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On this episode of Follow the Money and After America, Dr Emma Shortis and Ebony Bennett discuss the illegal US-Israel war in Iran, the implications of the conflict for the Middle East, and why Australian personnel were on board an American nuclear-powered submarine when it sank an Iranian warship.

This episode was recorded on Tuesday 10 March.

What we owe the water: It’s time for a fossil fuel treaty by Kumi Naidoo is available now for just $19.95. Use the code ‘PODVP’ at checkout to get free shipping.

You can also subscribe to the Vantage Point series to get four essays a year on some of the most pressing issues facing Australia and the world.

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

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

Show notes:

It is often believed that the common-law rule of birthright citizenship was that mere birth on the sovereign’s soil was sufficient to create such citizenship. That is incorrect. Although that statement is an approximation of the rule that usually gets the correct result, the precise common-law rule was birth on the sovereign’s soil to parents under the sovereign’s protection.

That is how Sir Edward Coke described the rule in Calvin’s Case, the leading common-law decision from 1608. Aliens from friendly countries with permission to be in the realm were under the sovereign’s temporary protection and owed in exchange a temporary allegiance to the sovereign. They were, while in the realm, natural subjects of the king. That is why their children born in the realm were natural-born subjects. In contrast, the children born of invading soldiers were not birthright subjects “although born upon [the king’s] soil,” because they were not born “under the ligeance of a subject” or “under the protection of the king.” That is, a natural-born subject is one born to another subject, a subject who was under the protection of the king. Invaders did not count, but aliens were subjects of the king if they were under his protection and, in exchange, explicitly or implicitly, swore allegiance to him.

A global shift toward youth enfranchisement

Amid worries about Canada’s aging population, democratic backsliding, and the risk to youth’s civic voice, there’s a promising trend to talk about: In a growing number of jurisdictions, 16- and 17-year-olds are gaining the right to vote. This policy adoption is reflective of a growing body of research demonstrating the political competence of this age group.

Some democracies such as Argentina, Belgium, Germany, Malta, Scotland, and Wales have introduced lower voting ages for certain jurisdictions over the last two decades. When experts examined the civic competencies of 16-18 year old voters in Austria where they are able to participate in national and European Parliament elections, teens demonstrated levels of voting decision-making and engagement that matched adults.

Over the last two decades, the European Union (EU) has faced a series of intertwined crises, including the Global Financial Crisis in 2008 and the structural adjustment programmes imposed by the EU and the IMF on several member states; the increase of flows of refugees triggered by war and famines and the humanitarian disaster caused by Fortress Europe; Brexit and the rise of Euroscepticism. In turn, new crises have emerged and further intensified the previous ones: the Covid-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine and the impending climate catastrophe. To capture the multiple, interrelated, and self-reinforcing characters of the crises affecting global capitalism and European integration, the term ‘polycrisis’ – originally coined by the French complex theorists Edgar Morin and Anne Brigitte Kern – has become increasingly popular, both among scholars and European elites alike (Tooze, 2022). As we argue in our recently published co-edited volume, Critical Political Economy of the European Polycrisis, Critical Political Economy (CPE) is well placed to contribute to this debate. In this blog post, we outline the purpose underpinning this volume and present some of the key findings.

A little more than a week into the U.S.’s campaign against the Iranian regime—which the Pentagon classifies as a below peer level—Central Command is pulling interceptors from the Indo-Pacific to keep the defensive umbrella intact over the Persian Gulf.

How is this possible when every major strategy document of the 21st century promised that the United States military could handle what lay ahead?

The 2001 Quadrennial Defense Review, which replaced the Cold War two-war framework, pledged to “swiftly defeat” aggression in two theaters while winning decisively in one. The 2018 National Defense Strategy shifted the frame to Great Power competition, assuring Congress that the joint force could mount sufficient deterrence in three regions, fight and win one major conflict, and maintain the ability to deter a second. The 2022 National Defense Strategy introduced “integrated deterrence,” which described a force that could simultaneously address the “pacing threat” of China, the “acute threat” of Russia, and persistent challenges in the Middle East.

What’s often lost amid discussions about America’s reliance on Chinese manufacturing is the vulnerability of our most basic chemical inputs. Pharmaceutical ingredients may not hold the same futuristic mystique as essential computing components, but they are no less vital to our society. In fact, just one vitamin is necessary to make effective supplements, fortified processed food, and nutritionally viable baby formula.

Vitamin B12 (or cobalamin) is one of the most complex compounds human beings have ever attempted to synthesize. Naturally produced by bacteria in a process involving more than 30 genes and many enzymatic steps, B12 required the combined efforts of more than 100 researchers and a Nobel laureate to reproduce in a lab.

Mass production of B12 relies on fermentation. Apart from being the global leader in manufacturing, China is also the leader in that process, holding 70% of the world’s capacity. It is no wonder, then, that the United States has relied on the Chinese to produce its vitamins.

One of the ways it’s possible to know that a political group is frightened is when they start to lie about opponents.

The world’s chocolate economy is built on an uncomfortable neocolonial paradox: Africa produces most of the cocoa beans, but the Global North captures most of the value through processing, branding, marketing, and retail gatekeeping. This is a classic case of neocolonial extraction from the Global South. Let’s start with the core fact that rarely makes it into “ethical chocolate” campaigns: cocoa is overwhelmingly an African commodity. Cacao is a non-native colonial crop that was introduced to Africa by European empires in the 19th century.

On this episode of After America, Elizabeth Pancotti from Washington DC-based think tank Groundwork Collaborative joins Dr Emma Shortis to discuss the State of the Union, Trump’s vile attack on Somali-Americans, and how tariffs are driving up prices in a deeply unequal American economy.

This discussion was recorded on Friday 27 February.

After America: Australia and the new world order is available now via Australia Institute Press. Use the code ‘PODVP’ at checkout to get free shipping.

Guest: Elizabeth Pancotti, Managing Director of Policy and Advocacy, Groundwork Collaborative // @ENPancotti

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

Show notes:

Groundwork Collaborative

The US and Israel attack Iran, foment chaos, After America, the Australia Institute (February 2026)

This interview is also available on podcast platforms and Rumble.

While the official White House X account posts video montages featuring video games and Hollywood movies spliced with real footage of their attacks on Iran, the situation on the ground could not be more different than an American propaganda blockbuster.

To pierce the fog of war and offer a concrete analysis of what is taking place across the Middle East, author and former British diplomat Alastair Crooke of the Substack Conflicts Forum joins host Chris Hedges on this episode of The Chris Hedges Report.

In 1989, terrorist rabbi Meir Kahane made a promise.

“A horrible world war is coming,” Kahane told journalist Robert I. Friedman. “Tens of millions will die. It will be the Apocalypse. God will punish us for forsaking him. But we must have faith. The Messiah will come. There will be a resurrection of the dead: all the things that Jews believed in before they got so damn sophisticated. The amount of suffering we endure will depend upon what we do between now and the end.”

Kahane did not live to see his vision realized. In 1990, the year Friedman published The False Prophet: Rabbi Meir Kahane, From FBI Informant to Knesset Member, the 58-year-old Kahane was shot to death while giving a speech imploring American Jews to move to Israel. The alleged assailant, Egyptian-American El Sayyid Nosair, was acquitted by a jury but sentenced by the judge. In death as in life, the circumstances surrounding Kahane are murky and violent.

Friedman had an eye for figures of the 20^th century who would define the 21^st. Ten years after The False Prophet, he published Red Mafiya: his investigation of a transnational crime syndicate whose members came from the USSR and spent the 1990s infiltrating governments and corporations worldwide. The head of that syndicate, Semyon Mogilevich, put a contract on Friedman’s life.

The American university is broken. The people running the universities know it, which is why they have redoubled their efforts to make sure you can’t do anything about it.

The story has been told so many times in conservative circles that retelling it risks being a bore: William F. Buckley warned us in 1951 about the free fall that had already begun in higher education. Allan Bloom sounded the alarm in 1987. Ross Douthat offered his critique in 2005. A generation of conservatives has poured time, treasure, and talent into reforming higher ed. We’ve funded centers, endowed chairs, launched institutes, filed lawsuits, and written enough op-eds to fill the Library of Alexandria. Yet still—still—the average graduate of an American university is more likely to be able to explain the nuances of “systemic oppression” than to tell you who wrote The Federalist Papers.

That should be a sign that the old approach, whatever its merits, was fundamentally wrong—not because the diagnosis was wrong, but because the strategy was. As Aristotle says, we should deliberate about means, not ends. Conservatives have been trying to reform the university from within a system that is designed, at every level, to resist exactly the kind of reformation we seek. It is time to stop playing a rigged game and build our own system.

The Unassailable Fortress

Foreword: This in an audiorecording of a presentation, which was delivered on 3/5/26 at the 2026 Conference on College Composition and Communication.

The Wrap with Dr Emma Shortis

The President of Peace has started another war.

It began with the bombing of a school in southern Iran. According to Iranian authorities, the death toll from that strike now sits at 168. Many of the victims were children.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US President Donald Trump have normalised the sight of little coffins.

Emerging evidence now suggests the school was struck more than once – perhaps three times. A “double-tap” strike is when a first strike is followed up by a second in order to target those still sheltering, those running away, and first responders. Double-tap strikes are prohibited by the laws of war.

Foreword: This presentation was delivered on 3/5/26 at the 2026 Conference on College Composition and Communication.

Content Warning: This article discusses kink and sex frankly, but in an entirely non-explicit way.