistant Governor (Economic) Sarah Hunter, at the Australian Industry Group Executive Luncheon – Sydney

The Palestine Laboratory: Exporting Occupation Technology (w/ Antony Loewenstein) | The Chris Hedges Report

 — Author: Chris Hedges — 

This interview is also available on podcast platforms and Rumble.

Filmmaker, author and journalist Antony Loewenstein documents how Israel has used Gaza as a weapons showcase. Spyware, killer drones, robot dogs and other weapons are debuted in Gaza and field-tested on the civilian population, demonstrating their effectiveness to regimes around the world that await their chance to purchase them.

FPM End of Year BBQ

 — Organisation: Free Palestine Melbourne — 
Sunday 14 December 2025, from 1pm, Coburg VIC. All welcome!

Make the Conservative Legal Movement Human Again

 — Organisation: The Claremont Institute — 

Today’s conservative legal movement is the proverbial dog that caught the car. After years of effort (and more than a little fortuity), a solidly conservative majority now sits on the Supreme Court. The movement has racked up a string of wins on longstanding priorities, ranging from affirmative action to abortion to administrative agency deference, with perhaps the most seismic changes still to come. The Court’s blessing of the long-theorized “major questions doctrine,” which grants courts broad power to deem a particular action outside the purview of administrative agencies and properly committed to Congress, is a blade perfectly forged for dismantling that perennial movement bogeyman, the administrative state.

So where do things go from here?

Why Are They Making Up Nonsense About Our Cities?

 — Publication: CityNerd — 

The Power of Public Ownership with Angella MacEwen

 — Publication: Perspectives Journal — 

Broadbent Research Fellow Angella MacEwen explains how public ownership and public investment are needed to fight inflation, fix inequality, and improve economic productivity. MacEwen shows that Canada has the power to build a stronger, democratic economy to fight back against the US Trump administration’s trade war and as an alternative to Mark Carney’s austerity agenda.


Progressive Political Economy is a video series that spotlights progressive economics and political ideas that push for a just and equal society.

Through interviews with Canada’s leading progressive economic thinkers, we lay out alternative approaches to orthodox economic thinking that have lent today’s inequalities and injustices.

The Empty Stage

 — Author: Sarah Kendzior — 

I am on stage at the Ryman Auditorium, the most famous concert hall in Nashville. A photographer tells me to smile. I hate getting my picture taken, but that day smiling came easy.

After years apart due to the pandemic, my family was reunited: my mother and father, my husband and children, and my sister and her husband and kids. We were in Nashville to celebrate my parents’ 50th wedding anniversary. My parents drove from Connecticut, my sister flew from Dallas, and we drove from St. Louis. It was the first time the ten of us had taken a vacation together.

We didn’t know it would be the last.

Sunlight poured through the stained-glass windows of country music’s holy ground. Legends surrounded me: Willie, Dolly, Hank, and my favorite, Johnny Cash. Johnny Cash, who sang with the weariness of reconciling mortality with morality; Johnny Cash, apocalyptic and American to the end.

There is no better music to ride out a pandemic than Johnny Cash. That’s a truth I never wanted to learn. Twenty-first-century truths are like that.

Exxon’s $600 Million Dollar Lie

 — Organisation: Climate Town — 

Is Monetary Policy Still Seasonal? 

 — Organisation: Federal Reserve Bank of New York — Publication: Liberty Street Economics — 

Mike Rann: how Albanese can leave a brave climate legacy

 — Organisation: The Australia Institute — 

On this episode of Follow the Money, Mike Rann addresses the fossil fuel industry’s tobacco-like tactics, South Australia’s leadership of progressive reform, and why policy bravery can be great politics, as he delivered the Australia Institute’s Hugh Saddler Memorial Lecture.

This episode was recorded live on Thursday 13 November.

A time for Bravery: what happens when Australians are courageous is available for pre-order now via Australia Institute Press.

Aiming Higher: Universities and Australia’s future by Professor George Williams is also available now.

Guest: Mike Rann, Chair of the UK Climate Group and former Premier of South Australia // @Mike_Rann

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

Show notes:

Coalition offers crash course on staying in opposition for forever by Ebony Bennett, The Canberra Times (November 2025)

11/18/2025 Market Update

 — Organisation: Applied MMT — 

We Need Innovators, Not Influencers

 — Organisation: The Claremont Institute — 

President Donald Trump’s latest comments on semiconductor exports sounded almost conciliatory—until they weren’t. Speaking recently on 60 Minutes, the president said he would let NVIDIA “deal with China,” but drew a bright red line: Beijing could buy chips, just not the “most advanced” ones. The message was calibrated for maximum effect: permissive enough to please markets, hawkish enough to claim toughness. NVIDIA’s stock jumped immediately—but China did not get what it wanted.

Days later, in a Financial Times interview, NVIDIA’s CEO Jensen Huang warned that if the U.S. blocked his company from selling more of its advanced chips to China, it would “lose” the AI race. The argument was astonishing in its candor: cut us off, Beijing wins.

The comparison between a president sounding measured and a CEO trying to sound indispensable captures a dangerous inversion of power. NVIDIA has become more than America’s most valuable company. It’s attempting to become its policymaker, shaping the boundaries of what Washington thinks possible in its competition with China. 

To understand how one company reached that position, it helps to revisit what happened in Washington just days before Trump met Xi Jinping in South Korea.

Banks Develop a Nonbank Footprint to Better Manage Liquidity Needs

 — Organisation: Federal Reserve Bank of New York — Publication: Liberty Street Economics — 

U.S. Banks Have Developed a Significant Nonbank Footprint

 — Organisation: Federal Reserve Bank of New York — Publication: Liberty Street Economics — 

“Anti-achievement” Democrats let pressure off Trump

 — Organisation: The Australia Institute — 

On this episode of After America, Crikey’s Charlie Lewis joins Dr Emma Shortis to discuss Congress’ failure to extend life-saving health insurance tax credits, Trump’s inability to make the Epstein files go away, and whether there is evidence of US involvement in the dismissal of Prime Minister Gough Whitlam.

This discussion was recorded on Friday 14 November.

Aiming Higher: Universities and Australia’s future by Professor George Williams is available now via Australia Institute Press.

Guest: Charlie Lewis, Reporter-at-large, Crikey // @theshufflediary

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

Show notes:

Shorter America: Opposing Trump, trouble in paradise, the American elite by Emma Shortis, The Point (November 2025)

The Radical Nonprofit That’s Destroying State Education

 — Organisation: The Claremont Institute — 

For decades, U.S. education has been dominated by the American Left. Their stranglehold was highly visible during the Biden Administration, with countless stories about wildly inappropriate books in school libraries, Critical Race Theory being taught in classrooms, and national associations calling for parents to be designated as domestic terrorists.

How did our public school systems—including those in red states, from Iowa to Alaska—become infected with radical leftist ideology? The answer is education consulting groups.

Most Americans don’t realize that every aspect of governance, from parks and wildlife departments to the curriculum in kids’ schools, has been outsourced to a coalition of nameless, faceless NGO consulting groups that are funded by millions of taxpayer dollars funneled through the government. One of the worst offenders is the American Institutes for Research (AIR).

Mapping the World of David Ireland

 — Publication: Progress in Political Economy — 

Launched on 31 October 2025 at Gleebooks, Sydney, this post focuses on the book by Brett Heino, Literary Geographies and the Work of David Ireland, which follows last week’s commentary from the same evening delivered by Brett Heino

***

In acknowledging that we are on Gadigal land of the Eora Nation, I want to start by paying my respect to elders past, present, and emerging and also to those Indigenous peoples that are either in the audience or reading this commentary. Sovereignty in what is now called Australia was never ceded but, rather, violently dispossessed. In paying respects to Indigenous voices, I also want to draw inspiration from Tara June Winch’s novel The Yield (2019) that received, among others, the 2020 Miles Franklin Award. To cite one key passage:

Don’t know what it is about us that seems to rile the white man. The burden, the burden of their memory perhaps, or that we weren’t extinguished with the lights of those empires after all!

Social Democrats of the North: Francis Marion Beynon, Feminist Firebrand

 — Publication: Perspectives Journal — 

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.

This episode looks at one of the first feminist social democrats in Canadian history: Francis Marion Beynon. Her work as journalist in Winnipeg in the early 1900s was critical for pointing out how exploitation wasn’t just about workers and bosses — it was also about the way that women were being treated by their husbands at home. 

The Magic Pill that Makes You Cis

 — Author: Sonja Black — 

Teaching Political Economy Symposium Program

 — Publication: Progress in Political Economy — 

The Discipline of Political Economy and the Journal of Australian Political Economy (JAPE) is hosting a Teaching Political Economy Symposium on Monday December 8th at the University of Sydney. This workshop is being held as part of a suite of events celebrating the 50th anniversary of Political Economy at the University of Sydney. In 1975, a full program of study in political economy was offered for the first time at an Australian university, following a significant student-staff campaign for a pluralist and practical economics curriculum. On this important anniversary, this workshop will feature a range of panels and papers discissing and debating the past, present and future of political economy pedagogy and education both at Sydney and in other institutions in Australia and internationally. Papers presented at the workshop will be considered for inclusion in a dedicated winter 2026 issue of JAPE.

The program for the workshop is available here and reproduced below. Everyone including non-presenters is very welcome to attend. Please register by Monday 1 December for catering purposes.

Details

When: Monday 8 December 2025

Where: Room 650, Social Sciences Building A02, University of Sydney

AI’s Next Safety Test: looking beyond performative protections

 — Organisation: Per Capita — 

When OpenAI announced its latest wave of safety improvements in ChatGPTs mental-health responses, the company framed the development as a major ethical advance. Working with more than 170 clinicians worldwide, it reported that the model now handles conversations about psychosis, mania, self-harm, and emotional dependence with up to 80 per cent fewer undesired responses.The company spoke of compassion, empathy, and progress in promoting the latest iteration of their LLM. These changes do matter, and it would be both unfair and unhelpful to not acknowledge them.

What’s On Nov 17-23 2025

 — Organisation: Free Palestine Melbourne — 
What’s On around Naarm/Melbourne & Regional Victoria: Nov 17-23, 2025 With thanks to the dedicated activists at Friends of the Earth Melbourne! . . . See also these Palestine events listings from around the country: 10004

Join Us in Italy to Support the Nationwide Strike Against Israel

 — Author: Chris Hedges — 

Editor’s note: A post with this same headline was sent out a few minutes ago. That post had the wrong video linked to it — for The Chris Hedges Report email list, we are sending out another post with the correct link attached below.

Western nations will do nothing to halt Israel’s ongoing slaughter of Palestinians. They will do nothing to alleviate the hunger and disease that is decimating Palestinians in Gaza. Our nations have been, and remain, full partners in the genocide. They will remain partners until the genocide reaches its grim conclusion.

Unless we stop them.

Kaleidoscope: Safety Gear

 — Author: Zoe "Doc Impossible" Wendler — 

Trump's Casada/Cothren Pardon Is a Slap in the Face

 — Author: Betsy Phillips — 
How do we expect 16-year-old kids to sit in prison for most of their lives when grown men can’t serve two years for their misdeeds?

NOR: Melbourne Film Festival

 — Organisation: Free Palestine Melbourne — 
When: 17-23 November 2025 Where: The Blindside Gallery, Level 7, 37 Swanston St, Melbourne VIC

The Longest Government Shutdown in U.S. History Ends Without Ameliorating Our Constitutional Crisis

 — Author: Nathan Tankus — Publication: Notes on the Crisis — 
The Longest Government Shutdown in U.S. History Ends Without Ameliorating Our Constitutional Crisis

This is a free Notes on the Crises piece. Consider tipping here.

November is my birth month so I'm doing a birthday sale all month long. I'm turning 34, so an annual subscription is now just 34 dollars. I've never offered subscriptions at this low rate and probably won't again so take advantage now. Thanks for your support!

Birthday Sale!

America is a Banana Republic - Read by Eunice Wong

 — Author: Chris Hedges — 

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 November 10, 2025.

Can COP30 be the COP of Truth?

 — Author: Fadhel Kaboub — 

At the end of COP29 in Baku last year, I described the so-called climate finance outcome as “300 Billion Lies and Economic Traps,” and I said that COP29 was not about climate finance. It was not even about climate. It was about a colonial economic and geopolitical hierarchy that refuses to be disrupted, because the kind of transformative climate finance that the Global South was asking for was going to unleash the huge development potential of the Global South, which is home to the youngest labor force in the world, the largest reserves of green transition minerals, and a massive renewable energy potential.

Subscribe now

Making Citizens

 — Organisation: The Claremont Institute — 

The great civilizations of antiquity have never needed a majority to survive. They have always required just a quorum of men who knew what they believed and acted on the courage of their convictions. A few hundred trierarchs at Salamis, a few thousand hoplites at Thermopylae, a Roman handful who backed Scipio when everyone else wanted to sue for peace—a hearty few have helped preserve their respective ways of life in times of turmoil.

The American Founders understood this. Fifty-six merchants, farmers, and lawyers in Philadelphia signed their own death warrant, and 12,000 half-frozen men at Valley Forge kept that signature from being erased. Formation of character is about learning how to stand when everyone else sits down. We don’t study great men to cosplay greatness—we study them to see how a group of determined souls can change the world.

Today’s America, however, no longer forms leaders. It manufactures influencers and administrators. Its schools churn out credentialed mediocrities fluent in therapy and management but strangers to duty, tragedy, or honor. The republic’s elite, once shaped by Scripture and Cicero, is now shaped by LinkedIn. The result is a leadership class without leadership, a caste of clever children managing the ruins of their inheritance.

The Celebrities

 — Author: Sarah Kendzior — 

First, thank you. This newsletter is now two years old. Because of your support, I’ve been able to write for a living and provide for my family. I also have the creative freedom I long desired, and I thank you for that as well.

Sarah Kendzior’s Newsletter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Why people who oppose Trump should stop saying “the Dems caved”

 — Author: Patricia Roberts-Miller — 
Fox headline saying Dems caved

I had a busy day, and will be minimally (maybe not at all) on social media for the next few days. My taking the stance that people who oppose Trump should stop saying “the Dems caved” got enough disagreement from various people that I thought I should explain it more. I haven’t had time to write it out thoroughly, and I’m not going to be able to explain it very well, but I thought I should try. So, here’s the short version (without links–sorry).

Mike Rann: Gas lobby using “tobacco tactics” to keep polluting, tax breaks

 — Organisation: The Australia Institute — 

Delivering The Australia Institute’s second annual Dr Hugh Saddler Memorial Lecture at the State Library of South Australia last night, Mr Rann slammed the fossil fuel lobby’s grip on climate policy in the country.

“Australia’s continued approval of new and expanded coal mines and its massive embrace of a gas industry means Australia is often seen internationally as walking both sides of the street on climate,” said former South Australian Premier and Chair of the UK Climate Group, Mike Rann AC.

“The fossil fuel lobby has learned from tobacco industry tactics of the past and they are desperate to avoid any commitment to phase out the cause of the problem that threatens billions of people on our planet.

“For the Australian fossil fuel industry, maintaining an ongoing, bipartisan commitment to gas exploration, production and almost tax-free exports is their central objective. For fossil fuel polluters, gas has become the lifeline that vaping was for the tobacco lobby.

“Like The Australia Institute, I am appalled that multinational gas companies are making massive, multi-billion profits from exporting Australian resources while paying little or no tax. Fixing this could be a big, first step in the second term tax reform agenda of the Albanese Government.”

Legal Conservatism for Our Time

 — Organisation: The Claremont Institute — 

Fall is not just a time for campfires and s’mores—it’s also when the Supreme Court starts its new term. This session comes at an especially significant time for conservatives, given that in just the last few years almost all of the most infamous cases that have been driving legal conservatism for roughly two generations have been overruled or substantially narrowed. Indeed, the Supreme Court has repudiated and formally overruled Lemon v. Kurtzman (1971), Roe v. Wade (1973), and Chevron v. NRDC (1984)—cases that, respectively, represent church-state separationism, abortion rights, and the administrative state. Likewise in SFFA v. Harvard (2023), the Supreme Court sharply criticized and substantially narrowed Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (1978) and Grutter v. Bollinger (2003), the two doctrinal pillars of affirmative action.

Such success, however, raises an unnerving question: What’s next? That is, what should drive the conservative legal movement now that its biggest enemies have seemingly been vanquished?

Before we can supply an answer to that question, however, we must first give some background on the conservative legal movement, beginning with an important distinction between legal and political conservatism, which will show that legal conservatives must create new strategies that are tailored to our current political and social moment.

A Way Forward

Food and despotism

 — Author: Heidi Li Feldman — 
Food and despotism

Withholding food benefits is obviously morally depraved. It is also utterly despotic. The drafters of the original American state constitutions and the eventual federal constitution believed that to be legitimate, a government must be committed to and must enable individuals' pre-legal rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. They believed that a government that does not protect the lives and well-being of those who live under it is not owed the loyalty of those people.