Everyone knows how it goes, as things get a bit older, they are a little less reliable. This is being typed on a five year old computer. the computer still works but it’s a little slower to start up than it used to be and sometimes it has a conniption or two when swapping between programs. Those that have owned an older car will be well used to the phone call from the mechanic when the car is in for a service telling you that you really should think about getting something else done to maintain reliability.

This also apparently applies to power stations. Gradually the coal fired power stations are closing down as they getting older. There is probably the inevitable phone call from the technicians that maintain the infrastructure suggesting that they really should do something else while they are there. Even then, breakdowns are becoming more common according to AEMO, who have the responsibility to maintain the misnamed ‘National Grid’, which doesn’t include Western Australia.

In 2019, a Hong Kong investment firm was proposing to build two coal fired power stations in the Hunter Valley. It was a great opportunity according to some. It didn’t happen

Those with a memory that goes back further than Opposition Leader Peter Dutton would hope may recall that former Prime Minister Scott Morrison offered to pay a $600 million subsidy to assist in the construction of a gas fired power station in the Hunter Valley. Apart from the obvious ‘up yours’ to the then ALP Opposition Energy Spokesperson whose seat was in the Hunter Valley there was the small problem of the facility having to run on diesel until a gas supply could be secured.

While former

Energy and Emissions Reduction Minister Angus Taylor said the government had given the private sector every opportunity to act.

“Cheap power is crucial to ensuring families, businesses and job-creating industries in NSW can thrive, which is why we are committed to replacing the energy generated by Liddell to keep prices down,” he said in a statement.

“This important project is good news for NSW as well as the broader National Electricity Market.

“We were very clear from the start – we will not stand by and watch prices go up and the lights go off.”

Maybe the private sector knew better

Kerry Schott, chair of Australia’s Energy Security Board, told The Guardian the private sector wasn’t building the plant because gas was “expensive power” and the project “doesn’t stack up”.

“One of the reasons given for [a taxpayer-funded plant in the Hunter] is it will flood the market with gas-fired power and when there’s a tonne of supply in the market, prices go down,” she said.

“We all learned this in economics. However, that doesn’t work when there are a whole lot of other things around that are cheaper in price, like wind, solar and big batteries, like pumped hydro and we’ve got Snowy 2.0 coming.”

So Snowy Hydro (owned by the Federal Government) was told to build it. Stranded assets anyone?

The Coalition’s latest foray into reigniting the climate wars of the 2010’s is to claim nuclear energy is a valid option. It’ll take until the mid 2040’s to organise but we ‘should be right’ for ‘net zero’ by 2050. First the plan was to install a number of small modular nuclear reactors around the country. The fly in the ointment being that they are vapourware – there are absolutely none of them in operation in the western word at the moment.

When this small problem was pointed out to Opposition Leader Peter Dutton, the focus changed to larger nuclear reactors to produce electricity. We have been waiting for a long time – and several promised dates – for the announcement where they will be located. While nuclear reactors are in operation in various parts of the world with a mixed safety record, they also have a few little issues including

• the timelines – about 20 years to be approved and built in various parts of the world,
• the cost – the latest UK nuclear power station is projected to be $88 billion and
• what to do with the waste – the Lucas Heights medical products and research reactor in Sydney which has been in temporary storage now for decades.

There are more problems with nuclear, have a look at this ABC report for details. Nuclear power is also more expensive than renewables.

So we have an aging fleet of coal fired power stations that are getting increasingly unreliable and an Opposition Leader that has a solution that is optimistically available in the 2040s. Regardless of Paris commitments, climate wars and anything else – what does Peter Dutton think is going to produce power in years between the demise of old coal fired power stations and the nuclear future? It wouldn’t be renewables by any chance?

It’s a pity someone hasn’t asked the question.

The EU elections over June 6 to June 9 have presented a chaotically merry picture, certainly for those on the right of politics. Not that the right in question is reliably homogeneous in any sense, nor hoping for a single theme of triumph. A closer look at the gains made by the conservative side of politics, along with its saltier reactionary wings, suggests difficulty and disagreement.

In any case, papers such as The Economist were hopelessly pessimistic about the post-Eden fall, which may suggest that democracy, in all its unpredictable nastiness, is working. The lingering nature of the Ukraine War, the obstinate, enduring presences of such nationalists as Marine Le Pen in France and Viktor Orbán in Hungary, all pointing to “a period of political rudderlessness.” In truth, the rudders are being replaced.

In France, Le Pen has managed to point the gun of discontent at the centre of bureaucratic control and (hideous word) governance. The two prominent targets: President Emmanuel Macron and Paris. She has been aided by the fact that Macron has been inclined to pack key positions in government with loyal, reliable Parisians. Last February, François Bayrou, an early Macron enthusiast and Justice Minister, found it hard to accept that 11 of the 15 important ministers in the government were from the Paris area. This revealed a “growing lack of understanding between those in power and the French people at the grassroots level.”

On June 9, Le Pen proved had every reason to gloat, with the gains made by her party sufficiently terrifying French President Emmanuel Macron to dissolve parliament and call an election. Parties of the far-right came first in Austria, tied for top billing in the Netherlands and came in as runners-up in Germany (where Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats were savaged) and Romania.

The party of Italian Prime Minister, Georgia Meloni, also did well, winning 28.9% of the country’s vote in the elections. Predicted to get 24 seats in the European Parliament, the Fratelli d’Italia (Brothers of Italy) have done a shedding act on neo-fascism in favour of a smoother image, while still insisting that Europe’s identity had to be defended “from every cultural subjugation that sees Europe renounce its history to adopt that of others.” Such messaging has come with slick shallowness on social media, including such posts as those featuring “L’Italia cambia l’Europa” (“Italy changes Europe”), or the voter instruction to “scrivi Giorgia” (“write Giorgia”) on their ballot.

Meloni’s march was so significant as to compel EU Commission chief, Ursula von der Leyen, to become asalivating groupie for the right – of sorts. Her sharp policies on migration have drawn the approval of Meloni. Speaking at April’s Maastricht Debate, organised by POLITICO and Studio Europa Maastricht, von der Leyen openly expressed her interest in linking arms with Meloni’s European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR).

The Italian PM has found herself to be an object of much political interest, indispensable to the chess pieces of Europe’s political manoeuvrings. Italy’s reactionary flame has become, for instance, a matter of much interest to Le Pen. To the Italian newspaper, Corriere della Sera, Le Pen emphasised her insistence that a hard-right bloc of parties in the European Parliament could be formed, overcoming the current division between her Identity and Democracy (ID) group and that of Meloni’s ECR.

That said, any union of faux liberal types such as von der Leyen with those of the hard right of Europe is unlikely to be a fragrant one. Von der Leyen has taken heavy shots at Le Pen’s Rassemblement National (National Rally), excoriating its pro-Russian position along with those of Germany’s AfD and Poland’s Konfederacja. “They are Putin’s puppets and proxies and they are trampling on our values.” The promise to Meloni: if you want my dour, camouflaged conservatism, forget the other reactionaries.

What was telling was that the young, having voted in 2019 for parties of the left such as the Greens, had had a change of heart. In May an Ipsos poll revealed that 34% of French voters under the age of 30 were keen to vote for the 28-year-old leader of the National Rally in the European Parliamentary elections. In Germany, the 22% of Germans between 14-29 were keen to plump for Alternative for Germany (AfD), just under double from what was registered in 2023.

For Albena Azmanova of the University of Kent, this presents a curious predicament for those on the progressive side of politics (is there such a thing anymore?). Dissatisfaction that would normally be mined by progressives for political advantage is being left over to the opposite wing of politics. “The left is failing to harness that discontent, although its trademark issues – poverty and unemployment – are now more salient for voters than the far right’s flagship of ‘immigration’.”

An unanticipated phenomenon has manifested: younger voters in France, Portugal, Belgium, Germany and Finland folding at the ballot box for parties of the right and far right. The pendulum has well and truly swung. Europe’s right, bulked by the young, is on the march.

Climate advocacy project Solutions for Climate Australia stated it was deeply disturbed by the announcement today by Federal Liberal Party leader Peter Dutton that the Federal Coalition will not commit to pathways and targets to reduce climate pollution this decade.

“This is a gutless and weak approach by Mr. Dutton – it’s not doing anything to deal with increasing climate disasters. If put into place, the Federal Liberal-Nationals no-plan on climate would produce billions more tonnes of climate pollution and place many more Australians in the path of climate disasters.

“It unfortunately confirms that the Federal Liberals and Nationals have no plan to keep Australians safe from the worsening impacts of fires, floods and extreme weather. They have no plan to maintain trade and security in a world increasingly moving to action on climate. It risks stranding existing jobs and investment in renewable energy solutions,” said Dr Barry Traill, Director of Solutions for Climate Australia.

“Millions of Australians have already directly experienced the impacts of climate change. Tens of thousands of Australians have lost homes, livelihoods and businesses from increasing fire, drought, storms and floods in recent years. Hundreds of Australians have lost their lives.

“Australians expect their political leaders to work hard to keep people safe. The Federal Liberal and National parties are failing on this basic test of leadership,” said Dr Traill.

Climate Council Media Release

Responding to reports today that Opposition Leader Peter Dutton would rip up Australia’s 2030 climate targets if elected, Climate Council CEO Amanda McKenzie said:

“Dutton’s climate policy is a disaster, and the consequence for Australians would be more extreme heat, fires and floods. Instead of ripping up Australia’s 2030 climate targets, Peter Dutton must listen to the communities already ravaged by worsening climate disasters.

“There are 195 countries signed up to the Paris Agreement. Opting out would make Australia a global laughing stock.

“The Liberals haven’t learned the lesson Australians gave them at the last election: this is more of the same from the party who already gave us a decade of denial and delay on climate.”

Head of Policy and Advocacy Dr Jennifer Rayner said: “Peter Dutton is now promising Australians more climate pollution and a more dangerous future for our kids.

“This is the make-or-break decade to slash climate pollution by accelerating Australia’s move to clean energy. This is what it takes to keep our kids safe from escalating climate change and set Australia up for our next era of prosperity.

“Australia is already making great progress, with 40 percent of the power in our main national grid coming from clean energy, and one in three households having solar on their roof. Doing a massive u-turn on this momentum makes no sense when we can accelerate it instead.”

Few have exerted as much influence on the tone, and outcome of elections, as Nigel Farage. Fewer have done so while failing to win office. In seven attempts at standing for a seat in the UK House of Commons between 1994 and 2015, the votes to get him across the line have failed to materialise. Yet it is impossible to imagine the Brexit referendum of 2016, or the victory of the Conservatives under Boris Johnson in 2019, as being possible without his manipulative hand.

Before an audience at the MF Club Health and Wealth Summit at the Tiverton Hotel in March, Farage had words for his country’s voting system, one that notoriously remains stubbornly rooted to the “first past the post” model. It was a system that had, in his view, eliminated any coherent distinction between the major parties. They had become “big state, high tax social democrats.”

Farage took the budget as a salient illustration. The leader of the Labour Party, Sir Keir Starmer, agreed “with virtually everything in the budget. It would’ve made no difference if Rachel Reeves had delivered that budget instead of Jeremy Hunt. They are all the same.”

Having been made leader of the populist Reform UK party for the next five years, Farage felt it was time to make another tilt. On June 3, he announced that he would be standing in the July 4 election in the Essex constituency of Clacton, one that had conclusively voted to leave the European Union in 2016. It is also the only constituency to have ever elected an MP from UKIP, Reform UK’s previous iteration. The decision concluded a prolonged phase of indecision. And it will terrify the Tory strategists.

The speech offered little by way of surprises. The usual dark clouds were present. The failure by both Labour and the Conservatives to halt the tide of immigration. Rates of crushing taxation. General ignorance of Britain’s finest achievements battling tyranny, including a lack of awareness about such glorious events as D-Day. The poor state of public services, including the National Health Service. A state of “moral decline”. Rampant crime. In the UK, one could “go shoplifting and nick up to 200 quid’s worth of kit before anyone is even going to prosecute you.”

From the view of the Conservatives, who already risk electoral annihilation at the polls, Reform UK was always going to be dangerous. Roughly one in four voters who helped inflate Johnson’s numbers in 2019 are considering voting for it. It explains various efforts by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, including his insensibly cruel Rwanda plan, to court a voting base that he hopes will return to the Tory fold.

Unfortunately for the PM, such efforts will hardly matter now that the real Nigel is running. “The pint-loving populist offers a splash of colour in an otherwise grey campaign,” suggests Robert Ford in The Spectator. “The result will be a constant background hum of populist criticism undermining Tory promises and reinforcing voters’ doubts.”

Veteran British commentator Andrew Marr relished the irony: here was the architect of the Brexit victory bringing calamity to the Conservatives. Farage had effectively raised “the pirate flag of what he calls ‘a political revolt’ against the entire Westminster class; but in particular against the listing, drifting and battered galleon that is the Tory party.”

Leaving aside – and there is much on that score – the issue of Farage’s Little England image, his presence in the Commons would come with various promises that will rock Britain’s political establishment. There is, for instance, the proposal for electoral reform, one long strangled and smothered in the cot by the main parties. Finally, he insists, a proportional representation model of voting can be introduced that will make Westminster more representative.

He also proposes ridding Britain of the House of Lords in its current form, replacing it with what would essentially make it an elected chamber accountable to voters. This “abomination” and “disgrace” of an institution had become the destination for shameless political hacks favoured by Labor and Tory prime ministers. “It’s now made up of hundreds of mates of Tony Blair and David Cameron; they’re the same blooming people,” he rattled to the entrepreneurs at the Tiverton Hotel. “They all live within the same three postcodes in West London. They’re not representative of the country in any way at all.”

There is a case to be made for Farage to stay behind the throne of UK politics, influencing matters as sometimes befuddled kingmaker. Even if he fails at this eighth attempt – and given current polling, Reform UK is not on course to win a single seat – there is every chance that he will have a direct say in the way the Conservatives approach matters while in opposition. He might even play the role of a usurping Bolingbroke, taking over the leadership of a party he promises to inflict much harm upon next month. Short of that, he can have first dibs at the selection of a far more reactionary leader from its thinned ranks. The Farage factor will again become hauntingly critical to the gloomy fate of British politics.

By any reckoning, this was the move of a fool. A fool, it should be said, motivated by spite larded with caution. Evidently playing safe, adopting what has been called a “Ming Vase strategy” (hold it with scrupulous care; avoid danger), the British Labour Party under Sir Keir Starmer is already laying its own boobytraps to step onto. This is some feat, given that Labour currently leads the incumbent Tories by such a margin it is projected to win a majority of 194 seats, giving them 422 in all.

With the election campaign still salad green, Starmer has made it clear that a number of the progressive faithful will no longer be expected to keep him company on his way into government – assuming he doesn’t cock matters up before July 4. A cull is being made of the old Labour guard, and they are not going away quietly.

One is a former leader of the party, an unabashed progressive who has been hugging the left side of politics since he was a callow teenager. Jeremy Corbyn, a member for London’s Islington North for over four decades and party leader for five years, is running as an independent. In March, the National Executive Committee (NEC) voted by 22 to 12 to approve a motion proposed by Starmer insisting that it was “not in the best interests of the Labour Party for it to endorse Mr Corbyn as a Labour Party candidate at the next general election.”

The response from Corbyn was resoundingly biting. The move was a “shameful attack on the party of democracy”, showing “contempt” for those who had voted for the party at the 2017 and 2019 elections. “If you start shutting down dissent and preventing people from speaking out, it’s not a sign of strength, it’s a sign of weakness. A sign of strength is when you can absorb and listen to the other person’s arguments,” says Corbyn on the YouTube outlet, Double Down News.

Things were also further muddied by the near juvenile incompetence regarding the future of the MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington, Dianne Abbott, a figure who has been an enduring feature of Labour politics for decades. She was the first black woman to be elected to Parliament, reliably Left, admirably innumerate and always reliable in having a moment of indiscretion. (She had been suspended over comments made in a letter to The Observer claiming that Jews, the Irish and Travellers suffered “prejudice” rather than the “racism” suffered by blacks.) The question here was whether her readmission to the party would qualify her to run again or enable her to journey into a veteran politician’s sunset.

Here was a moment of genuine danger for Labour. Confusion, always fatal for any party seeking government, ignited. Was Abbott banned by her party from running at the next election because of her recently spotty record? Some Labour functionaries thought not, but felt that the NEC should have the last say. Whispers and rumours suggested the opposite.

Laura Kuenssberg of the BBC bored her readers senseless with a slew of anonymous sources that did little to clear things up. “She was looking for a way to stand down with dignity when it was blown all up,” one source claimed. Another is quoted as a “senior ally” of Starmer, suggesting that things had come to a pass. “Everyone was aware of the symbolism. We had to draw the line, it couldn’t just go on and on.”

A strategy is certainly afoot to stay, remove or frustrate candidates of a certain left leaning disposition who fail to fit Starmer’s ultra cautious strategy. They are memory’s heavy burden, a reminder of the roistering, scuffling legacy of the party. Distilled to its essence, it is a crude and clumsy effort to purge the Corbynistas. As Katy Balls of The Spectator appropriately describes it, the Labour leader has been selecting “candidates they trust to have a low risk of scandal or rebellion.”

Economist Faiza Shaheen, for instance, has found herself blocked for taking issue with her party’s Middle East policy, though, as she put it, it entailed “14 tweets over 10 years, including me liking a colleague’s tweet saying she was running as a Green councillor, and a retweet containing a list of companies to boycott to support Palestine, both from 2014.”

In an article for The Guardian, Shaheen describes how she was “removed, via email, from being a Labour parliamentary candidate from Chingford and Woodford Green.” She faced the dreaded NEC regarding her deselection. “More than four years’ work thrown in the bin. Any connection to my community brushed aside.”

Shaheen proceeds to make a fundamental, if obvious political point. “The irony is that taking me off the ballot and replacing me with someone no one in my community knows will jeopardise Labour’s ability to win this seat and finally unseat the Tory grandee Iaian Duncan Smith.”

These instances may not be enough to derail the Labour train that is destined, at this point, of storming into the House of Commons and Number 10 with tearing effect. But Starmer’s culling program is already taking the shine off the effort. Abbott has a loyal following. Those of Corbyn’s are the stuff of legend. Riling, obstructing and barring such figures serves to cloud the message, impairing an electoral effort that may, ironically enough, see the Ming Vase slip out of Starmer’s desperate hands.

The “great patriotic conference in Madrid” has echoes in a flurry of National Conservative (NatCon) activity in Australia. Here too, corporate dollars keep the illiberal project afloat. This is the second in a pair of essays.

The Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC) has stepped up its efforts after its October conference in London. Campbell Newman’s ecstatic promise at an Atlas Network-partner event – at the Australian Institute for Progress (AiP) – to continue to develop it here in the meantime has taken form (with or without his involvement).

Marcus Foord has been appointed the Convenor of the “Australian Chapter of the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship.” His previous work includes functioning as a staffer for Senator Sarah Henderson who has been seen at rightwing “insurgency” events that undermine the efforts to shore up electable centrism in the Victorian Liberal Party.

Word of mouth reports suggest that two fundraising events took place in Sydney and Melbourne for ARC Australia in April. Membership recruiting emails are circulating.

ARC was founded by former National Party leader John Anderson in conjunction with Baroness Philippa Stroud formerly of the Legatum hedge fund’s “think tank” and pop-psychologist Jordan Peterson. The National Party’s pro-fossil fuel “think tank”, the Page Research Centre sends out emails that declare such inaccurate propaganda as

“The rapid build out of renewables paired with the retiring of our coal fired power stations has been rationalised upon two dangerously false calculations.

1. That renewables are cheap and reliable
2. That the world is turning away from coal”

Anderson is the Chairman of the Board for Page. Its new CEO is Gerard Holland who has been working for the Legatum Institute for over three years, and as a paid “researcher” for the ARC according to Stroud’s parliamentary declaration, before taking on the Page role.

Stroud, incidentally, belongs to a controversial church where her husband is a leader, the Newfrontiers church. It has been accused of homophobia, fights abortion access and embraces “joyful female submission.” Stroud was reported to be in Australia for the ARC fund-raising events.

The Atlas Network-partner Mannkal Economic Education Foundation, joined by the range of other domestic Atlas partners, hosted a conference on the 17^th of April with the American network’s Atlas Society. While the Atlas Network denies that its name is drawn from Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, the Atlas Society is dedicated to celebrating Rand’s legacy. The conference was instigated to award the Atlas Society’s lifetime achievement award to Gina Rinehart, the first female recipient.

In Rinehart’s acceptance speech she reiterated her dedication since the age of 13 to Rand’s puerile “philosophy” that aims to dignify greed and selfishness. Furthermore Rinehart used the “courage” referred to in the speech celebrating her own career as an excuse to celebrate convicted felon Donald Trump. She spoke with devotion of the reason Trump rises each morning to pursue a second term in the White House. It is not, apparently, to quash the plethora of cases addressing his constant criminality and sedition. Neither is it an aggrieved narcissism determined to win and take revenge. It is because, Rinehart quoted, “I love America and I love the American people.” Rinehart concluded that Australia needed more politicians like Trump. If anyone needs proof that success is not linked to intellect, we have it there.

The other speeches at the day reiterated the talking points present at all NatCon events. The war to save fossil fuels from socialist renewables, the war on woke, preservation of an eye-wincingly narrow definition of family, the protection of children from modernity. Vacuous Briton Brendan O’Neill fabricated straw men of “woke” positions, denigrated “climate change hysteria” and claimed that bourgeois self-loathing had led the West to push our children into the “arms of barbarism.” He describes protesting for peace and justice in Israel as preferring “the antisemitic horror of Hamas” to the enlightened gains of our own societies. The implication is that all Palestinians are terrorists. Not even the babies deserve our outcry.

It is not surprising that Janet Albrechtsen was one of the presenters. She was a member of the secretive, invitation-only Mont Pelerin Society (MPS) the last time its membership was leaked. The MPS is the inner sanctum of the Atlas Network and a centre of climate denial activity.

Albrechtsen’s speech was driven by the “injustices” around the Lehrmann case. She celebrated the judicial activism of Antonin Scalia, “conservative intellectual gladiator,” who legitimised the marginal theory of “Originalism” that is underpinning NatCon activity within the American Supreme Court. Her speech nevertheless strongly condemned “activist judges,” a current trope of the rightwing culture war that delegitimises any judicial decision they find objectionable.

Albrechtsen’s determined effort to combat the MeToo movement in campaigning for Bruce Lehrmann and against Shane Drumgold became the primary factor ensuring that legal findings against Drumgold could have “no legal effect.” Albrechtsen criticised media interventions for Higgins, and yet the public has access to thorough detailing of her own extensive “media interventions” against Higgins in Acting Justice Kaye’s judgment.

The Page newsletter cited above also quoted the Mannkal conference’s “evidence” on energy policy.

Elsewhere, Atlas Network partner the Centre for Independent Studies (CIS) is rolling out events trying to dignify its embarrassing “CIS Energy Program”, which betrays the boasted academic credentials of the parent “thinktank.” It is an instrument to promote nuclear energy which is widely understood in the Australian market to be a mechanism to delay transition to clean energy, having missed the moment where nuclear would have been a reasonable option. Unfortunately reputable figures are allowing themselves to be made tools in these performances, granting credibility to a disingenuous project.

We must pay attention to these events and “thinktank” activity: there are overlapping figures, organisations and donors – domestic and international – at work cooperating to achieve their goals. They function primarily to free corporations from the regulations that protect us and the taxes that fund society. Now, however, they have pushed to the foreground the illiberal project of the NatCon movement too.

The Atlas Network is funded by a range of beleaguered corporate sectors such as fossil fuel, tobacco and private healthcare. It rewards its funders and activists. An Atlas Network-partner, the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA) was a finalist for one of Atlas’s grand awards, the Templeton Freedom Award, for its work under Tim Wilson to defeat the so-called “carbon tax.”

When the Atlas Society CEO, wearing a jewelled dollar-sign brooch, presented aspiring-oligarch Rinehart her award, the CEO bemoaned the “incredibly hostile regulatory climate in which [mining] is forced to operate.”

The most significant goal appears to be resisting the energy transition. Whether from Russia, through Orbán, or American donors and their architecture of influence, the money and message promote continued carbon emissions. Orbán is now overtly connecting his influence bodies with the American fossil-fuel funded Atlas Network. The particular partner, the Heritage Foundation, with which the alliance was made is the same one planning the fossil fuel-driven and extremist Christian Project 2025 for a new Trump administration. Tony Abbott’s April speaking tour with Orbán’s Danube Institute, including an event co-hosted by the Quadrant Journal in Sydney, is particularly troubling.

The reactionary goals of the funders are turned into a populist culture war with every enemy labelled “woke.” They aim to elect their illiberal leaders with such a base.

Whether inspired by reactionary religion, like Philippa Stroud appears to be, or clinging to religion as a cultural symbol representing “traditional” values, these groups place religion in some form as a core element of their identity.

Their conventions and gatherings are largely staged out of sight, but the kaleidoscope of figures and issues connected across the networks is aiming to impose strict rules on our societies.

The old “conservative” debate about the primacy of freedom or virtue has relinquished “freedom” as a goal except for their corporations who must operate without regulation. “Virtue” must be imposed on a renegade majority that they perceive to have lost it, producing an existential crisis. Democracy has become a weapon of the enemy.

Their definition of “virtue” is not one embraced by the majority in the societies these coalitions intend to impose it upon. If we don’t watch them, we cannot understand the clues they grant us as they arm themselves for battle.

In Australia and around the world, the far right is actively working and meeting, aiming to recreate their nations in a form most of us do not want. In Spain recently, a “great patriotic convention” was staged, bringing together the far-right parties of Europe and beyond. In Australia, their affiliated networks are working, largely out of the public eye, to ensure they too are able to impose their minority positions against our majority will. Corporations and their influence networks are funding this activity. Part 1 of a pair of essays addresses the international scene.

In late May, the Spanish convention, Europa Viva 24, brought together most notable far-right politicians, and parties, including the Israeli Minister for Diaspora Affairs, Amichai Chikli. The (temporary) Zionism of the event veils a deep antisemitism, but Netanyahu has long promoted antisemites and antisemitism providing this supports his expansionist goals. Jew-demonising Neo-Nazis and Holocaust-deniers are only antisemites if they oppose Israeli religio-ethnonationalism from the river to the sea. Or, as Netanyahu’s Likud Party frames it: “between the Sea and the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty.”

Any Jewish person who opposes this project becomes the antisemite in this redefining of the term. In fact, Chikli does not consider such a person a Jew. Madrid is only the latest in a series of meetings with antisemitic far right factions that Chikli has promoted in recent times.

This is the National Conservative (NatCon) movement of affiliated religio-ethnonationalisms. Far right Israelis, Hindutva Indians, and Christian Nationalists cooperate to reinforce each other’s project; Muslims and modernity are the designated mutual enemies that bind them. Civilian Palestinians are only Hamas, in the same spirit as this coalition designating all Muslims as terrorists and central to the Great Replacement conspiracy.

The list of figures in attendance at the Madrid convention, and the variety of rightwing bents represented, is telling. They illustrate how a rightwing “popular front” is being forged against everything the coalition defines as “communist.” Extremist Catholics and anti-communists from across the Latin sphere, north and south of the globe, combine in a neo-Francoist movement based in Spain, known as the Madrid Forum. The Vox Party, representing such forces within Spain, hosted the convention.

Italy’s Meloni and Hungary’s Orbán spoke by video link. France’s Le Pen was amongst the many politicians there in person. All were agitating for far-right mobilisation ahead of looming elections.

Europa Viva 24, however, was much more than a European event. CPAC – the trashy American face of the NatCon movement – declared that it had “joined forces” with Vox at the event. The coordinators of CPAC, Matt and Mercedes Schlapp had just come from CPAC Hungary with Chikli, where Tony Abbott presented on his recent speaking tour.

Another Madrid attendee was Roger Severino, vice-president of the Heritage Foundation. Heritage shaped Ronald Reagan’s neoliberalism, creating the Mandate for Leadership that dictated 2/3 of the policy of his first year. The 2024 iteration of this Atlas Network-partner’s Mandate has rejected neoliberalism in favour of theocratic illiberalism.

One of the chief targets in Madrid was international bodies that aim to bind nations. The development goals espoused by the UN were framed as an “ecofeminist” conspiracy. Viktor Orbán, by video, delivered the pronouncement that, ‘We the patriots must occupy Brussels.” The EU has been a key target of their fury.

These far-right parties, junktanks and corporate funders are determined that bodies such as the EU or the UN are nobbled if they can’t be broken. Regulations impede profit. The fact that 5-year-old children in the EU are now taller than in Brexit Britain is a telling symptom of the world this coalition wants to create: the malnutrition of Global North children matters as little as the welfare of children in the Global South has to them. They distract with culture war concerns about the EU “poisoning our children with gender propaganda” to cover for their utter lack of concern about children’s life or death struggle for food.

It is not surprising, then, to find the ever-metastasising Atlas Network is involved. As usual there is money to be made from corporate donors and plutocrats’ foundations in fighting the bodies that enable the population to resist predator capitalists who intend to extract every cent of profit from us, without regard for our opinion or pain.

A weakened Brexit Britain, with poverty prevalent in 1/5th of the state, is tempting pickings for predator capitalists. The NHS is devastated by years of Tory activity driven by private healthcare donors and corporate influence networks mostly linked to Atlas, who are working to recreate the USA’s sickening chasm in healthcare for Britain: the plutocrats and enablers will receive excellent care at eye-watering cost. The masses will die young and bankrupt in pursuit of the universal medical care they once enjoyed.

The EU too can offer such rich profits, if only the technocrats devising regulations that protect the people can be removed. For this reason, speakers at the Spanish convention dwelt on the repulsive “socialism” of the EU and focused on the culture war topics such as mythical attempts to change children’s gender as a weapon for their base.

“Sovereignty” is the justification for these attacks on international organisations, and another weapon. The UK Tories have been trying to present the European Convention on Human Rights as impinging on British freedoms to harm migrants. Like Brexit, leaving the convention would be a matter of “sovereignty.” Of course Britons losing human rights protections would suit the corporate interests that drive the Tories. The same Tories, furthermore, are pushing for freeports which grant all untrammelled rights to corporations, abandoning sovereignty.

Vox, the Spanish far right party, was represented by its leader. He declared that an international alliance was the only way these parties who “defend our national sovereignty” can succeed. Only a “global alliance” can defeat the “shared threat” of “globalism and its socialist soul.” This is the century-old “Judeo-Bolshevik” conspiracy persisting.

Milei is the figure who most clearly illustrates the change in the Atlas Network. He spoke as a staunch advocate of neoliberalism, as an Atlas apparatchik should. He appealed, however, to the theocratic bent prevalent in this NatCon movement: “let’s not let the dark, black, satanic, disgusting, atrocious, carcinogenic side – which is socialism – defeat us.” It is this existential crisis that ought to unite the attendees over “the differences we may have on this side in life.”

In America and around the anglosphere, the Right is radicalising, committing to “a public square re-ordered to the common good and ultimately the Highest Good.” The “Highest Good” is God’s mandate – as they define it. The Europeans gathered with them in Madrid agree.

And when God is dictating the rules this forcefully, the marketplace of ideas is dead. This is civil war for the soul of the nation: no quarter will be given.

And the corporate dollar is very happy to subsidise illiberalism that will allow it uninterrupted profits.

By James Moore

“Right is right even if no one is doing it; wrong is wrong even if everyone mis doing it” – Saint Augustine.

If Donald Trump is a “very innocent man,” then I am the sheikh of an OPEC nation.

His baseless degradations of his guilty verdict were expected but I was not prepared for the Republican officeholders and high-profile party surrogates to attack the American judicial system with such vigor. Their actions are irresponsible and dangerous, and if they don’t know that, they ought to. They are so concerned about Trump’s political ego and their proximity to his putative power that they are willing to toss the rule of law into a ditch flowing with their lick spittle, and further Trump’s destruction of U.S. democratic institutions. Their revenge language almost transcends fascism.

Let’s talk first about the governor of Texas, whose hypocrisies with the legal system are already many and manifest. Remember that Greg Abbott sued a homeowner, their arborist, and insurance company, when a tree blew over and made him paraplegic during a run. Abbott managed to land tens of millions of dollars in the case, which included free lifetime health care, annual cash annuities, and regularly renewed special vehicles and drivers for handicapped persons. When, however, he got into politics, he pushed hard for tort reform, which capped jury awards against business failures and negligence to $250,000. As a Texas Supreme Court justice, he also ruled in favor of corporations over citizens, consistently.

Abbott is, nonetheless, a lawyer and a member of the Texas State Bar, and the group ought to begin disbarment proceedings against him for undermining the judicial process with his lies, which are as blatant as the lying liar in emulates.

“This was a sham show trial,” he wrote on X. “The Kangaroo Court will never stand on appeal. Americans deserve better than a sitting U.S. President weaponizing our justice system against a political opponent, all to win an election. We must FIRE Joe Biden in November.”

That word “sham” was doing a lot of work after a just trial had concluded. Neither Abbott nor any other whiners can show evidence to connect the president to the New York state jury trial. A president has no jurisdiction over state courts, or federal, and there is no linkage between the jurors or the judge to Mr. Biden. There are only unfounded accusations that place the rule of law in peril because there are MAGA members who believe the lies. If any lawyer had made such claims about a ruling Abbott wrote while he was sitting on this state’s high court, he would have moved immediately to seek their disbarment. His decisions and opinions almost uniformly favored corporations in cases involving product liability, medical malpractice, and any issue consumer related.

None of the allegations made by Trump sycophants are supportable, or even logical. The Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Mike Johnson, who has said god has spoken to him about being a modern Moses, indicated he thinks the “Supreme Court should step in, obviously, this is totally unprecedented. I think that the Justices on the court, I know many of them personally, I think they are deeply concerned about that, as we are. So I think they’ll set this straight.”

The idea that personal relationships might somehow influence legal outcomes is what’s unprecedented, and for a House Speaker to imply that matters to a jury’s findings, well, it is vile. “Hey, Donnie. I know the black robe folks well. Lemme see what I can do.” What he knows is that the high court has no jurisdiction over state courts, unless some constitutional right was contravened, and such a case has been made throughout the state appeals process. Trump was granted all the rights of any citizen before a jury of his peers. Even his lawyer has said on TV, though, that they will likely take it to the Supreme Court. They cannot; appeals will run through state appellate processes.

The heaping-est helping of hilarity, though, goes to Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, who said, “If the justice system can do this to a former president, it can do it to anyone in America. That should frighten every American. New York and Biden have turned our country into a third-world-styled justice system that goes after political opponents like you see in Russia or North Korea.” Patrick, though, corrupted and controlled the outcome of an impeachment trial of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. The Lt. Gov. runs the Texas State Senate the way Putin manages the Kremlin. He accepted a $3 million dollar donation from Paxton’s largest backers prior to the proceedings and then controlled what witnesses were to be called, helping to acquit Paxton. Of course, he’s not wrong that the justice system can do to any American what it did to Trump because what it did was subject him to a jury of his peers and a proof of evidence regarding charges leveled. Danny P a.so abrogated the judicial process with Paxton’s impeachment in the Texas Senate by threatening to sequester senators in the capital if they did not quickly return a verdict, and it was clear what decision he expected.

Maybe I gave out the award for hilarity a bit too capriciously. Paxton was impeached and convicted in the Texas House but acquitted in the Senate in a truly sham process that kept his mistress from testifying but allowed her former employer, a state senator, to vote on the AG’s guilt. Paxton is still being investigated by the FBI in a whistleblower case that involved what appear to be kickbacks to him and privileges for Austin real estate developer Nate Paul, who gave Paxton’s extra lady a job. Paul was indicted for lying to banks to get $172 million in loans. Anyone who tracked the Senate impeachment, though, knew the fix was in and Paxton was not going to be convicted so his expertise on what comprises a “sham” must be an accepted part of our political calculus regarding reactions to Trump’s conviction.

“From the beginning of this sham trial, I stood by President Trump, and my support for him is stronger than ever,” he posted on X. “As Attorney General of Texas, I will unleash every tool at my disposal to fight this blatant corruption and political persecution spewing from New York and the Biden administration.”

None of the GOP herd of lawyers care that they are insulting twelve jurors, doing their civic duty, and, in this case, probably at great risk. Social media MAGAts are calling for doxxing of jurors and the prosecutor and judge are reportedly already recipients of death threats. Each of GOP’s condemnations of the trial as rigged and the judge and prosecutor as corrupt are clear violations of Professional Rules of Conduct established by most state bars. Abbott is too busy putting a spit shine on Trump’s shoes and his ass to tend to this state’s real challenges. We have a million uninsured children and rank 45th in health care with a ranking of 41st in per pupil education spending, which is not stopping him from a legislative effort to send taxpayer money to private Christian schools.

The theme of GOP outrage seems to be, “If they can use the courts to do this to President T, they can do it to you.” Isn’t that what Trump and Bush did with the Supreme Court? Impanel it with extremist conservatives who use their power to contravene existing law? If that court can do to women what it has done with the Dobbs ruling, imagine what they can do to you. If that court can empower corporations over voters like it did with Citizens United, imagine what it can do to you. Aren’t those more succinct questions to be asked than making up groundless fears that Biden is pulling strings and weaponizing the Department of Justice? The legal system was already politically weaponized with Trump’s appointments to the high court, and, in the process of making political rulings, the Supreme Court has lost most of its legitimacy and has become a vestigial organ of American democracy. It is also important to point out that when there are calls to end the death penalty because of flawed evidence or false testimony leading to convictions, the radical right screams that we must trust the judicial processes.

Trump is already polishing up the fascist tools he plans to take into the White House. In a direct mail piece many people have posted on Reddit, his primary campaign appeared to be using threats and intimidation. The language on the piece below reminds the recipient their “voting record is public, your neighbors are watching, and will know if you miss this critical runoff election.” I am unamused by the line that says, “We will notify President Trump if you don’t vote. You can’t afford to have that on your record.” Even better, the GOP Gestapo ends with the message, “We will contact you after the election to make sure you voted.” Too many voters will fall for this kind of crap and be frightened into voting for Trump and his sheeple.

They are, most likely, already measuring for new drapes in the Western Kremlin.

This article was originally published on Texas to the world.

It was a pitiful sight. Soaked and literally washed-out, the feeble thin British Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, made an announcement that caught many in his party by surprise. On July 4, the United Kingdom will be going to the polls. Necks will find themselves in nooses and placed in the guillotine – metaphorically speaking. The stretch to slaughter has been laid out. The oddity of this drenched occasion was made all the more pungent by a protester playing, in most audible fashion, the anthem of Tony Blair’s Labour’s victory in 1997, Things Can Only Get Better.

The PM’s speech rattled off the usual trimmings about a world dangerous and uncertain, as if various preceding eras were not. With the lumpy historical discordance, he suggested that the world was “more dangerous than it has been since the end of the Cold War.” Savage Russian President Vladimir Putin was one to blame for his “brutal war in Ukraine”. Islamist extremism continued to bloody the map of the Middle East. On the bookkeeping front, he claimed to have restored “economic stability,” a dagger remark to his predecessor, Liz Truss, who had a distinct talent for giving the economic books away.

The hordes of the Middle Kingdom and irregular migration also come in for a wet lettuce belting. China was a country “looking to dominate the 21^st century by stealing a lead in technology and migration is being weaponised by hostile states to threaten the integrity of our bodies.”

As for the Labour Party, his opponents and contenders for government, no credible basis could be found. He did not “know what they offer. And in truth, I don’t think you know either. And that’s because they have no plan.” Sunak has a point, but wise oppositions hankering for government tend to release their program closer to the election date than their greener counterparts.

The conservative stable in Sunak’s party, and the commentary box, were making the obvious point: why now instead of waiting till later in the year? If you are doing well in readjusting the direction of the economic ship, surely, it’s good to be reassured it’s heading the right direction and gloating about it to the voters before they cast the vote? Such questions are pertinent, given that the UK economy emerged from the stifling chrysalis of recession in the first quarter with 0.6%, with an inflation rate of 2.3%, a touch above the 2% target set by the Bank of England.

Reactionary, brutal, and cruel, Sunak could also boast that the Rwanda legislation, intended as part of a vain effort to deter boat arrivals to UK shores, had at least passed, despite being widely condemned, and reviled, by the legal fraternity and activist groups.

Strategizing for incumbent governments facing cool slaughter by an unhappy electorate is never an easy call. Isaac Levido, the shadowy Australian Conservative election strategist, plumped for some time later this year. Liam Booth-Smith, Sunak’s Chief of Staff, aided by the views of deputy prime minister, Oliver Dowden, and political secretary James Forsyth, preferred the starter gun to go off earlier. Best bring the cull on.

Commentary from various Conservatives tended towards Levido’s view. One senior figure, speaking to the BBC, confounded “the assumption of the entire establishment, not to mention Tory MPs, that it would be autumn.”

The Spectator, Britain’s consistently conservative magazine, was certain about the implications of premature electioneering. “Calling an early election is an admission of defeat – and that, on everything from public finances to public services, the worst is yet to come.”

Since the announcement, the Tories have been paternalistic in the hope that anyone will notice. Fatherly suggestions have come in the form of proposed mandatory national service, a case of carrot, stick and tease to discipline and condition the youth of the country. Were he to retain office, Sunak promises to reintroduce a measure that seems cumbersome and unconvincing. These are his words at a campaign event at Buckinghamshire: “It is going to foster a culture of service which is going to be incredibly powerful for making our society more cohesive, and in a more uncertain and dangerous world it’s going to strengthen our country’s security and resilience.”

Cruising onto TikTok, a platform otherwise viewed with Sinophile suspicion, Sunak made the point that, in line with other nation states, “we will provide a stipend to help with living costs for those doing the military element alongside their training.” Promises of sanctions for not following the program, were it to be introduced, are already being mooted by the likes of Tory Party deputy chairman James Daly. “If you are fit and healthy and you are able to make a contribution to your wider community to do something for your area, I have faith that young people will take that opportunity.”

In a sign that this government is spluttering in its terminal doom, Home Secretary James Cleverly offered a less punitive view. “There’s no one going to jail over this.” Foreign Office minister Anne-Marie Trevelyan preferred to toss the matter over to the royal commission intended to investigate the details of the proposal were fines to apply to disobedient children unwilling to serve their country. Defence personnel minister Andrew Morrison, within twenty-four hours of the election being called, walled off the possibility that “any form of national service” would be introduced.

For any government, confusion in the already scatty ranks spells death. In the case of the Tories, a wheezing sense of entropy will continue to soften them for the chop. While the losses may be checked come the date the votes are cast, the Tories are set for an all-country drubbing. Were Sunak to offer a decent salvaging from the blood bath for his party, he might almost be forgiven.