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?

The global trade in human #skulls and body parts was initiated in Europe’s #Enlightenment and lasted at least 150 more years after the celebrated #abolition of the infamous #slave trade. This other trade in human flesh illustrates how deeply embedded race and racism are in the #history of #science.

All the talk now is about the conditions that other countries will impose on the Palestinians. The most important question however is and has always been: what conditions (if any) will they impose on Israel?

One of the most consequential myths in our public discourse is that we inhabit or work within an economy. There is no singular economy. There are several. While many of us are caged within one or another, other economies exist in more or less complete isolation to protect & perpetuate privilege.

The way things are going, my colleagues and I will be the last generation of academics in the Humanities in Australia.

You would think the world has seen enough to learn that there are costs, foreseen and unforeseen, when absurdity is empowered.

My government is making a mockery of justice and truth. They know they’re doing it. They know it is indefensible. But they’re doing it just the same. For what?

I urge every Australian scholar, and every Australian citizen concerned about the future of our public universities, to sign this petition initiated by the Australian Historical Association.

Edinburgh University has just released a report on its very long history of intellectual support for #racism. The report cites my own research with @lindaaburnett.bsky.social, among many others. It highlights the connection between racism and #Enlightenment... www.theguardian.com/education/20...

If the US were even remotely a functional democracy the other parties would all have been campaigning long before now on the repeatedly demonstrated fact that every vote for the Republicans empowers pedophiles, predators, and perverts.

Australia’s PM @albomp.bsky.social calling for immediate #ceasefire in #Gaza, and need for a ‘2 state solution’, is welcome but not enough. Australia must insist on ending the genocidal attacks on the Palestinian population and removal of their rights by Israel, and on punishing perpetrators.

This is how it should be done.

Why are we paying billion$ in public money to a nakedly corrupt and hostile foreign power aspiring to become a banana republic, characterised by a sleazy diplomacy of extortion, for over-priced submarines they will never provide, and if they did, we will not own or ever use?

Contemporary US government communications doesn’t even have the heft to be regarded as ‘propaganda’. It is so risible one could not even call it mere PR. It’s like an adolescent tantrum: as jarring as it is laughable; a pathetic amplification of meaninglessness.

Yes.

I’ve worked in higher education in Australia and Europe since the 1990s, and on reflection I would say that every technological innovation, and each pedagogical initiative over those years has left the bulk of our students less prepared, less able, and less willing to question their world.

“If not now, when? If not us, who?” m.youtube.com/shorts/o0BAg...

A shout out to my colleague @amywayness.bsky.social who won the Allan Martin Award for early-career Australian historians. Amy's project examines the complex histories of Carnarvon Gorge in Queensland, along with Bidjara Elders and Traditional Knowledge Holders. experts.griffith.edu.au/40486-amy-way

How many more men, women, and children must be “shot in the head and torso” before we and our government act?

The first time around he didn’t want to talk about being compromised by Russian tapes of his perversions. The second time around he doesn’t want to talk about being compromised by files that record his perversions. History repeats.

The Empire is razing itself to the very ground. It’s done.