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
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
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.
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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!
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
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.”
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.
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.
After two years of genocide, it is no longer possible to hide complicity in Israel’s crimes against the Palestinians. Entire countries and corporations are — according to multiple reports by UN Special Rapporteur on Palestine Francesca Albanese — either directly or indirectly involved in Israel’s economic proliferation.
Tax doesn’t just affect markets, it shapes society. On housing, excessive tax concessions have driven up prices, concentrated wealth and locked many of the market. On this special episode, Maiy Azize from Everybody’s Home, Josie Lee from Oxfam Australia, and housing advocate Jordan van den Lamb join Amy Remeikis to discuss how bad policy created a housing crisis.
This discussion was recorded on Wednesday 29 October 2025 at the Australia Institute’s Revenue Summit at Parliament House in Canberra.
Today I want to talk about presentation—boymode vs. girlmode and all that—but before getting into the trans-specific stuff I want to start by examining presentation more generally. Take a look at these three women:
The FBI’s Arctic Frost investigation is confirmation that the Left sees conservatives as enemies of the state. If you are a conservative when the Left holds the reins of power, you will be treated as such.
Arctic Frost began in April 2022, with the approval of then-Attorney General Merrick Garland, Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco, and FBI Director Christopher Wray. In November 2022, the newly appointed Special Counsel Jack Smith took it over. Smith declared he was focused on the allegations of mishandling classified documents, but Arctic Frost shows he was much more ambitious. He helped turn the investigation into an effort to convict Donald Trump and cripple the Republican Party.
In 2025, the Federal Reserve has cut interest rates, trade policy has shifted abruptly, and economic policy uncertainty has increased. How have these developments affected the functioning of the key U.S. Treasury securities market? In this post, we return to some familiar metrics to assess the recent behavior of Treasury market liquidity. We find that liquidity briefly worsened around the April 2025 tariff announcements but that its relation to Treasury volatility has been similar to what it was in the past.
On this episode of Follow the Money, former head of the Australian Greens Bob Brown joins Ebony Bennett to discuss the irreplaceable beauty of Australia’s natural environment, the current government’s efforts to change our nature laws, and his latest book, Defiance: Stories from Nature and Its Defenders.
This episode was recorded live on Friday 31 October as part of our Australia’s Biggest Book Club webinar series. Join the Book Club to find out about our upcoming webinars with authors.
China's ageing population is expected to slow the country's economic growth in coming years. Population ageing can have a negative effect on a country's growth due to the decline in the working-age population relative to the dependent population, and could cause decreased labour productivity growth, as has been the case in other countries which have experienced similar demographic shifts. This paper seeks to estimate the causal effect of ageing on GDP per capita growth in China using data among China's provinces. I find that over 10 years a 10 per cent increase in the proportion of the population aged over 60 decreases nominal GDP per capita by around 7 per cent, all other things equal. These estimates imply that an ageing population has placed downward pressure on China's economic growth in the 2010s and 2020s so far, with this pressure likely to continue in the coming years. Authorities have so far responded to this challenge by increasing retirement ages and introducing policies such as a nationwide childcare subsidy. Different sectors in the economy are not likely to be affected uniformly by population ageing. I find that an increase in the old-age ratio increases the contribution of services (excluding real estate) to output, and decreases the contribution of construction.
Yesterday, a young woman named Laura filed the first medical malpractice lawsuit against doctors in Latin America for perpetrating the lie that she was born in the wrong body. Doctors from the Clínica Valle del Lili in Colombia diagnosed Laura with gender dysphoria on her very first visit. Though only 15 at the time, they told her that testosterone and puberty blockers would solve her distress. Despite Laura’s desire to breastfeed one day, they performed a double mastectomy after she turned 18. Now, with the help of lawyers, she is going to court and to the public because “kids and teenagers shouldn’t be able to transition.”
Like youth in other countries, Laura first encountered gender ideology online. After seeing a Swedish girl use a breast binder, she became seized with the idea that she could “become a boy.” This offered her escape from impending womanhood—something she dreaded. Additionally, at only six years old, Laura was sexually assaulted by a person who worked in her household. As she began to go through puberty, that trauma resurfaced, and crippling fear made it hard just to leave the house.
Prosper Australia today welcomed the inclusion of a stamp duty to land tax transition in Infrastructure Victoria’s new strategy but criticised the absence of value capture as a sustainable and equitable funding mechanism. “We applaud Infrastructure Victoria’s endorsement of a broad-based annual land tax. This reform recognises that shifting the tax base from transactions to […]
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 will be followed next week by a commentary from the same evening delivered by Adam Morton.
Before I’d watched the first episode, Rhea Seehorn’s screaming mug on the promotional poster for Pluribus captured the heady mix of primal terror, disbelief, horror and rage that’s been stewing in me over the last several years as a homebound person living with a virus most people will not acknowledge.
On hearing the show’s stated premise, I was even more intrigued: “The most miserable person on Earth must save the world from happiness.”
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In my daily life as a Long COVID patient, disabled by an infection in late 2023, it sounded like a tagline I might write about my own efforts over the last several years.
On this episode of After America, Dr Emma Shortis joins Angus Blackman to discuss the results of last week’s sweeping election victories. They discuss what it all means for the Democratic Party, how the MAGA-verse is responding, and the impact of the longest federal government shutdown in American history.
This discussion was recorded on Monday 10 November.
Follow Emma’s work at The Point, where she publishes a column on the week in American politics every Monday.
Join Emma and Don Watson in conversation in Carlton on Saturday 15 November.
Host: Emma Shortis, Director, International & Security Affairs, the Australia Institute // @emmashortis
Host: Angus Blackman, Executive Producer, the Australia Institute // @AngusRB
In 1991, the Tailhook scandal rocked the U.S. Navy. Hundreds of aviators at a Las Vegas convention engaged in misconduct that shocked the public. The fallout was swift. Policies that had long rewarded tactical excellence and operational rigor gave way to gender sensitivity training, compliance mandates, and a culture of political correctness. Officers who once climbed the ranks based on battlefield skill suddenly found themselves judged on how well they adopted progressive talking points. Conservatives conceded too much to progressives, even if only rhetorically, and responded with caution, attempting to preserve what little influence remained. Once a warfighting meritocracy, the military had begun a subtle shift. The pivot favored optics over lethality.
Over the next three decades, this dynamic deepened. The Peter principle—the idea that competent individuals rise only to the level of their incompetence—was weaponized. Political loyalty and agenda signaling replaced combat effectiveness as the dominant criterion for promotion. Diamonds, the true experts in warfighting, began to sink under the weight of bureaucratic mandates, while incompetents and social climbers got to the top rungs of the Pentagon.
However, in 2025, reformers like Pete Hegseth have emerged, leading a merit-first reclamation project that aims to restore skill, innovation, and operational readiness.
What’s On around Naarm/Melbourne & Regional Victoria: Nov 10-16, 2025 With thanks to the dedicated activists at Friends of the Earth Melbourne! . . . See also these Palestine events listings from around the country: 9962
The Gender Equality @ Work Index produced by Sydney Uni academics is a great summary of national changes in gender workplace inequality, but the South Australian data might tell a slightly different story.
Between them, they’ve recorded a collective profit of more than $43 billion.
Much of that has come at the expense of Australian home owners who’ve been battling a cost-of-living crisis. The big 4 banks control almost three quarters of the nation’s home loans.
Research by The Australia Institute reveals the big four banks make $213,480 in pure profit from the average mortgage of a first-home buyer with a 30-year loan.
ANZ is the smallest of the banks as reflected in its profit being lower than the rest. It’s also the smallest using its share of total loans to residents or its share of home loans. The ANZ accounts for 13% of all loans to Australian residents and 13% of loans for housing.
Today, Saturday November 8 2025, NSW National Socialist Network (NSN) members held an antisemitic rally outside NSW Parliament House under the banner of “White Australia”. Their photographs have been generously forwarded to our team by members of the community, and although we have an impressive inventory of details already, we are now appealing for more information about these men.
For the purposes of this article we have only included the names already in the media – see relevant articles at the links beside their names.
Does one of them work at your workplace? Has one of them given you a haircut? Trained at your gym? In classes with you at school, TAFE or uni? A known gronk in your local music scene? We're particularly interested in those working with government contracts or the legal sphere, and with access to major infrastructure, but any tip-off, no matter how small, helps.
Individuals are numbered 1-60 for ease of communication. Help us out by sharing any verifiable information by securely dropping us a line at thewhiterosesociety@protonmail.com. We will protect your anonymity.
Today, nearly all Americans agree that drug prices are too high. The average annual per capita spending on medications is over $1,000 and climbing. These sky-high costs burden working-class families with yet another expense, reducing their ability to save, invest, or buy other needed items.
In response to this urgent matter, politicians are singling out pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs), the financial negotiators between pharmaceutical companies and pharmacies. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) released a report in 2024 accusing PBMs of price-gouging and is currently suing one of these managers over insulin prices. The House Oversight Committee has made PBMs the primary target of its drug price-fighting efforts, rehashing the FTC’s accusations of profiteering.
In 1992, a young Democratic strategist on the Clinton campaign named James Carville coined the now-famous phrase “It’s the economy, stupid.” He directed it to the campaign workers to ensure they remained laser-focused on kitchen table issues. In Tuesday’s elections, voters delivered that same message, loud and clear, in races in New York City, Virginia, and New Jersey. The results were not surprising—even the margins were roughly in line with 2017, the last off-year elections in those localities when Trump was president.
But the message was clear: while many give the economy solid overall marks, many young voters in particular are hurting economically. Of course, the Trump Administration is well aware of this. They’ve been digging out of the economic disaster Joe Biden left them. Compared to Europe and much of Asia, the U.S. is doing better, with unemployment still low and Trump having largely tamed inflation. But the global macro environment is still challenging—especially for young people.
This is why almost immediately after the election, the administration focused on ramping up its communication efforts on the economy. President Trump indicated an urgent need to blow up the filibuster and enact a legislative agenda commensurate with the issues young voters are facing. Trump’s approach was echoed by Vice President JD Vance, who noted, “We’re going to keep working to make a decent life affordable in this country, and that’s the metric by which we’ll ultimately be judged in 2026 and beyond.”
Not content with alienating voters in former blue-ribbon seats who think climate change is real by dithering on its net-zero commitment, several male Coalition MPs did their level best this week to alienate women as well.
Here’s what happened. “Priya’s Law” was an uncontroversial bill designed to clarify that employers can’t just cancel paid parental leave if a child is stillborn or dies after birth. The law was drafted after baby Priya died when she was just 42 days old and a heartless employer notified Priya’s mother, just days after her daughter’s death, that her pre-approved parental leave was being cancelled and she was required to return to work.
It is every parent’s worst nightmare. But for Barnaby Joyce, Andrew Hastie, and several other male Coalition MPs you’ve never heard of, it was also an opportunity to virtue-signal on abortion.
“Unfortunately – I hate to bring it up – there remains the issue of late-term abortion. We have a right to know if it includes that,” Joyce said.
Hastie reminded the Parliament he was opposed to late-term abortion, saying “I do have a question about the unintended consequences of this bill and it applies to late-term abortions.”
One year after Donald Trump was elected President of the United States for a second time, New York City elected a self-declared “democratic socialist” as Mayor. Zohran Mamdani beat independent candidate, disgraced former Democrat Andrew Cuomo, by nine percentage points.
In Virginia and New Jersey too, Democrats swept to double-digit victories. In California, Governor Gavin Newsom’s redistricting ballot measure (a direct response to Republican gerrymandering in Texas) also passed easily.
New Australia Institute polling reveals only 8% of Australians are genuinely convinced Australia “shares values” with Trump’s America.
“It is past time Australia rethinks national security – and focuses on fairness and climate action, not blind fealty to America.’
I unpacked a box in the basement and photographed the remains of a life.
A notebook from the New York Daily News, where I earned $40,000 a year in my first job out of college: a job that later became an unpaid internship and now is probably done by AI. A Nokia cell, used for making calls: what else could a phone do? A card for a video store in Astoria, where I paid $900 a month for a one-bedroom apartment.
And the object that shifts Before to After: a keychain adorned with the flag, the Statue of Liberty, and God Bless America. I don’t know where I got it. But I know when: September 12, 2001. I attached it to my purse and wore it without irony, for a time.
Sarah Kendzior’s Newsletter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
The Supreme Court began its November sitting this week in what is already shaping up to be a blockbuster term, both on the regular oral argument docket and the emergency docket. The latter has taken on huge significance as lower federal court trial judges in forum-shopped district courts have issued an unprecedented number of nationwide injunctions against President Trump’s executive actions.
I say “forum-shopped” because a large number of the roughly 400 cases that have been filed against the administration since January 20 have been brought in jurisdictions in which all (or nearly all) of the judges were appointed by Democratic presidents. All 11 of the sitting active judges on the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, for example, were hand-picked by Democrats—one by Bill Clinton, five by Barack Obama, and another five by Joe Biden. The five judges serving on the First Circuit Court of Appeals, which oversees that court, are likewise entirely stacked with Democratic appointees—three by Obama and two by Biden.
Even before the term began on the first Monday in October, the Supreme Court was already checking what increasingly appears to be rogue rulings by anti-Trump lower court judges who are essentially second-guessing the president’s executive decisions dealing with foreign aid and other spending cuts, deportations, federal law enforcement, and administrative agency personnel firings—all core areas of executive authority.
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.
Groy Polloi | The Roundtable Ep. 292
Tucker Carlson hosted Nick Fuentes, an antisemitic broadcaster, for a friendly interview, causing divisions to erupt on the Right. This week, as socialist Zohran Mamdani is forecast to take New York City’s mayorship, the guys appraise the influence of Fuentes on the mainstream and discuss the Right’s alternatives to curry favor with the middle. Plus: details have emerged about an FBI operation, “Arctic Frost,” aimed at targeting GOP officials’ comms to delegitimize Trump and his supporters post-2020 election. And more cultural recommendations!
