How a relentless progressive orthodoxy is politicising life and crushing debate in Australia

How a relentless progressive orthodoxy is politicising life and crushing debate in Australia. By Greg Sheridan in The Australian.

Welcome to Australia, the nation Labor rigged. Not just Labor, but the progressive left establishment across society has established a state ideology, a system of orthodox beliefs (more unrelenting than medieval Christianity), which is increasingly imposed across all walks of life. The tendency is towards a one-party state, even if different party labels are preserved.

The Albanese/Chalmers budget is a giant step towards creating a southern hemisphere European welfare state. This relies on ultimately ruinous levels and types of welfare.

It greatly exaggerates the power of the state in all spheres of life, and tends to crony capitalism and corporate state structures. It brings a vast machinery of political orthodoxy — progressive ideology — which it’s increasingly difficult to be free of.

In a democracy the state is meant to be, as far as possible, politically neutral. In Australia, institutions that should be neutral have been politicised, while fresh institutions have been created for political purposes. Governments spend billions of dollars to coerce Australians into seeing reality through a leftist, progressivist lens, then enforcing them to live their lives accordingly. …

Ever bigger government now funds one side of every political debate:

Governments have established a vast forest of wealthy organisations designed to propagate a progressivist left worldview.

The Australian Human Rights Commission is a prime example. With a few exceptions it takes a progressivist/left view of human rights. It has very little to say in defence of free speech. Before the Bondi terror attacks it had little to say about antisemitism. But a Critical Theory and ideological view of the alleged fundamental injustice of Australia permeates its work. Thus this week we had the absurdity of the Sex Discrimination Commissioner expressing concern that transgender women could be discriminated against on the basis of potential pregnancy. …

Australian Human Rights Commission president Hugh De Kretser claims the fundamental injustice of British settlement in Australia has never been addressed, and advocates treaties with Aboriginal groups as a way of improving the human rights of Aboriginal Australians. A classical view of human rights would emphasise universal citizenship, with race having no part in official civic life. Why should the government fund the propagation of only one side, the left/progressivist side, of this issue? …

The government funds the Environment Defenders Office to litigate against development projects. This involves enhancing, magnifying, helping political campaigns against these developments. Those who believe in development get no such government money.

Super and the unions have become another center of big government/leftist power:

The Australian superannuation industry has acquired vast financial power. As a result it also has political power. …

Compulsory super in Australia is really a form of tax. Many super funds have union officials on their boards. Super funds shouldn’t campaign politically about the treatment of super funds. These funds have also become part of the progressivist consensus in industry and investment.

Governments funnel huge amounts of money to trade unions. Unions now represent just 9 per cent of the private sector workforce, yet they’ve never been richer or more powerful. Government money is given to them for training and many other purposes. …

Universities:

University research grants are often enough mocked for their absurdity — anti-racist dentistry, drag shows for scientists, etc. But this nuttiness is a sideshow. It’s the deep, pervasive, overwhelming orthodoxy throughout publicly funded universities, with exceptions, that is simultaneously intellectually stultifying, corrosive in its exaggerated hostility to Western traditions, and ultimately undemocratic.

An autocracy doesn’t need an opposition ready to take over the reins of government, obviously. The opposition is just ceremonial, if it is allowed to exist at all.

There are thousands of other examples. The Albanese government, perhaps the most profligate in Australian history, found one area where it could economise. It cut staffing levels for the opposition.

In nearly 50 years of journalism, I can never remember House of Reps question time, the only part of parliament regularly broadcast to a large TV audience, being so rigged against giving the opposition any chance to make a point effectively, or meaningfully contest ideas and policies.

Totalitarianism is where government asserts total control over the lives of its citizens, regulating nearly every aspect of public and private behavior through coercion, repression, and propaganda. It is characterized by a single-party rule, the suppression of all opposition, and the enforcement of an official ideology that permeates education, media, and morality.

Clearly that is the direction in which Australia is currently headed.

Australia is one of the oldest continuous democracies in the world, but this relentless left/progressive orthodoxy is inherently authoritarian. It politicises normal areas of life such as school education, while ruling many normal views out of order for actual political discussion.

The best study of such tendencies remains George Orwell’s 1984. Big Brother determines the thoughts of its citizens. Subtlety and nuance are crushed. The only permitted opinions are double plus good, or double plus bad. This reflects the simplistic binaries that always underlie left/progressive orthodoxy, notwithstanding its pompous jargon and blather. For the left, the world is simplistically divided between oppressor and oppressed, hate-filled reactionary and enlightened progressive.

The author said “authoritarianism,” but technically “totalitarianism” fits the bill better, though we aren’t fully there yet. Perhaps it is fairer to say we are heading in an increasingly totalitarian direction, led by an authoritarian government. Obviously we still have many freedoms, but not as many as five years ago, or 20 years ago, let alone 80 years ago.

Advanced manufacturing and AI: Australia just makes it all too hard

Advanced manufacturing and AI: Australia just makes it all too hard. By Bran Black in The Australian, Mr Black is the CEO of the Business Council of Australia.

I returned to Australia this week after leading a delegation of Australian chief executives through New York and Washington, where we met with senior investors, members of congress, administration officials, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the New York Stock Exchange and leaders from some of the world’s largest investment and technology companies.

The message we heard repeatedly was clear, consistent and urgent – Australia is extraordinarily well positioned to benefit from the next wave of global investment driven by artificial intelligence. But the world will not wait for ­Australia.

On the flight home from Washington to Dallas before returning to Australia, I sat next to an American investment banker heading to Hong Kong. When he heard I was Australian, he immediately said he’d heard about Australia’s recent changes to capital gains tax and our miles of red tape and regulation.

Then he said something alarming. “I wouldn’t invest in Australia right now.” …

One senior figure told us Australia was “almost the perfect place in the world” for the infrastructure required to power the AI revolution. But we also heard growing concern that Australia risks regulating, delaying and debating itself out of the opportunity. One phrase came up repeatedly throughout the trip: “Just make it happen.” …

Missing out (take note, Mr Albanese):

Around the world, governments and businesses are moving fast to secure the investment, energy systems, data infrastructure and supply chains that will underpin the next generation of economic growth.

Huge amounts of global capital are on offer. Decisions are being made and projects are being approved. And the next six to 12 months are widely seen as critical.

We heard estimates of up to $US1 trillion in capital potentially being deployed globally over coming years into the infrastructure required to support AI. That means data centres, electricity generation, transmission, cooling systems, and advanced manufacturing. …

Australia should be one of the leading destinations for that investment. But investment flows to where confidence exists. And increasingly, international investors are questioning whether Australia is still capable of saying “yes” to major projects quickly and consistently.

Again and again, concerns were raised about regulatory complexity, approvals delays and ­policy uncertainty. Whether it’s changing tax settings, debates around capital gains tax, or overlapping planning systems, these ­issues are not viewed in isolation internationally. Together, they fuel an existing narrative we’ve now heard in boardrooms from Tokyo to New York that Australia just makes it all too hard.

Poorer Australians, coming up.

Australia’s feminized pubic square

Australia’s feminized pubic square. By Stephanie Bastiaan in The Spectator.

The institutions hollowing out women’s sex-based rights are not run by shadowy men in back rooms. They are run, increasingly, by women: a majority-female federal Labor government, a public service that is 60 per cent women, a thicket of agencies where the gatekeepers of our rights are overwhelmingly female – and they all seem to sit on the same side of progressive politics. …

We were promised that putting more women in charge would deliver better outcomes. Women are now at or above parity at almost every level of the public service. So where are the better outcomes? Quantity is not quality. Filling the room with women who all think identically is not diversity — it is a monoculture wearing the costume of progress.

Giggle vs Tickle is the new misogyny:

I have often heard gender ideology described as a new kind of misogyny — and in its material impact, it is. The Giggle v Tickle ruling, in my personal view, confirmed it: a man’s claim to womanhood now outranks the reality of sex, and it is women who have the most to lose — in sport, in single-sex spaces, in the services built for them. …

However, in Australia, gender ideology is, at its core, a woman-driven problem. …

The women’s suffrage movement was grounded in biological reality — that women were unequal under the law for the simple fact of being female. Somewhere along the way, that cause talked itself out of its own premise. ‘Sex matters’ became ‘sex is a feeling’, and a movement that began by defending women ended unable to say with confidence what a woman is.

When Australia’s Sex Discrimination Commissioner, Anna Cody — the official charged with administering a law whose entire architecture rests on the category of sex — cannot, or will not, define ‘biological men’, you are not looking at an outlier. You are looking at a pattern. From Equality Australia’s patron Governor-General Sam Mostyn to academics like Paula Gerber, the women in our most prominent public roles haven’t just accommodated gender ideology — it is my opinion that they have promoted it throughout their careers.

Show us the money!

So why have so many embraced an ideology that works against their own sex? Part of the answer lies in a moral economy that treats victimhood as the highest currency. We are the majority of the public service and of university graduates, yet the story too many women still tell is one of subjugation. …

Independent analysis finds our national broadcaster’s coverage on gender ideology, produced by a majority-female workforce, is heavily skewed toward trans-activism. Presenters whose names are synonymous with ‘the female perspective’ on our screens have built careers on women in public life, yet that perspective is rarely turned toward the women who insist that ‘female’ still means something….

The women dismantling our rights do it in our name, and often at the taxpayer’s expense. The women defending them do it at their own cost. History will not confuse the two.

Iran War Update

Iran War Update.

President Trump:

Iran must agree that they will never have a Nuclear Weapon or Bomb.

The Hormuz Strait must be immediately open, no tolls, for unrestricted shipping traffic, in both directions.

All water mines (bombs), if any, will be terminated …

Ships caught in the Strait due to our amazing and unprecedented Naval Blockade, which will now be lifted, may start the process of “heading home!” …

The enriched material, sometimes referred to as “Nuclear Dust,” which is buried deep underground with virtually collapsed mountains, caused by our powerful B2 Bomber attack 11 months ago, sitting on top of it, will be unearthed by the United States (which, it is agreed, is the only Country, along with China, with the mechanical capability of doing so!), in close coordination and conjunction with the Islamic Republic of Iran, plus the International Atomic Energy Agency, and DESTROYED.

No money will be exchanged, until further notice.

Other items, of far less importance, have been agreed to.

I will be meeting now, in the Situation Room, to make a final determination.

Newt Gingrich makes the vital point that Trump is acting as the head of a coalition, not as the head of just the US:

After spending this week reviewing the Iranian war I am now convinced President Trump is on the edge of an historic victory.

The real breakthrough for me came as I reviewed President Trump’s decisions and maneuvers not from the standpoint of American unilateralism but from the standpoint of the leader of a remarkable historic coalition, the largest coalition ever put together in the modern Middle East. Everyone understands that Israel is an important ally. What is little discussed is the depth of support from the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and other countries in the region. It has to be sobering for the Iranian dictatorship to realize that it does not have a single ally willing to challenge the American naval blockade.

Slowly, gradually, timidly, our European allies are lining up to help with the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz. A great deal of President Trump’s maneuvers against Iran make sense once he is seen as a coalition leader and not just as a unilateral American President.

I spent a lot of the last couple weeks reviewing kinetic options including wining the battle of the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz and if necessary using the shocking and shattering level of force President Nixon and Secretary Kissinger used against Hanoi and Haiphong in Christmas 1972 (which both leaders believed convinced the North Vietnamese to agree to a truce and the freeing of American POWs).

If this were a unilateral American campaign I could enthusiastically support a more aggressive kinetic campaign. However it is also clear it would shatter the coalition because our Arab allies are convinced Iran could still do enormous damage to their oil fields and infrastructure.

Coalitions are inherently slower than unilateral campaigns. However coalitions ultimately bring vastly more power to the fight.

I am as frustrated as everyone else by the pace of talking with the dictatorship but having reviewed the correlation of forces and the options available to the coalition on one side and the Iranian religiously motivated dictatorship on the other I am prepared to assert that President Trump’s coalition leadership (something almost none of his critics want to acknowledge) is within reach of an enormous historic victory.

And if the Iranian dictatorship ultimately proves it is hopelessly committed to a suicidal position there will be plenty of time for a kinetic campaign of enormous power and effectiveness. Either way we are on the edge of an astonishing victory for our values and for a safer Middle East.

Interesting. Let’s see what happens.

Ukraine war update

Ukraine war update. Look at modern war, where human solders are hunted down by drones laden with explosives

Here’s recent footage from Ukrainian FPV drones impacting Russian soldiers:

 

And here’s Russian drones hunting Ukrainian soldiers:

 

The Ukrainians have more and better drones now, largely due to a more innovative and free-wheeling development and procurement system. As a result, they have turned the tide and are now seen as winning (slightly).

After four years of sanctions, the Russian economy is hurting badly. Maybe Russia is laying the groundwork for a withdrawal — the following might be true:

hat-tip David Archibald

The European left is starting to cave on immigration

The European left is starting to cave on immigration. By The Economist.

Western attitudes are hardening. In Europe the views of social democrats and right-wing populists are converging.

The system is not working. Designed for post-war Europe, it cannot cope with a world of proliferating conflict, cheap travel and huge wage disparities.

Roughly 900m people would like to migrate permanently. Since it is almost impossible for a citizen of a poor country to move legally to a rich one, many move without permission. In the past two decades many have discovered that asylum offers a back door. Instead of crossing a border stealthily, as in the past, they walk up to a border guard and request asylum, knowing that the claim will take years to adjudicate and, in the meantime, they can melt into the shadows and find work.

Voters are right to think the system has been gamed. Most asylum claims in the European Union are now rejected outright. Fear of border chaos has fuelled the rise of populism, from Brexit to Donald Trump, and poisoned the debate about legal migration. …

The Economist is very ruling establishment, so this is a significant change of direction. Vox Populi:

It’s obvious why they are alarmed. In Britain, the two mainstream parties have been destroyed. And the convergence of SOCIALIST democrats and right-wing NATIONAL populists is always going to terrify a media controlled by a small group of people who were not historically very popular with socialist nationalists.

The Economist again, trying it on:

Mr Trump’s policy of mass deportation is both cruel and expensive. Far better to let those who have put down roots stay, while securing the border and changing the incentives for future arrivals. If liberals do not build a better system, populists will build a worse one.

Vox Populi again:

After their policies fail, they always try to move the goalposts in order to prevent those failures from being adequately addressed. At this point, they’re just trying to lock in their gains.

The Restore party in Britain basically aims to restore Britain to year 2000 demographics by reversing most all the migration since then. Imagine how much better off the natives would be.

Globalists retreating on European immigration

Globalists retreating on European immigration. By Cameron Stewart in The Australian.

It has taken a decade but Europe is now reaping the rewards of a slow but historic transformation in its approach to illegal migration.

It’s a change that has been led by individual countries on the frontline of irregular arrivals from Africa — like Italy, Greece and Malta — but also by the European Union, whose 27 members will next month implement the toughest new measures in a generation to tackle illegal migration. …

Europe has ­finally learned that the peril of uncontrolled illegal migration is the political story of our times. It has destroyed presidents, prime ministers and governments across the Western world. Those who promise to tackle it are rewarded handsomely at the ballot box.

Voter backlashes on illegal immigration powered the rise of Donald Trump in the US and have turbocharged Britain’s Reform UK, which now enjoys a handsome lead over Labour. It has given birth to a new generation of far-right parties across Europe, and now in Australia we are seeing concerns about immigration drive voters to One Nation.

Those who fail to learn the lessons of these trends risk being turfed from office. In Britain, Starmer is likely to be the next victim as his party plots a leadership succession amid dire polls.

By contrast, Europe has emerged as one of the most remarkable — and unlikely — success stories in tackling illegal immigrants.

The result has been a free-fall in the number of illegal arrivals in Europe, which peaked at 1.32 million in 2015. Last year, the number of illegal arrivals into the EU fell by a remarkable 26 per cent to just 178,000, less than half the figure of two years earlier.

Copying Australia on illegals:

Ironically, many European nations — which once criticised as inhumane Australia’s tough Pacific Solution policies to stop illegal boatloads of asylum-seekers — are now adopting similar strongarm tactics to combat the problem.

Third-country processing of illegal arrivals, boat turnbacks, repatriation by air, the prevention of boat departures, longer detention and harsher penalties have all become part of the playbook for many European nations.

The EU’s migration commissioner, Magnus Brunner, has even echoed the language of former prime minister John Howard on the issue by saying “Europe decides who comes to the EU”.

“But our voters,” squeal the lefties:

And, as also occurred in Australia, these tougher policies are attracting fierce criticism from human right groups and non-­government organisations, which say the rights of asylum-seekers are being trampled. …

But the concerns of human rights groups have been all but ignored as European leaders shield themselves from the politically toxic allegation that they are soft on illegal immigration.

Actions:

The EU has aggressively pursued deals across north and west Africa that provide large sums and aid and investment to transit countries in return for them intercepting or turning back would-be asylum seekers before they embark for Europe.

In 2024, a year after the EU signed a deal with Tunisia, transit across the central Mediterranean route fell by 58 per cent.

Plus the EU has invested far more in surveillance and policing of its own land and sea borders, while investing heavily in new technology for its border agency Frontex. …

European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen says bluntly that this suite of new measures across the continent will prevent a repeat of the 2015 asylum-seeker crisis. …

Goodbye Starmer, any day now:

Starmer was elected on a promise to crack down on illegal migration and his failure to deliver has seen Reform UK surge past Labor, with 27 per cent support compared with just 20 for the government.

Indians dominate IT via lower costs and ethnic favoritism

Indians dominate IT via lower costs and ethnic favoritism. By Megan Barth at California Globe.

Two-thirds of Silicon Valley’s nearly 400,000 tech jobs are held by foreign-born workers. India-born employees account for 23 percent and China-born for 18 percent–together outnumbering U.S.-born workers at just 34 percent, according to a 2025 Joint Venture Silicon Valley report.

This transformation extends to the C-suites. Major companies are now led by foreign-born executives: Microsoft’s Satya Nadella, Alphabet’s Sundar Pichai, Adobe’s Shantanu Narayen, IBM’s Arvind Krishna, Intel’s Lip-Bu Tan (Malaysian-born), YouTube’s Neal Mohan, and T-Mobile US’s Srinivas Gopalan — many from India.

 

Satya Nadella at Microsoft,  and Sundar Pichai at Alphabet (Google)

 

Silicon Valley, pioneered in American garages by Jobs, Hewlett, Packard, Noyce, and Moore, has gone global at the expense of domestic workers. …

Competition on price:

Foreign software developers … earn roughly 30 percent less than Americans.

This “redistributes wealth from those who compete with immigrants to those who use immigrants,” … fueling Big Tech profits and stock surges while sidelining mid-career American professionals.

Veteran Silicon Valley marketer “Mary” had the experience, the resume, and the skills, with stints at Google and Cisco. Yet after two years of relentless job hunting, she remains unemployed. Her story is emblematic of a broken system: she was ordered by her Indian-born CEO to train her lower-paid foreign replacement before being laid off.

“I had experience. I should have walked right into these corporate jobs, but I didn’t,” Mary told RealClearInvestigations. “Why? Because Silicon Valley is flooded with people who work for two-thirds of the price, or even half price.”

Ethnic tribalism:

Hiring has grown “tribal,” according to Kevin Lynn of the Institute for Sound Public Policy:

“Professionalism doesn’t exist in these IT departments anymore… when you look at the hiring, it becomes very tribal — India versus the rest of the world.”

Engineer Stephen Vivien described Indian H-1B workers at Google sharing interview questions to help each other. A New Jersey jury recently awarded $8.4 million against Cognizant Technology Solutions in a discrimination case involving bias against non-Indian workers. …

Losers:

The human cost is profound. Displaced Americans like Mary face not just unemployment but the erosion of the California dream they helped build.

Mid-career engineers, marketers, and developers, often with families, mortgages, and roots in the state, find themselves uncompetitive against a system that rewards lower wages and networked hiring over experience and loyalty. …

Winners — by Professor Richard Werner and Wall Street Apes:

It’s not that only Indians are IT geniuses. This has been explained here on X: The hiring Indian gets a %age of the salary of the new hired Indian. An Amway-style commission pyramid.

As this is routine in India everyone sticks to Indians: they know it, play ball & keep it secret.

New data shows once an Indian CEO gets hired at a major company, what follows is Americans getting pushed out of their jobs and replaced by Indians

Major Companies with an Indian CEO:

– Google – Sundar Pichai – Indian
– Microsoft – Satya Nadella – Indian
– YouTube – Neal Mohan – Indian
– Adobe – Shantanu Narayen – Indian
– IBM – Arvind Krishna – Indian
– Infosys – Salil Parekh Indian
– NetApp – George Kurian – Indian
– Arista Networks – Jayshree Ullal – Indian
– Novartis – Vasant Narasimhan – Indian
– Micron – Sanjay Mehrotra – Indian
– Honeywell – Vimal Kapur – Indian
– Flex – Revathi Advaithi – Indian
– Niyafair (Wayfair) – Niraj Shah – Indian
– Chanel – Leena Nair – Indian
– Shantanu Narayen (Adobe) – Indian
– Cognizant – Ravi Kumar S. – Indian
– Cognizant (variant/duplicate) – Indian
– Vertex – Reshma Kewalramani – Indian
– Escaler Indian
– Zscaler – Jay Chaudhry – Indian
– Microsoft Gaming – Indian
– FedEx – Indian

“There’s an observable correlation between the rise of Indian-born CEOs taking the helms at major U.S. companies and increased offshoring and outsourcing activity to India”

There is also a massive correlation to once an India CEO gets hired, H-1B visa applications skyrocket.

Ricardo Duchesne:

Indian migrants are particularly attractive because they are more compliant and geographically mobile than native Whites with comparable education. Lacking deep community roots or established family ties in the West, they accept irregular and intense schedules more readily. There are no entrenched mortgages, local schools, or unions associated with the importation of fresh Indian migrants. This entails less political or social pushback when companies adjust to new market signals or replace workers with AI.

The cost savings are substantial: firms can hire a senior Indian developer in the US or Canada on work visas for $30,000–$50,000 per year, in contrast to $150,000–$200,000 for a similarly qualified American worker.

Their narrow education, total focus on STEM degrees, compliance, and one-dimensional desire for money have made Indians quite useful as employees in limbic capitalist sectors such as social media, e-commerce, gaming, streaming, and AI-driven engagement. …

In the United States, according to data collected by the Pew Research Center (published 2025), the median income of Indian-headed households is about $145,000 – $156,000, which is significantly higher than the U.S. national median of $75,000–$83,000. The median income of Taiwanese Americans is $133,000 – $145,000, while that of Chinese Americans is $98,400 – $108,60. Chinese and Indian immigrants also show higher STEM educational attainment.

This should not surprise us: Indian and Chinese immigrants to the U.S. are heavily filtered through H-1B visas, leading to employment. They don’t “waste their time” with Liberal Arts, but focus on high-paying fields like computer science, medicine, engineering, and finance. In Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, second-generation Chinese and South Asians similarly demonstrate higher household median incomes and stronger representation in high-tech occupations.

 

 

Commenters:

Indians are NOT remotely IT geniuses. I have worked with 1000s of them and maybe 5 of those were above average. …

Actually very few of them are. While at Intel in the early 90’s I saw first hand the results of a team when there was an Indian made manager. The team grew to include only Indians. One of them worked closely with me and later confided they had to pay 10% of his pay to the manager for 1 year. That was back then. It is much higher now. After 35 years I’m out.

The flood of Indians was insane and the skill sets almost none existent by the time I left. Coincidentally, I was assigned to establish the Indian development and support center in India for my company. I spent years on this. They are just as non-qualified there as they are here.

The entire narrative surrounding the “skill” and “talent” of an Indian engineer was 100% bullshit. …

It’s the same process everywhere. Particularly in the English speaking world. I work in banking and we went from a few Indians 20 years ago, to them being everywhere now. The management hierarchy is dominated by Indians, teams are mostly Indian, and we are still offshoring.

hat-tip Peter S

How much mass immigration is too much?

How much mass immigration is too much? By Matt Forney. Highly unfair to many fine individuals, but it’s a funny take on the usual “First they come for” story.

First they came for the Indian doctors, and I did not speak out because now my girlfriend can visit the hospital without worrying about getting raped.

Then they came for the Indian engineers, and I did not speak out because every website, app, and OS mysteriously started working again.

Then they came for the Indian leaders, and I did not speak out because I no longer had to worry about my banking information being stolen by scammers.

Then they came for the Indian businesses, and I did not speak out because I could buy gas without getting my credit card skimmed.

Then they came for me…JUST KIDDING! I lived happily ever after.

Hollywood Actress Blows Whistle On Systemic Anti-White Discrimination In Casting

Hollywood Actress Blows Whistle On Systemic Anti-White Discrimination In Casting. By Steve Watson at modernity.

Actress Samaire Armstrong, known for her role in the hit series The O.C., stepped forward with a raw account of Hollywood’s entrenched discrimination. For years, she stayed silent as casting directors repeatedly rejected her for one reason: her race. …

Armstrong explained, “Over the last 6 years, I’ve heard nonstop, ‘They’re not looking for white.’ — ‘They liked you, but you’re white.’ …

“You gotta wonder, what’s the point of acting school and putting this time into developing the craft if that doesn’t matter anymore?” Armstrong urged. …

This isn’t one isolated voice. Armstrong’s experience reflects a broader industry shift where skin color determines opportunity more than skill, training, or audience appeal. In a country still majority white, the creative heart of American entertainment has turned against its foundational talent pool.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences formalized this bias with its “Representation and Inclusion Standards” for Best Picture eligibility. Starting with the 96th Oscars in 2024, films must meet at least two of four detailed standards … These rules prioritize “underrepresented” groups — defined to include women, racial or ethnic minorities, LGBTQ+ individuals, and the disabled or deaf — across every level of production. …

Iconic films from Hollywood’s golden eras would fail these tests. Casablanca, The Godfather, Saving Private Ryan, No Country for Old Men, or even Titanic in its original form wouldn’t check enough boxes. The rules don’t just encourage diversity — they penalize storytelling rooted in European-American cultural traditions or historical accuracy. …

Organic tales of human struggle, ambition, love, and loss vanished under layers of ideological checklists.

This hits aspiring actors hard. Acting demands years of classes, auditions, rejections, and honing emotional range. When race becomes the deciding factor, that investment must feel pointless. …

Audiences don’t reject diversity when it feels authentic; they reject pandering that prioritizes messaging over entertainment. …

When every ensemble requires a precise racial mix, every leadership team checks ethnicity boxes, storytelling suffers. Characters become mouthpieces. Plots twist to accommodate themes rather than emerging from genuine conflict.

The decline isn’t imaginary. Recent years delivered a string of high-budget disappointments: franchise entries laden with awkward diversity lectures, remakes that rewrite history for contemporary politics, and originals that feel like committee products rather than visionary works.

Studios chase Oscar validation and corporate ESG scores. Meeting Academy standards boosts awards chances and shields against activist boycotts. But it alienates core domestic audiences who simply want compelling stories. …

Compare this to earlier eras. Classic Hollywood produced universal stories — tales of redemption, heroism, romance, and tragedy — that transcended demographics. Directors cast the best actors for roles, not the best demographic fit. Writers explored human nature without mandatory identity arcs. The result was timeless cinema that still draws viewers decades later.

 

America is a nations of settlers, not a nation of immigrants or based on ideas

America is a nations of settlers, not a nation of immigrants or based on ideas. By John Daniel Davidson in The Federalist.

Of the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence, only eight were not born in the American colonies — they were born in England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales. All of them were subjects of the British crown, and each of them came to the colonies as colonists and settlers, not immigrants. They traveled from one part of the British Empire to another. …

The “nation of immigrants” line is not just ahistorical, though. It’s an insidious attempt to redefine American identity away from the shared bonds of culture and history that have always defined a nation, and assert instead that America is “an idea” or a “creedal nation,” as Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch recently said.

What terms like this really mean, what they are meant to convey, is that instead of being a distinct people descended from common ancestors, America is something far more plastic and ephemeral: a set of Enlightenment propositions about human nature and natural law that anyone can adopt. All you have to do to become an American, according to this view, is assent to those propositions and sign some documents. A recent arrival from Somalia, so long as he has all his paperwork in order and has gone through the proper bureaucratic process, is just as American as someone whose family has been here since the seventeenth century.

Every knows that is absurd position, but often people are afraid to say so for fear of being called a racist or an ethno-nationalist. That’s because the “creedal nation” argument is often framed as a binary: America is unique among the nations of the world because we have a “civic nationalism,” not “blood-and-soil nationalism.” Or, our American identity is based on the founding creed, not on ethnicity — as if ethnicity is the only alternative to creedalism. The implication is that anyone who rejects the creedal nation idea is an ethno-nationalist/racist who thinks only white people can be real Americans.

But of course one need not be an ethno-nationalist to reject the creedalists’ claims about American identity. …

It is a people who came from a particular culture and religion, British and Christian. Its creed is universal in the same way the Christian creed is universal: it is open to everyone willing to convert, change their life, and be transformed. That’s what assimilation really means.

The immigrant must leave behind the cultural practices of his homeland and adopt American culture and habits as his own — above all, he must adopt the Christian idea that all men are created equal, with all the implications that flow from that. That is harder to do than it seems, and it doesn’t happen at all under conditions of mass immigration.

And that’s what all this really comes down to. Not everyone who emigrates here will become an American. Ilhan Omar, for example, will probably never become an American, no matter how long she lives here. That’s because being an American doesn’t mean just being physically present in the United States, with all your documents in order, in hopes of making a lot of money or amassing a lot of power. It means joining, and being adopted into, an existing people — a people with a shared past and a common future and a distinct heritage and cultural patrimony.

Most foreigners, if they fully understood what it meant, would not even want to assimilate. People after all tend to love their own cultures and ancestral homelands, and they generally do not want to leave them behind for another. That’s why so many immigrants today fail to assimilate, or don’t even try. That’s also why, in 2026, it’s worth asking whether we should keep allowing them to hold high federal office.

What has been lost? Here’s a Coca-Cola commercial from 1976 in the US:

 

 

Ditto Australia, obviously. Australia was only started up by the British after they lost their colony in America in 1776, and they needed somewhere new to put prisoners and settlers.

They want the land

They want the land. By Elizabeth Nickson at Absurdistan.

Our land is being stolen by bankers and oligarchs. Every acre, every hectare they take, means our regression to modern serfs. We are being driven into the cities where we can be tracked and traded like widgets.

This has not been addressed by Trump. His team have pruned regulations and are breaking the meat packing cartel, but land taking continues, hand over fist. It is wrong. It is complex.

The Iron Triangle of bureaucrat, activist and legislator works silently to take our land. Buy a farm, a forest, a beachfront, and immediately people set themselves to tie it in regulation, and drive you off. Tens of millions have been driven into the cities, and many of them, shorn of family and meaning, end up on the streets.

As we have learned just this year, almost all activists are paid and directed by oligarchs. In the environmental business, behind the hysteria, the supposed ‘grass roots’, lie the financeers, who are the richest people on earth, and who ruthlessly, through dozens of cut-outs, use activists, bureaucrats and legislators to get what they want: the land.

Some sort of new feudalism seems to be gradually replacing our short-lived democracies. Control of assets via manipulating the money system is the key tool, by which the bulk of the population gradually return to living from paycheck to paycheck, their lives controlled by an untouchable elite who import a new population of serfs to compete with the trouble-makers.

Normies strike back

Normies strike back. Cory Bernardi’s maiden speech in the South Australian Parliament with comments by George Christensen.

Well said.

More:

Calling for accountability on covid:

“They locked us down, they silenced dissent, they imprisoned citizens, and they forced people to take dangerous and experimental injections. … The slogans were pure political propaganda, and our political class trampled on our freedoms and ruined our economy because of the flu. It was all BS.” …

Naming the “midwit managerial class”:

“The midwit, of course, is the most dangerous person to be in charge of anything… the midwit is of average intelligence, but believes themselves to be a genius and exceptionally insightful.”

The bureaucrats. The policy consultants. The government-funded experts. The professional class that never misses a paycheck while lecturing everyone else about sacrifice.

Bernardi’s critique wasn’t simply about intelligence. It was about arrogance detached from consequences.

The modern obsession with race, sexuality and grievance:

I make no apology… for being tall, straight, white, and a traditional man. …

“Most people don’t care about what colour your skin is until you start blaming those with different skin for your own problems. …

“Tolerance of that celebrated difference became exploited for political gain.”

The political class insists people are endlessly divided by race, sex and identity. Ordinary Australians mostly just want competent government and affordable electricity.

Gender ideology:

“Men can never be women, or vice versa. …

“The media are silent while the government allows doctors to mutilate children in the name of gender affirming care.”

Bernardi is willing to say in parliament what many politicians are too frightened to say publicly. And that matters politically because the public mood is shifting.

Conclusion:

His broader argument was unmistakable:

  • Government has grown too large.
  • Bureaucracy too powerful.
  • Citizens too controlled.
  • Truth too policed.

And he believes Australians are reaching breaking point.

Albanese has a solution for people whose speech he doesn’t like

Albanese has a solution for people whose speech he doesn’t like. Listen to this Australian’s story:

 

Will One Nation be next? The laws are so ill-defined that the Minister can ban any political party for “hate”.

Didn’t Anthony Albanese used to define himself as hating Tories? Yes he did: “I like fighting Tories. That’s what I do.”