Stories and links that are of interest or relevance to leaders, strategists, campaigners and organisers.
Inequality and the economy
Escaping the trap of US tech dependence
Canada needs real digital sovereignty, not our own digital colonizers
A discreet intellectual network has been reshaping the world for 70 years. Here’s how
A constant battle of ideas reshapes the world we live in, and few groups have been more successful in winning the war than the little-known Atlas Network.
“Poverty is the mother of crime”
What did Marcus Aurelius mean when he said “Poverty is the mother of crime”? Surely he wasn’t trying to justify crime? The vast majority of poor people keep on ‘the straight and narrow’ without turning to crime? No, he wasn’t justifying crime; he was simply being realistic. When they see affluence all around them, some of […]
Global affairs
Pardon the Corruption
Trump’s justification for invading American cities and other countries is to reduce the crime he is actively encouraging through his pardons
Scientists now know the most effective ways to fight microplastic pollution
From the peak of Mount Everest to the depths of the Mariana Trench — and even as far as Antarctica — microplastics have spread to every corner of the planet. Now, for the first time, scientists say they know enough to take meaningful, large-scale action against this pervasive pollution. The…
Trump’s Year Of Making White Nationalism Great Again
In the first year of Donald Trump’s second term, ideas once confined to white nationalist fringes have been folded directly into U.S. governance. Through extremist appointments, the implementation of Project 2025, militarized immigration policies rooted in “remigration” rhetoric, and an aggressive rollback of civil rights, the administration is normalizing racist, antisemitic, and Christian nationalist ideologies as state policy.
Trump Is Reviving a Disastrous, Forgotten Era in U.S. Foreign Policy
His invasion of Venezuela and abduction of Nicolás Maduro recall the U.S. imperialism of the early twentieth century—and may similarly lead to global catastrophe.
Peas In A Pod: The Budding Alliance between the GOP and AfD
Germany’s AfD and the U.S. GOP are forging a real political alliance—moving from shared rhetoric to coordinated action. As Republican figures welcome a party that German authorities have deemed a far-right extremist threat, the MAGA movement is helping legitimize an international partnership built on anti-immigrant politics, Islamophobia, and “Great Replacement” ideology.
Venezuela polling update: Republicans fall in line on comparatively unpopular action
Your weekly political data roundup for January 11, 2026.
More than 2,000 people reported killed at Iran protests as Trump says ‘help is on its way’
The US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) says it has confirmed the killing of 1,850 protesters over the past 17 days.
DHS Used Neo-Nazi Anthem for Recruitment After Fatal Minneapolis ICE Shooting
The federal government is openly embracing white nationalist online content — including in a recent recruitment post.
Chatham House Director Bronwen Maddox warns ‘This does mark the end of the Western alliance’
In her annual lecture, Maddox described a world in which superpower competition threatens the peace of others, and said that US policy under President Trump amounts to a revolution.
Every data centre is a U.S. military base – CCPA
Understanding how the United States uses its tech companies to serve empire
Notes from the Ground: Reflections on a Month That Shook Iran
Kaveh Rostamkhani, a photographer and essayist, speaks to Drop Site about what he saw and felt over the past several weeks inside Iran
Beyond Black and White: Notes from Tehran
These on-the-ground notes from Iran reject oversimplification and one-sided narratives: “There is layer upon layer.”
Unions
ACTU, Microsoft agreement eases fears AI will take jobs: AIIA
Microsoft Australia and the Australian Council of Trade Unions have signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) and framework agreement that sets a new benchmark for workers’ rights in the tech sector.
With Twin Cities Under Siege by ICE, Minnesota Moves Toward a General Strike
An economic blackout on January 23 could be the first general strike in Minnesota in nearly 100 years.
“No Work. No Spending”: Minnesota Workers Strike Today to Protest ICE
A critical conversation with Minnesota union leaders about a massive general strike that begins on Friday, January 23.
Workers’ rights
A New Low for American Workers
The share of American income going to labor is at its lowest level since measurements began.
Data, tech and privacy
Indonesia temporarily blocks access to Elon Musk’s Grok over sexualized images
The move comes after governments and regulators from Europe to Asia have condemned and some have opened inquiries into sexualized content on the app.
Known for their work with the CIA, tech company Palantir is coming to Coles
Coles plans to deploy data company Palantir’s tools across more than 840 supermarkets to cut costs and “redefine how we think about our workforce”. At a time of increased food insecurity, Australians should question if this is the right direction, writes Luke Munn.
Zoom Is the First Casualty in France’s War on American Big Tech
Homebrewed video conferencing may not be a moonshot, but you gotta start somewhere.
ICE Is Using Palantir’s AI Tools to Sort Through Tips
ICE has been using an AI-powered Palantir system to summarize tips sent to its tip line since last spring, according to a newly released Homeland Security document.
AI and the future of work
How An AI Bubble Burst Could Shake Global Financial Markets
Learn how concentrated AI valuations and rising AI debt could fuel an AI market collapse and discover how banks can prepare for the next downturn.
Dell seems to be the first to realise we don’t actually care about AI PCs
“What we’ve learned over the course of this year, from a consumer perspective, is they’re not buying based on AI.”
Will Google Become Our AI-Powered Central Planner?
Google may monopolize the market for AI consumer services. And now it is now rolling out a service to help businesses set prices, based on what it knows about us. The failure of antitrust was costly.
Rollout of AI may need to be slowed to ‘save society’, says JP Morgan boss
Jamie Dimon warns of civil unrest but Nvidia’s Jensen Huang argues tech will create rather than destroy jobs
Wikipedia volunteers spent years cataloging AI tells. Now there’s a plugin to avoid them.
The web’s best guide to spotting AI writing has become a manual for hiding it.
Generative AI’s crippling and widespread failure to induce robust models of the world
LLM failures to reason, as documented in Apple’s Illusion of Thinking paper, are really only part of a much deeper problem
Breaking: Sir Demis Hassabis becomes the latest to say that ChatGPT is a dead-end and that we must turn our focus to world models
Per the Times of India:
Poisoning Attacks on LLMs Require a Near-constant Number of Poison Samples
Poisoning attacks can compromise the safety of large language models (LLMs) by injecting malicious documents into their training data. Existing work has studied pretraining poisoning assuming adversaries control a percentage of the training corpus.
Campaigning, communications and social media
The cure for misinformation is not more information or smarter news consumers
Political scientist Samuel Bagg explains why social identity is at the root of the misinformation crisis — which calls for something deeper than factchecking.
The Case for ‘Abolish ICE’ — and Against Liberal Triangulation
Persuasion doesn’t happen through moderation — it happens through repetition, conflict, and narrative.
Society, media, news and culture
New GPAHE Report Profiles Far-Right Hate and Extremist Groups in Australia
Similar to trends elsewhere, white nationalist, anti-immigrant, and other extremist groups in Australia have grown in recent years
COMPLICIT: Corporate Media’s Capitulation to Trump’s Attacks on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion
This comprehensive report sheds new light on the ongoing capitulation of major media, tech and telecom companies to the dictates of a bigoted and corrupt administration.
Climate Change
As heatwaves get worse, 50C summers could be the new norm
Heatwaves are becoming longer, more frequent and more intense with multiple days of 50C looking more likely.
Australia’s hottest towns hit 120F in a grueling heat wave: ‘It’s just damn hot’
Vast swaths of southeastern Australia are sweltering in a heat wave that’s pushed temperatures to close to 50 degrees Celsius (122 degrees Fahrenheit) and forced some residents to protect their properties as wildfires race through parts of rural Victoria.
