It was his idiotic policy, introduced without congressional approval, so if anything it should make him personally liable to pay back those sums, with all the coin he has scammed through his very own crypto-corruption.

Book launched! @lindaaburnett.bsky.social @kathryn-seymour.bsky.social #C18th #race #colonization #ScottishEnlightenment

Book about to be launched! @lindaaburnett.bsky.social @kathryn-seymour.bsky.social www.intellectualhistory.net/events-outsi...

Edinburgh!

The Firth of Forth on a sunny autumn morning. Quite a rarity in Scotland!

Nero fiddled while Rome burned.

The word “healthy” here is doing quite a lot of deceptive work in this exchange. A more honest word to use than “healthy” would be “compelled”, and the more appropriate term than “health system” would be “compulsion system”.

Imagine a university where academics are free to teach what they are researching, where students are enabled to follow their interests, and where scholars are supported to push the boundaries of knowledge. That university is so far from our lived reality as to constitute a half forgotten dream.

From the tyrant whose entire philosophy of government is to use the constitution as toilet paper, this is truth masquerading as metaphor.

History will record it as The Great Patriotic Portland War. It will be regarded by future generations as an axis in world history, after which no nation will be from the scourge of a dancing T-Rex.

Our book launch is happening, at IASH in Edinburgh, October 29. It was there that @lindaaburnett.bsky.social and I first met, and had an idea that we might do some work together. That was in 2012! If you'll be in Edinburgh then, please come to our launch. Details below.

When I was studying political science 30 years ago, we kept being told about democratic governments being concerned to govern within the bounds of ‘legitimacy’. Anyways…

Gettysburg, 2.0.

Many think that time travel was a creation of science fiction. It wasn’t. It began as a presumption of Enlightenment thought, and became a concomitant of global colonisation in the #C18th.

With thanks to @global-ih.bsky.social for promoting my article on mobility, Enlightenment, war and colonisation.

A tale of two countries. apnews.com/article/ital...

Over 2 million people across Italy have rallied in more than 100 cities for a one-day general strike.

Can we all just now admit that over 20 years on from the September 11 attacks on the Twin Towers, Osama bin Laden definitively won the the ‘war on terror’. The US is now demonstrably weaker, more divided, animated by more strident extremism, and governed by their own version of the Taliban.

A scandal of enormous proportions. A debasement of public service, a fraud committed by government against its own people, that drove some to suicide. And none of those responsible held to account. But in spite of it all, a story of tremendous courage. Watch it. www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/tv-...

After they lose the impunity gifted by this degenerate and rapidly degenerating president, the perpetrators who authorised this vast wellness scam in place of medical science, will find themselves permanently residing in courts, losing their fast dwindling finances.

It is worth remembering that there is nothing inherently valuable in having an opinion. We earn respect by winnowing out unjust, ill-founded, and vile opinions. Our humanity resides in shouldering the burden of judgement. Not in the entitlements falsely claimed for mere opinion.

It will do nothing to alleviate the suffering of the Palestinian people, but there was a time not so long ago when this recognition seemed impossible in my country.

“Gaza has illuminated a dark truth – barbarism and Western civilisation are inseparable.”

Few of us expected it, but the global empire of the United States, its vast wealth and military might, and its unimaginable cultural power, has all been burned to the ground, immolated and razed by the most pathetic simulacrum of a man; a man so small and weak, he is an existential vacuum.

An observation for our times. Michel de Montaigne, "Of Cannibals", 1580, translated by John Florio, 1603.

Getting a bit sick of the sanctimonious reification of ‘debating’. From over 30 years as a university educator I can say that debating should most often be categorised as performance art. Persuasion, it rarely is.

Our politics seem deranged, and history offers few bearings. In dark times we should recall that every age decides for itself. You are either on the side of monopolisers of privilege and executors of power over the weakest among us, or you are against them. All else is prevarication.

Our book, Race and the Scottish Enlightenment, now published, @lindaaburnett.bsky.social and I were challenged to the ‘Page 99 Test’. The challenge, as defined by Ford Madox Ford, is whether the whole book can be seen in a single page. Here’s our response. page99test.blogspot.com/2025/09/lind...

The mass deportations are an exercise in conquering Lebensraum, apparently.

All empires learn that war is inseparable from dominion. War must rage ever on. War is empire’s life blood. Foreign bloodshed fractures the illusion of domestic peace, opening new fissures for relentless war to sow new killing fields at home. War is empire’s rise and empire’s inevitable fall.

As its economy ails from self-sabotage, and the empire self-immolates; as the wellness maniacs usher in a golden age of diseases, and as spreading corruption vitiates the the body politic beneath a golden shower of crypto scams, how fitting that its president both embodies and emblazons the rot.

Australia has a home grown Nazi problem. It’s beyond time for a national eradication plan. www.theguardian.com/p/x35c32?CMP...

Having taught in Australian #universities since 1992, I’ve watched the tidal onset of bureaucratic sclerosis in teaching. The determined futility of annual course reviews, vacuous data monitoring, and external compliance reduces spontaneity, increases process dependency, and guarantees dullness.

“He said history as a topic was a reliable driver of online traffic.” The rationale for generous funding of history teaching and research at our public universities has never been more compelling. If AI is the future, humanity is quite simply finished. www.bbc.com/news/article...

Good news, but probably not the financial Armageddon for the AI corporations I was hoping for.

Welcome to our brave new world. “The teenager discussed a method of suicide with ChatGPT on several occasions… ChatGPT guided him on whether his method of taking his own life would work. It also offered to help him write a suicide note to his parents.” www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

Amid the deliberate destruction of the Humanities by managers and governments. In the face of growing passivity-by-technology. Burdened by online pedagogies hollowing out university experience. Surely now, deep in this crisis, is the time to reaffirm the humanity of, and in, university education.

The commodification of human bodies - their beauty, their labour, and their bones - goes had in hand with racism and slavery. Enlightenment Europeans turned the collection of human remains into a global trade. We are still trapped in their shadow. www.theguardian.com/science/2025...

An effect of edtech (at least in my experience in Australian universities) is to circumvent scholarly agility by locking scholars into an endless round of largely unproductive labour curating a suite of courses that become difficult to turn to meet immediate opportunities.

They have arrived! @lindaaburnett.bsky.social @yalebooks.bsky.social @18thcenturycam.bsky.social @long18thsem.bsky.social #Enlightenment #18thCentury #HistoryOfRace #ColonialHistory #Colonialism

Behold, American democracy. As extinct as the Dodo.

It began with a small idea and a few hunches. It grew through years of research in archives and libraries, reading the work of other great scholars, and seemingly endless writing and re-writing. Now it is finally published! Race and the Scottish Enlightenment: A Colonial History 1750-1820.

There is something curious in the so called ‘Sovereign Citizen’ movement that the ABC’s 4 Corners program captured quite well. Whatever their particular antivax, neofascist, or racist neuroses, these are people who believe in the efficacy of spells and incantations. #auspol #ABC

America winning again, I see.

Why were human skulls collected for science? Who instructed their collection? What responsibility does C18th Enlightenment bear for 'scientific racism' in the C19th? How are we to interpret this legacy of trading in human flesh? Find out here! Open access journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Bring. It. On.

It took shape over many years, written in Edinburgh, Uppsala, Brisbane, Paris, Copenhagen, and Adelaide. Now, at last, @lindaaburnett.bsky.social and my book is finally here! #18thCentury #Enlightenment #Race #Colonisation

Could a call be put out now for donations to buy Trump a new White House mascot?

Australia now intending to recognise a Palestinian state on the grounds that if they don’t there will be no Palestine left at all. And whose fault is that, after decades of illegal Israeli settlement and ethnic cleansing aided and abetted by nations like ours, @albomp.bsky.social?