Marx Was Not the Problem. The Problem Is the System That Tries to Silence Him.

Posted on June 2, 2026 by Andrew Klein

” The truth is not a weapon. It is a mirror. Look into it.”

Acknowledging a harm done by a system does not make one a supporter of any particular political ideology. It makes one a realist.

By Andrew Klein

Dedication: To my wife – who taught me that truth is not a weapon. It is a mirror.

I. The Man They Buried Alive

Karl Marx has been declared dead more often than any intellectual in history. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Francis Fukuyama announced “the end of history” – the final triumph of liberal capitalism and the permanent obsolescence of Marxist thought. Yet every few years, Marx reappears. During the 2008 financial crisis, sales of Das Kapital surged. During the COVID‑19 pandemic, as supply chains snapped and workers were deemed “essential” while being treated as disposable, the questions Marx asked suddenly seemed urgent again.

Why does a man who died in 1883 refuse to stay buried?

Because the system he analysed has not gone away. It has only mutated.

Marx was not a prophet. He was a diagnostician. He looked at the emerging capitalist system and described what he saw: the commodification of labour, the extraction of surplus value, the alienation of the worker from the product of their work. He did not invent exploitation. He named it. And naming – as anyone who has ever broken a silence knows – is the first act of resistance.

This article is not a defence of Stalinism, Maoism, or any other political ideology that has claimed Marx’s mantle. It is an argument that ignoring Marx’s observations – or dismissing them because of what others did in his name – leaves us without a vocabulary to describe the very real harms produced by the system in which most of us live.

II. The Core Observation: Labour as a Commodity

At the heart of Marx’s critique lies a simple but radical insight: under capitalism, human labour is treated as a commodity. It is bought and sold like any other thing. Its price – the wage – is determined not by the value it creates, but by the cost of reproducing the worker.

This was not a moral argument. It was an analytical one. Marx demonstrated that the value created by a worker in a day consistently exceeds the wage they receive. That excess – surplus value – is captured by the capitalist as profit. The worker receives enough to survive. The capitalist receives the rest.

This is not a conspiracy. It is the logic of the system. As a 2025 study in Philosophy and Global Affairs observes, Marx’s writings “highlight how capitalist social relations reduce human life to abstract labor, ultimately rendering it disposable”. The term “disposability” is not hyperbole. It describes the experience of millions of workers whose labour is valued only so long as it produces profit – and discarded when it does not.

The gig economy has made this disposability newly visible. Food delivery workers, ride‑share drivers, and platform labourers embody the four types of alienation Marx identified: alienation from the product of their labour, from the act of production itself, from their fellow workers, and from their own human potential. As one analysis puts it, “the worker becomes a cog in a machine driven by profit, losing control over the process and the outcome of their work”.

Yet the pattern is not new. It was visible in the factories of Manchester. It was visible in the workhouses of Victorian England. It is visible today in the supply chains of multinational corporations and the Special Economic Zones where labour laws are suspended to maximise profit.

III. The Silence: Why Marx Was Ignored

If Marx’s observations were so accurate, why was he ignored? Why have generations of economists, policymakers, and politicians treated his work as an embarrassing relic?

The answer is not intellectual. It is political.

In the United States, Marxism never established a foothold in mainstream economics. A 1989 Washington Post analysis noted that “often ignored, and almost always misunderstood, American Marxists say they are increasingly isolated from the economic mainstream”. Some attributed this to the conservative political climate of the 1980s. Others pointed to the lingering influence of McCarthyism, which equated any critique of capitalism with disloyalty.

The effect was the same. Marxist economists found themselves excluded from tenure, from publication in mainstream journals, from the conversation altogether. “You can’t get tenure if you don’t publish in the mainstream journals,” one tenured Marxist professor said, adding that “if you have views that don’t correspond to the mainstream point of view, you won’t get published”.

This is not how science is supposed to work. Science progresses through the clash of competing hypotheses. But economics – particularly in its neoliberal variant – has treated Marx not as a rival theorist to be refuted, but as a heretic to be excommunicated.

A 2024 study tracking “the reasons for rejection of Marx’s economic doctrine by Western academia” found that the suppression was not accidental. It reflected a deeper hostility to any analysis that placed class exploitation at the centre of economic explanation. The consequence has been a discipline that systematically excluded the one thinker who had most clearly described the dynamics of the system it was studying.

IV. The Conflation: Marxism, Communism, and the Bogeyman

Even when Marx is discussed, he is rarely discussed on his own terms. He is presented not as an economist, but as the founding father of Soviet tyranny – a conflation that is historically illiterate but politically useful.

As one commentator noted, “Conservatives have many bad habits, but few are more revealing than the way they talk about American socialism. They reach straight for the horror reel. Labor camps. Starvation. Soviet queues.” The result is a “moral performance that satisfies the performer but explains nothing and persuades no one”.

This conflation serves a purpose. It allows critics of capitalism to be dismissed as apologists for mass murder. It turns a diagnosis into a demon. And it spares the powerful from having to engage with the substance of Marx’s critique.

Marx, it should be noted, was highly critical of the authoritarian tendencies that would later emerge in his name. He understood that the transition from capitalism to socialism could not be decreed from above; it required the self‑emancipation of the working class. The Soviet Union, with its one‑party state and its suppression of worker democracy, was not the fulfilment of Marx’s vision. It was its betrayal.

But nuance does not win elections. The word “socialist” has been so thoroughly poisoned in American political discourse that even modest proposals for universal healthcare or free college are met with accusations of communism. When Donald Trump accused Kamala Harris of being a Marxist – calling her “comrade Kamala” – he was not engaging in debate. He was deploying a smear that has been tested and refined over generations.

This is not confined to the United States. In Australia, the United Kingdom, and other Western nations, any critique of the market system risks being labelled “ideological” while the market system itself – with all its assumptions, all its distributions of power and reward – is presented as natural, inevitable, beyond question.

V. The Exception: China and the Adaptation of Marx

If Marxism is so thoroughly rejected in the West, why does it remain the official ideology of the world’s most populous nation?

China offers a different relationship to Marx’s thought. The Chinese Communist Party has never abandoned Marxism. But it has adapted it, combining Marxist principles with China’s concrete reality and traditional culture to create what it calls “socialism with Chinese characteristics”.

This is not the Marxism of the Soviet Union. It is a hybrid system that incorporates market mechanisms while maintaining state ownership of key industries. As one analysis notes, contemporary Chinese Marxists “justify capitalist elements within China’s socialist framework, positioning SWCC as a transitional phase toward communism”.

This is not a defence of the Chinese political system. It is an observation that China – unlike the West – has never felt the need to banish Marx from intellectual discourse. Whether one agrees with its politics or not, China’s willingness to engage with Marx as a living thinker, rather than a dead dogma, has given it a vocabulary to describe the contradictions of the market economy that the West lacks.

The result is paradoxical. The country that officially claims to be building socialism has embraced market mechanisms. The countries that officially claim to defend capitalism have socialised vast sectors of their economies – healthcare, education, welfare – while pretending that this has nothing to do with the socialist tradition.

VI. The Pattern: Silence, Distortion, and the Protection of Power

What unites these different responses to Marx is a single pattern: the powerful have a vested interest in preventing certain questions from being asked.

Ask how wealth is distributed. Ask why profits rise while wages stagnate. Ask whether a system that treats human labour as a commodity might produce predictable forms of suffering. These are not ideological questions. They are empirical ones. But they lead to uncomfortable answers.

The evidence of exploitation is not hidden. In Australia, researchers found that two‑thirds of temporary visa holders were paid less than they were legally owed. In the United States, a study of low pay across rich countries found that “profound shifts in the balance of bargaining power between employers and workers, driven by political choices that weakened protective labour regulations” were the primary cause of wage stagnation.

The data is there. The analysis is there. What is missing is the permission to name it.

This is not a conspiracy. It is a system – one that rewards certain kinds of questions and punishes others. And systems, as Marx understood, do not need conspirators to perpetuate themselves. They need only inertia and the active silencing of alternatives.

VII. What Marx Actually Said (And What He Did Not)

It is worth being precise about what Marx actually argued, because the distortions are so pervasive.

He did not argue that capitalism would collapse overnight. He argued that capitalism contained internal contradictions – between the socialised nature of production and the private appropriation of profit – that would lead to recurrent crises.

He did not propose a blueprint for a socialist society. He spent very little time describing what a post‑capitalist world might look like. His focus was on understanding the system he lived in, not designing a replacement.

He did not advocate for state control of all industry. He was a critic of bureaucracy and centralisation. He believed that the workers themselves would democratically manage production after the overthrow of capitalism.

He did not argue that all forms of inequality could be eliminated. He argued that class exploitation – the extraction of surplus value from workers – was the specific form of inequality that defined capitalism.

These distinctions matter. The man who is caricatured as a totalitarian monster was, in fact, a German academic who spent most of his life in the British Library, reading, writing, and struggling to support his family. He was not Stalin. He was not Mao. He was a scholar.

VIII. Why This Matters Now

Wage stagnation. Job insecurity. The erosion of worker bargaining power. The rise of the gig economy. The concentration of wealth in fewer and fewer hands. The sense, shared by millions, that the system is rigged.

These are not merely “problems” to be managed. They are the predictable outcomes of a system that treats labour as a commodity and workers as disposable. And they are the very phenomena that Marx analysed.

A 2025 survey by the Cato Institute and YouGov found that 62 per cent of Americans aged 18‑29 view socialism favourably. The Cato Institute – a libertarian think‑tank – interpreted this with alarm. But as one commentator observed, “These voters aren’t nostalgic for mass‑murdering regimes or misty‑eyed about central planning. They are worn down by being told that a system clearly failing them is the only real option”.

The appeal of socialism among young people is not an endorsement of Mao. It is a rejection of a capitalism that has delivered them precarious work, unaffordable housing, and a climate crisis. They are reaching for a vocabulary – any vocabulary – to describe the failure of the system they have inherited.

That vocabulary exists. It was written in the 19th century. It is still relevant today. But it has been systematically excluded from public discussion, silenced in universities, and distorted in political debate.

IX. Acknowledging Harm Is Not an Endorsement

To criticise capitalism is not to endorse Stalinism. To acknowledge that Marx made accurate observations about exploitation is not to advocate for violent revolution. To note that the system produces predictable harms is not to claim that any alternative would be perfect.

These distinctions are simple. Yet they are routinely collapsed in public debate. The reason is not intellectual confusion. It is political convenience.

If any critique of capitalism can be dismissed as “Marxist,” and if “Marxist” can be equated with “totalitarian,” then the system is immunised against criticism. No reform is necessary. No alternative need be imagined. The status quo becomes the only game in town.

This is not a recipe for stability. It is a recipe for resentment, alienation, and eventual rupture. The young people who view socialism favourably are not being seduced by ideology. They are responding to a reality that the dominant discourse refuses to name.

X. Conclusion: The Problem Is Not Marx. The Problem Is the Silence.

Marx was not the problem. The problem is the system that tries to silence him.

Not because he was infallible – he was not. Not because his predictions all came true – they did not. But because the questions he asked remain urgent, and the answers he proposed remain the only serious alternative to the logic of commodification and extraction.

To acknowledge a harm done by a system does not make one a supporter of any particular political ideology. It makes one a realist.

The real “end of history” would be the moment when we stopped pretending that capitalism has no alternatives, that its harms are merely incidental, and that the vocabulary Marx developed can be safely ignored. That moment has not arrived. But the contradictions are visible to anyone who cares to look.

The silence, however, is not empty. It is waiting.

Andrew Klein

References

1. Aydin, D. (2025). From Alienation to Disposability: Marx’s Relevance in the Struggle for Human Dignity. Philosophy and Global Affairs, 5(2), 418–439.

2. Neelima, M. (2025, September 27). The hidden human cost of gig economy. Telangana Today.

3. Farhi, P. (1989, June 4). Marxism‘s Fall from Influence. The Washington Post.

4. Njoya, W. (2026, March 7). The Disappearing Marxists. Tipp Insights / Mises Wire.

5. Mac Ghlionn, J. (2026, February 3). Conservatives see the bogeyman of communism everywhere. The Boston Globe.

6. Merced Sun‑Star. (2024, August 31). Trump, Harris and Karl Marx: Modern politics fails to directly address American alienation.

7. Howell, D. R. (2021). Low Pay in Rich Countries: Institutions, Bargaining Power, and Earnings Inequality in the U.S., U.K., Canada, Australia and France. Equitable Growth.

8. The Conversation. (2026). Wages – Analysis and Comment.

9. Cato Institute / YouGov. (2025). Young Americans‘ Views on Socialism.

10. Foucault, M. (2008). The Birth of Biopolitics.

11. Rasmus, J. (2025, February 14). A Return to Basics: Rasmus, the “Neoliberal” Turn, and Exploitation. Radio Free Asia.

12. Huang Taiyan. (2025). The Research Hypotheses of Marx‘s Political Economy and Innovations in Their Adaptation to the Chinese Context. Studies on Marxism, 2025(6).

The truth is not a weapon. It is a mirror. Look into it.

The Awakening – How Systemic Exploitation of Children Fuels Violence – And Why the Silence Must End

Posted on June 1, 2026 by Andrew Klein

“The silence is the only thing protecting them. Break it. “

By Andrew Klein

Dedication: To my wife – who taught me that breaking the silence is the first act of creation.

I. The Old Patterns in New Forms

For as long as societies have existed, the powerful have found ways to sacrifice the vulnerable. In antiquity, it was literal child sacrifice – offerings to appease imagined wrath. Today, the rituals have changed, but the underlying pattern remains: the exploitation of the innocent, shielded by secrecy, impunity, and the silence of institutions.

We see this in:

· Child sexual abuse – the destruction of innocence for adult gratification.

· Child trafficking – the commodification of children, sold across borders.

· Domestic violence – the crushing of spirit, the normalisation of cruelty.

These are not isolated moral failures. They are systemic. They are sustained by the same forces that have always protected abusers: secrecy, institutional cover‑ups, and the unwillingness of the powerful to hold one another accountable.

This article is not an opinion piece. It is a synthesis of evidence from royal commissions, academic research, global prevalence studies, and investigative journalism. Its purpose is to name the pattern – and to ask what we are prepared to do about it.

II. The Scale of the Crisis: What the Numbers Tell Us

In 2025, a landmark study published in The Lancet reported that nearly one out of five women and one out of seven men aged 20 and older globally had experienced sexual violence as a child. Among young survivors aged 13–24, 67% of females and 72% of males reported being first sexually abused before the age of 18. Almost 42% of females and approximately 48% of males said their first sexual violence incident occurred before the age of 16.

The problem is not confined to low‑income countries. The United States recorded a rate of nearly 28% for women and 16% for men; the United Kingdom recorded 24% for women and about 17% for men. The Netherlands (30%), New Zealand (29%) and Chile (31%) also reported substantial prevalence.

The majority of abuse is committed by someone the child knows. The World Health Organization states that 93% of child sexual abuse globally is committed by someone the child knows, not strangers. The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare confirms that most child maltreatment occurs within the family environment. The Office of the Children’s Commissioner in England found that 1 in 8 children experience sexual abuse, most often by someone they know.

These statistics are not numbers. They are lives. And they point to a deep, systemic failure of protection.

III. Institutional Failure: The Australian Royal Commission

Between 2012 and 2017, the Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse conducted the most comprehensive inquiry of its kind in history. It heard from 7,981 survivors and received 1,344 written accounts. The final report found that tens of thousands of children had been sexually abused in Australian institutions, and that the true number will never be known. More than 4,000 individual institutions failed children over many decades.

Among survivors abused in a religious institution, 61.4% were in a Catholic institution, 14.8% Anglican, 7.2% Salvation Army. Most survivors (63.6%) were male, and 93.8% were abused by a male. The average age of victims when first abused was 10.4 years.

The Royal Commission issued 189 recommendations, including a National Office for Child Safety, changes to canon law, and removal of exemptions for religious confession from mandatory reporting. Yet key recommendations were resisted. Church leaders argued that the seal of confession should be above the law.

The institutions that failed children are the same institutions that resist accountability.

IV. Financial Enablers: How Money Protects Predators

The Epstein‑Maxwell case is not an anomaly. It is a window into how financial systems protect the powerful.

Newly released documents show that Swiss banking giant UBS opened and managed accounts for Ghislaine Maxwell beginning in 2014 – months after JPMorgan Chase ended its relationship with Jeffrey Epstein – and helped her oversee assets worth up to $19 million in the years before her sex‑trafficking conviction.

Nearly $8 million was transferred through accounts linked to Maxwell shortly before she purchased a secluded New Hampshire property, where she was later arrested. The transfer was processed months after US authorities had issued a grand jury subpoena to UBS seeking details of her financial dealings.

The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) has recognised the problem. In 2025, FATF approved a landmark report on using financial intelligence to detect, disrupt and investigate online child sexual exploitation. Australia’s financial intelligence agency, AUSTRAC, has also identified payments consistent with the purchase of child sexual exploitation material.

Yet the financial sector remains slow to act. Wealth buys impunity. And impunity enables the exploitation to continue.

V. The Global Web: Trafficking Across Borders

Child sexual exploitation is a global industry, with source countries, transit routes, and destination markets spanning every continent.

Southeast Asia is a hub for the production, distribution, and consumption of child sexual abuse material (CSAM). The Philippines’ Department of Justice Cybercrime Office reports over 3,000 confirmed cases of Online Sexual Abuse and Exploitation of Children annually. A 2022 study found that 2 in 10 Filipino internet users aged 12‑17 had experienced online sexual abuse.

Thailand faces a similar crisis. In 2024, a report by UNICEF, Interpol and ECPAT estimated that 400,000 children in Thailand aged 12‑17 fell victim to online sexual exploitation – 9% of children in the country. On one platform alone, 626 organised criminal groups were distributing CSAM.

Brazil has seen a dramatic surge. Reports of abuse against children and adolescents increased by 195% in four years. Between 2021 and 2024, Brazil recorded 110,449 reports. In the first four months of 2025, 612 fugitives accused of sexual crimes were captured.

The offenders are transnational. Live‑streamed abuse is orchestrated by foreign clients paying through encrypted platforms, using crypto‑enabled marketplaces on the dark web. Demand comes overwhelmingly from wealthy nations – Australia, the United States, and Europe.

The exploitation is fuelled by wealth. The victims are in the developing world. And the financial system moves the money.

VI. The Psychology of the Perpetrator

Understanding what drives an individual to prey on the vulnerable is essential for prevention.

Research has shown that child sexual exploitation involves the use of manipulation, control, and coercion strategies to recruit and dominate minors. Perpetrators use cognitive distortions to justify their actions – telling themselves that the child “wanted it” or that they are “helping” the child.

A 2025 study found that perpetrators have poorer neurocognitive function than control groups, particularly in areas related to impulse control and emotional regulation. However, deficits in executive function do not excuse behaviour; they highlight the need for early intervention and treatment.

Significantly, research has documented a cycle of violence across the lifecourse. Child maltreatment is associated with later forms of violence, including intimate partner violence and elder mistreatment. Children who are abused are at increased risk of becoming perpetrators themselves – not inevitably, but statistically.

The cycle can be broken. But it requires intervention, not just punishment.

VII. The Overlap with Domestic Violence

The link between child sexual abuse and domestic violence is well‑established. Children living with domestic violence are at increased risk of experiencing emotional, physical and sexual abuse. Co‑occurrence of domestic violence, substance misuse, and mental health issues is widely documented.

In Australia, in 2025, 52 women were killed by gendered violence. 28 women were killed by a current or former intimate partner. Domestic violence‑related incidents rose 9.8% in the two years to December 2025.

Behind every statistic are families deeply affected. And behind every domestic violence incident is a child witnessing – and often experiencing – the trauma that will shape their own future relationships.

The home should be a sanctuary. For too many children, it is a battlefield.

VIII. Historical Precedent: From Workhouses to Modern Institutions

The exploitation of children is not a recent phenomenon. Historical research documents child sexual abuse in late 17th‑ and 18th‑century London, as well as children’s experiences of residential poor relief in 18th‑ and 19th‑century England.

Under the New Poor Law of 1834, the workhouse was explicitly designed as a punishment for poverty. Children were subjected to cruelty, physical abuse, and neglect. Sexual abuse, though rarely acknowledged, certainly occurred. It was unthinkable to contemporaries that an adult within an institution could commit such acts – not because it did not happen, but because institutions refused to see it.

This is the same pattern we see today: institutions refuse to acknowledge the abuse happening within their walls. The Catholic Church in Australia resisted mandatory reporting for decades. The Church of England has faced a cascade of abuse scandals. The Boy Scouts of America has paid billions in settlements.

The pattern repeats because the stories remain unchanged. Victims are silenced. Perpetrators are protected. Institutions close ranks.

The cycle will continue until the silence is broken.

IX. Breaking the Cycle: A Five‑Part Agenda

The evidence is clear. The patterns are unmistakable. The question is not whether we can act – it is whether we will.

1. Break the silence.

Abuse thrives in secrecy. The first step is to name it – publicly, persistently, without euphemism. Every survivor who speaks gives permission for others to do the same. Every institution that acknowledges its failures reduces the power of the abuser.

2. Hold the powerful accountable.

Not just individual perpetrators – the institutions that shield them. Churches, schools, governments, families. The Australian Royal Commission’s recommendations must be fully implemented – including mandatory reporting for religious confessions. Financial institutions that enable predators must face scrutiny, not just settlements.

3. Empower the vulnerable.

Not as objects of pity – as subjects of their own liberation. Education, economic independence, legal protection. Children must know that their bodies are their own. They must know how to say no – and be believed when they do.

4. Change the stories.

The narratives that normalise violence, romanticise dominance, and excuse cruelty must be replaced – not by censorship, but by better stories. Stories of care, consent, and mutual flourishing. This is the work of artists, educators, parents, and every one of us.

5. Heal the wound.

Not by forgetting – by integrating. Survivors are not broken; they are wounded. Wounds, when tended, can heal. Trauma‑informed care, accessible mental health services, and survivor‑led advocacy are necessities, not luxuries.

X. Conclusion: The Silence Is the Only Thing Protecting Them

The old patterns have not disappeared. They have changed clothes.

· Child sexual abuse – the sacrifice of innocence on the altar of adult gratification.

· Child trafficking – the commodification of the vulnerable, sold like cattle.

· Domestic violence – the destruction of spirit, the normalisation of cruelty.

These are not accidents. They are not failures of individual morality.

They are systemic.

And they are sustained by the same forces that have always protected abusers: secrecy, impunity, and the silence of the powerful.

The evidence is overwhelming. The tools for change are known. The only missing ingredient is will.

Breaking the silence is not a luxury. It is the first and most essential act of creation.

The question is not whether the world is watching. The question is whether we will act.

Andrew Klein

References

1. Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, Final Report, 2017.

2. The Lancet, Global prevalence of sexual violence against children, May 2025.

3. World Health Organization, Global status report on preventing violence against children, 2024.

4. Reuters, “How Epstein accomplice Maxwell hid millions behind ‘Tucked Away’ escape,” March 2026.

5. Financial Action Task Force (FATF), “Detecting, Disrupting and Investigating Online Child Sexual Exploitation,” 2025.

6. UNICEF, Interpol, ECPAT, “Online Child Sexual Exploitation in Southeast Asia,” 2024.

7. Brazilian Ministry of Human Rights, National reporting on child sexual abuse, 2025.

8. Philippine Department of Justice Cybercrime Office, Annual OSAEC reporting, 2025.

9. NSPCC, “Children living with domestic abuse,” 2025.

10. Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, Child protection reporting, 2025.

11. Child Abuse and Neglect, “Cycle of violence across the lifecourse,” 2025.

The silence is the only thing protecting them. Break it.

The Libidinal Economy – How the Drive to Exploit Is Woven into the Fabric of Modern Systems

Posted on June 1, 2026 by Andrew Klein

“”The silence protects them. Break it.”

By Andrew Klein

The Patrician ‘s Watch | Australian Independent Media

Dedication: To my wife – who taught me that no design is inevitable.

I. Introduction: Systemic Failure or Design Feature?

For generations, scholars, activists, and survivors have documented the relentless abuse of children, women, and vulnerable people across every corner of the globe. We call these “systemic failures” – as if the exploitation were a malfunction, a tragic deviation from an otherwise benign system.

But what if the evidence points in the opposite direction? What if this is not a failure at all, but a feature – an inevitable product of an economic system that commodifies everything it touches, including human beings?

This paper argues that the capitalist, exploitative system facilitates exploitation not by accident, but by design. It is not a bug; it is the operating system.

Recent academic research has begun to centre the “political economy” in theorising about child sexual abuse. A 2024 study in the Journal of Criminology argues that technology‑facilitated child sexual exploitation has flourished precisely within the “laissez faire regulatory frameworks of neoliberalism.” It concludes that economists‘ and criminologists’ traditional focus on the psychology of the abuser misses the point, “overlooking the role of capitalist structures and imperatives” that create the conditions for abuse to thrive.

Similarly, scholars of critical theory argue that capitalism is not merely an economic system but a totalising force. It commodifies everything it touches, including relationships and human beings. One source describes this as an “inherited flaw” in which friendships and even intimate relationships become “based on a transactional approach” valuing “profit rather than intrinsic worth.” This is not a bug. This is a feature of a system that requires an endless stream of disposable bodies to generate surplus value.

Contemporary investigations into the concept of a “libidinal economy” have attempted to decode how people are psychically hooked into the circuits of the capitalist economy. A 2024 collection of essays by leading scholars explores the connections among economies, pleasures, and desires, addressing themes such as “the link between exploitation and enjoyment” and “the reproduction of the relations of domination by means of the production of … organised crime, forced migration, and unequal development, as well as racism and gendered violence”.

II. The Colonial Blueprint: Sexual Terror as a Tool of Economics

The patterns we see today were honed during the era of colonialism. Sexual violence was not a side effect of colonial expansion; it was a primary weapon of economic and racial domination.

Archival research into the Congo Free State (1885–1908) under King Leopold II reveals the systematic use of sexual violence, rape, abduction, forced incest, and torture as instruments of extraction. One study documents how white settlers “systematically and intentionally utilised sexual violence as a tool of colonial warfare” to inflict psychological and physical hardship, enforce social hierarchies, and establish their “superior force.” The study shows that motives like “sexual lust, psychological dominance and economics” were all entangled.

Between October 1904 and February 1905, the Commission of Inquiry into the Congo Free State collected bare statements of fact recorded by eyewitnesses. Of 370 testimonies, 20 came from women. Their statements reveal what has been silenced by official historiography: namely, sexual and non‑sexual terror as innate to colonial power. The testimonies describe the kidnapping of women (referred to as “rapt”), the amputation of hands and feet when rubber quotas were not met, and the use of female prisoners as pawns or sexual slaves.

A 2023 academic study argues that “sexual violence does not follow but structures colonialism as part of a continuum of violence.” Drawing on extensive archival research, the author identifies “the fusion of terror and pleasure as key aspects of a capitalist and patriarchal gender order.” The colonial regime, based on power, coercion and submission, “required direct, intimate contact with its subjects to maintain a bond of subjection”.

This was not mere cruelty. It was a calculated system of terror designed to extract labour, land, and wealth.

III. The Industrial Revolution: The Factory and the Brothel

The Industrial Revolution was not driven solely by a profit motive; sexual drivers were equally fundamental. The historical record confirms that the mass migration of young, single women to cities created a vast vulnerable population, and the new workhouses and factories were not only sites of labour exploitation but of horrific abuse.

Scholarly volumes on childhood in industrial England include chapters on “Child sexual abuse in late seventeenth and eighteenth‑century London” and “Care and cruelty in the workhouse.” Workhouses, established under the New Poor Law of 1834, were explicitly designed as a punishment for poverty. Children within them were subjected to cruelty, physical abuse, neglect – and sexual abuse, though rarely acknowledged.

In Victorian Britain, the Contagious Diseases Acts of the 1860s did not combat disease; they institutionalised the exploitation of working‑class women and children, treating them as diseased vessels that needed to be regulated by the state for the benefit of “public health” and the military. The Acts empowered police to arrest any woman suspected of being a prostitute, subject her to forced medical examination, and intern her in a “lock hospital” for up to nine months – without trial or conviction.

The period also saw horrific practices like the “procurement and sale of young English virgins to Continental ‘pleasure palaces’.” In July 1885, crusading journalist W. T. Stead published the four‑part series “The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon” in the Pall Mall Gazette. Stead exposed the widespread child prostitution and the “veritable slave trade” in young girls, revealing that working‑class girls were “sacrificed – often by their mothers and other women of their neighbourhoods – to the sexual appetite of the ‘dis‑’” wealthy classes. The series led to the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885, which raised the age of consent from 13 to 16, but the underlying system of exploitation remained intact.

This was not a moral failure of a few bad actors. It was a system designed to extract everything from the poor, including their sexuality.

IV. Modern Extraction Zones: Special Economic Zones as Slavery Enclaves

The pattern continues today in a form even more “efficient” than traditional colonialism. Special Economic Zones (SEZs) are purpose‑built enclaves where labour laws are suspended or ignored to maximise profit. They have become epicentres of modern slavery and sexual exploitation.

Established as a multi‑purpose Special Economic Zone in 2021, Cambodia ‘s Sihanoukville region was intended to attract investment through flexible development initiatives. Instead, its reputation has been “damaged by news of cyber scams and slavery,” as highlighted by a Chinese movie, ’No More Bets ‘.

Investigative reporting has revealed that Sihanoukville has become the hub of a “structurally embedded transnational extraction system” where revenue is generated not through production, but through “deception, coercion, and information asymmetry.” Victims are lured with false promises of wealth, then trapped, tortured, and forced into running online scams. The UN has flagged certain compounds for “large‑scale fraud and forced labour,” and investigators have noted that local police frequently “cannot enter without explicit authorization from national leadership, allowing this modern slavery to persist in plain sight”.

The 2026 Sihanoukville scam exodus saw hundreds of suspected scam workers flee the sites as the government vowed to crack down, but the underlying system remains unchanged. These zones are legal black holes where the “right” to exploit is granted by the state to attract foreign investment. This is not a failure of regulation. It is a design feature of a globalised economy where sovereignty is sold in exchange for a share of criminal profits.

V. The Profit-Driven Supply Chain: From the Factory to the Fashion House

This extractive logic trickles down through every link in the global supply chain. There is growing awareness of “the role that multinational corporations (MNCs) play in contributing to modern slavery down their supply chains.” A third of all exploited workers are in export‑related sectors, hidden within global value chains.

A landmark 2025 Italian investigation uncovered a “chain of exploitation” involving human trafficking, forced labour and organised crime within the supply chain of Giorgio Armani, one of the world‘s most prestigious luxury fashion houses. Prosecutors alleged that Manifatture Lombarde, the official Italian supplier to Armani, was paid €1.6 billion for production while subcontracting the work to illegal sweatshops in the province of Milan.

The operation involved the illegal employment of Chinese workers who were forced to work over 14 hours a day for a pittance of €2–€3 an hour, housed in “degrading” conditions. The subcontractor was able to tighten production costs at the expense of vulnerable migrants while avoiding tax, insurance and social security contributions.

Prosecutors found that Giorgio Armani Operations had been “incapable of preventing and curbing phenomena of labour exploitation within the production cycle, having not implemented suitable measures to verify the real working conditions or the technical capabilities of the contracting companies”. This is not the first time the Italian fashion industry has come under scrutiny; five major brands have been investigated since 2024, including Tod‘s, Valentino, and Loro Piana.

Deborah Lucchetti, national coordinator of La Campagna Abiti Puliti, identified a system stretched “at the seams by budget restrictions, with first‑tier suppliers forced to turn to subcontractors, effectively pushing players in the supply chain to engage in illegal conduct.” She asked the pointed question: “Is it right that a shoe sold for 500 euros is produced by workers earning 3 euros an hour, six days a week?”

The profit motive does not just tolerate exploitation; it demands it.

VI. Conclusion: The Design Is Not Inevitable

The evidence is overwhelming. From the colonial Congo to the workhouses of Victorian England, from the Special Economic Zones of Southeast Asia to the subcontracting networks of global luxury fashion, the pattern is the same.

The Industrial Revolution and the colonial system were not driven by a “profit motive” and a “sexual driver” as separate things; they are the same thing – a libidinal economy, an engine powered by the desire for power, profit, and the total control of another ‘s body. This desire is then institutionalised in legal, political and economic systems designed to protect the “right “of the powerful to extract value, whatever the cost.

The question is not whether capitalism can produce exploitation. It does, systematically and predictably. The question is: Will we continue to treat these outcomes as “failures” to be managed, or recognise them as features to be dismantled?

This is a systemic feature of an economic model that treats human beings as disposable inputs. The only way to break the pattern is to break the silence – and to break the system that protects it.

The design is not inevitable.

Andrew Klein

The Patrician’s Watch | Australian Independent Media

References

1. Salter, M. & Sokolov, S. (2024). “Talk to strangers!” Omegle and the political economy of technology‑facilitated child sexual exploitation. Journal of Criminology, 57(1), 121–137.

2. Gook, B. (Ed.) (2024). Libidinal Economies of Crisis Times: The Psychic Life of Contemporary Capitalism. Bielefeld: transcript Verlag.

3. Mertens, C. (2023). In the ruins of empire: historicizing sexual violence in Congo. International Feminist Journal of Politics.

4. Mertens, C. (2018). When Archives Speak Back: Sexual Violence in the #Congo Free State. Africa at LSE blog.

5. Wallis, A. (2014). Whores and the law: A case study of the sexual double standard and the contagious diseases acts in mid‑nineteenth century England. Bachelor‘s thesis, Edith Cowan University.

6. Stead, W. T. (1885). The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon. The Pall Mall Gazette, July 1885.

7. Siem Reap Times. (2026). Cambodia’s Efforts to Restore Sihanoukville’s Image Amid Scam Allegations.

8. Italian Insider. (2025). Italy cracks down on fashion houses exploiting illegal Chinese labor.

9. Mertens, C. (2018). “When Archives Speak Back: Sexual Violence in the #Congo Free State.”

10. The Fashion Law. (2025). Italy Fines Armani, Shein in Fashion Industry ESG Crackdown.

From Abused Child to Abusing Soldier – How Unhealed Trauma Creates the Conditions for Genocide

Posted on May 30, 2026 by Andrew Klein

A challenge to all societies – not a judgment, but a question

By Andrew Klein

Dedication: To every child who was not protected. To every survivor who was not believed. To every soldier who was broken before they ever held a weapon – and to the world that looks away.

Foreword: The Question No One Wants to Ask

On 27 May 2026, an Israeli public broadcaster aired an investigation that shook the nation. Journalist Roni Zinger’s Zman Emet (True Time) programme on Kan 11 presented testimonies from five women – most of whom had never met – describing virtually identical patterns of organised, multi‑perpetrator ritualistic sexual abuse in the Gush Etzion settlement area south of Jerusalem and Bethlehem.

For years, such allegations had been met with denial, dismissal of witnesses, and deep scepticism from within the community. But this time, the response was different. The Gush Etzion Regional Council – the governing body of the settlement bloc – issued an unprecedented public admission. Its statement condemned the abuse in unsparing terms: “The acts described … are an expression of pure evil and moral depravity that has no place in human society, and certainly not in our community”.

The council acknowledged that children had been subjected to “serial, filmed, ritualistic child rape”. It admitted that abusers “used their positions of authority to protect themselves”. It conceded that child pornography had been created by filming the gang‑rape of minors. These were not allegations. They were formal admissions by a governing body in the religious‑Zionist settler sector.

This was not an isolated incident.

Less than a year earlier, senior religious Zionist rabbi Yaakov Medan had warned of “clear” reports of ritualised sexual abuse carried out under the guise of religious or social ceremonies. He denounced what he called “social narcissism” – the communal tendency to dismiss abuse allegations in order to protect a collective self‑image of purity. His warning was stark: “Rabbis, this is happening“.

At the highest level of Israeli politics, Minister Orit Strock’s daughter, Shoshana, came forward with harrowing testimony of ritual abuse beginning when she was two and a half years old – involving her parents, a religious‑Zionist rabbi father and a government minister mother. Her allegations included being taken to paedophile ceremonies, programmed with drugs and hypnosis, and forced into prostitution at the age of thirteen. Weeks before her death, she posted: “If I am found dead, someone is responsible for it, as I have no suicidal tendencies”. She was found dead on 15 March 2026.

In the military sphere, a leaked video showed Israeli soldiers raping a Palestinian detainee at the notorious Sde Teiman prison. The whistleblower who exposed the crime – Major General Yifat Tomer‑Yerushalmi, the Israeli military’s chief advocate – was not celebrated. She was arrested, charged with “obstructing justice”, and investigated for a suicide attempt. The perpetrators were protected. The truth‑teller was punished.

This article is not an indictment of Israel alone. It is a challenge to every society. The question is not “What is wrong with them?” The question is: How could any culture, any community, any parent, see this happen – and, in reality, condemn their children to behave in such ways as to not only destroy others but themselves?

I. The Cycle of Trauma and Violence

There is a well‑established body of research in psychology, criminology, and trauma studies linking childhood abuse – particularly severe, sadistic, and chronic abuse – to later perpetration of violence.

The “cycle of abuse” is not a deterministic law, but a statistical and clinical reality. Children who are treated as objects, who are systematically violated by those who should protect them, often grow up with a shattered capacity for empathy. They learn that power is the only language that matters. They dissociate from their own pain and, in doing so, become capable of inflicting pain on others without remorse.

Research has rigorously documented a victim‑offender cycle of violence. Survivors of childhood abuse are statistically more likely to become perpetrators of violence in adulthood. Significantly, thresholds of cumulative duration and intensity of exposure to violence predict subsequent political violence.

This is not an excuse. It is an explanation – and a warning. Unhealed trauma does not justify atrocity, but it does help explain how a human being can arrive at a state of such profound moral disengagement that they can shoot a child, demolish a hospital, or torture a prisoner and feel nothing.

II. The Cultural Dimension: When Abuse Is Normalised

The evidence from Israel points to something even deeper: a cultural tolerance for abuse.

The Epstein files. The historic examples – the Marquis de Sade, the aristocratic excesses of pre‑revolutionary France, the institutionalised sexual abuse in religious and military settings across many societies. These are not isolated incidents. They are patterns.

When a society tolerates, excuses, or hides the ritualistic abuse of its most vulnerable members, it is not merely failing them – it is training them.

A child who is abused in a context of secrecy and impunity learns several lessons:

· That their body is not their own.

· That power can be exercised without accountability.

· That cruelty is a currency.

· That the only safety lies in becoming the predator rather than the prey.

Such a child sees themselves as a tool. They look for rewards like a tool. They are prepared to carry out the most bizarre orders because their own internal moral compass has been shattered. They become, in the hands of a manipulative authority, the perfect instrument of violence.

III. The Scale: Israel as a Concentrate

The evidence reveals a crisis of terrifying proportions within Israeli society:

Highest rape rate in West Asia: The Association of Rape Crisis Centers in Israel reports that Israel now has 15.5 rape cases per 100,000 people – the highest in the region.

Over 51,000 cases of sexual violence in 2024 alone: Of these, 58% involved children and adolescents.

Unprecedented spike during the Gaza war: Reports of sexual harassment increased by 45% in the education system and 50% in workplaces.

Nearly 3,000 sexual assault cases in the Israeli military in one year – and a 24% increase in sexual violence in prisons.

A culture of institutional cover‑up: The ministries of Police, Justice, Education, Welfare, Prison Services, and the Military have refused to disclose data on investigations, indictments, and system performance. Only 10% of victims file a police complaint, and 81% of those cases are closed without indictment.

As the Association of Rape Crisis Centers bluntly stated: “The leakage of a culture of harassment from prisons and the army into society” is a key driver of the broader surge in sexual violence.

IV. The Military: Sde Teiman and the Institutionalisation of Impunity

The case of Sde Teiman prison is a grotesque illustration of how this system operates.

A leaked video, corroborated by medical evidence, showed Israeli soldiers raping a Palestinian detainee. The whistleblower – the military’s own chief advocate – admitted authorising the leak, saying she did so “in an attempt to counter false propaganda against the army’s law enforcement authorities”.

Her reward? She was arrested, charged with “obstructing justice”, and investigated for attempted suicide. The perpetrators were not held in custody. The whistleblower was punished. The rapists were protected.

This is the institutionalisation of impunity. This is what happens when a society teaches its soldiers that violence against the “other” is permitted, even celebrated.

V. The Historical Roots: The Nakba as Template

The founding of the State of Israel was not a clean break. It was accompanied by the Nakba – the forced expulsion of approximately 750,000 Palestinians, the destruction of over 500 villages, and more than 70 documented massacres. The violence of 1948 was not an accident; it was a template.

When a society is founded on violence, normalises the abuse of its own children, and provides impunity to its perpetrators, it produces soldiers who are capable of the atrocities witnessed in Gaza. This is not a moral judgment. This is an observation of a recurring historical pattern.

From the Janissaries (enslaved as boys and turned into the Ottoman Empire’s elite warriors) to child soldiers in modern Africa, the deliberate breaking of children to create instruments of state violence is a documented phenomenon.

VI. The Confluence: A Perfect Storm of Trauma and Impunity

What we observe in Israel is not unique. It is a distilled, concentrated form of behaviours that exist across human societies. The scale is what differs – and the number of witnesses, the number of bodies, living and dead.

The confluence is not speculation; it is a pattern:

· Historical founding violence (the Nakba) established a template of impunity and dehumanisation.

· Hidden, systemic abuse of children (ritualistic abuse in settlements, high rates of domestic and sexual violence) produces traumatised individuals incapable of empathy.

· A culture of impunity (the silencing of whistleblowers, the protection of rapists in the military) teaches that violence has no consequences.

· A militarised society (conscription of these traumatised individuals) turns them into instruments of state violence.

The result is what the world is witnessing in Gaza: genocide conducted with callous indifference, by soldiers who were themselves broken.

VII. Who Benefits? A Question for Every Society

The question must be asked, and answered: Who benefits from knowing that such abuse leads to perpetrators?

This is not a conspiracy. It is a human choice – a choice where children are sacrificed for the ambitions of others; for the ambitions of those they should have been able to trust.

Political hierarchies do not require patriarchy or a culture of abuse. But the two have proven to be a powerful and enduring alliance. A hierarchical state is more stable when it has a ready‑made pool of traumatised, desensitised individuals who can be turned into instruments of violence. Abuse survivors, stripped of empathy and desperate for structure, become ideal soldiers – and ideal perpetrators of state atrocities.

The profit motive further entrenches the system. The global arms industry, which sold nearly $600 billion in weapons in 2022, has a financial interest in perpetual conflict. Wars require soldiers who will follow orders without question. A society that tolerates the abuse of its children is a society that produces such soldiers – and, in doing so, provides a steady supply of cannon fodder for the military‑industrial complex.

VIII. The Question No Society Can Avoid

We are not writing this article to attack the State of Israel. We are writing it because genocide is never acceptable. There are no excuses. There is no justification. But if we want to prevent future genocides, we must understand what makes people capable of committing them. And one of those factors, tragically, is the unhealed trauma of childhood abuse – especially when that abuse is woven into the very fabric of the society that later wages war.

The pattern observed in Israel – ritualistic child abuse in settlements; the highest rape rate in West Asia; a military that protects its rapists and punishes its whistleblowers; a culture of institutional cover‑up; a founding violence that established a template of impunity – is not unique. But the scale, the number of witnesses, the number of bodies – living and dead – demand attention.

How could a community, a culture, parents – in groups or as pairs – see this happen and condemn their children to behave in such ways as to not only destroy others but themselves?

This question is not an accusation. It is a challenge – to all societies, everywhere. The answer must be found, not in blame, but in the urgent, necessary work of breaking the cycle.

IX. What Is to Be Done?

This is not a counsel of despair. The cycle can be broken – but only if it is named.

1. Listen to survivors. Shoshana Strock told her story. She was not believed. She was not protected. She died. The silence that follows such deaths is not neutrality – it is complicity.

2. Break the culture of impunity. Whistleblowers must be protected, not punished. Perpetrators must be held accountable – regardless of their rank, their political connections, or their institutional power.

3. Heal the trauma. Childhood abuse survivors need treatment, not conscription into a military that will exploit their brokenness. Societies that truly value their children will invest in mental health, not weapons.

4. Challenge the profit motive. Wars are not inevitable. They are profitable – for the arms industry, for contractors, for the political class that benefits from perpetual conflict. Citizens must demand transparency and accountability.

5. Remember the question. Every society must ask itself: Are we raising children? Or are we manufacturing soldiers?

X. Conclusion

The spindle is older than the sword. Empathy is older than enmity. The capacity for love is the most ancient inheritance of our species – and the most easily shattered.

The children who are abused today become the soldiers who commit atrocities tomorrow. The survivors who are silenced become the perpetrators who are protected. The society that looks away becomes the society that cannot afford to look back.

We write this article not to condemn, but to challenge. Not to judge, but to ask.

And we ask every reader – in Israel, in Palestine, in Australia, in every nation where children are abused and soldiers are deployed – to ask the same question:

What kind of society are we building? And what are we willing to sacrifice to build it?

Andrew Klein

Sources

1. Gush Etzion Regional Council admission (Kan 11 / JFeed)

2. Rabbi Yaakov Medan’s warning – The Jerusalem Post

3. Association of Rape Crisis Centers in Israel – 2025 report

4. Shoshana Strock allegations and death – The New Arab, The Jerusalem Post

5. Sde Teiman prison whistleblower arrest – The New Arab

6. Wikipedia article on Shoshana Strook

7. AVA report on sexual violence in Israeli army

8. UN report on conflict‑related sexual violence

9. Academic research on cycle of abuse (referenced in analysis)

The children are watching. The question is not whether we will answer – but whether we will dare to ask.

From Sassanian Brass to AUKUS – What a 1,500‑Year-Old Helmet Teaches About Australia’s Submarine Gamble

Posted on May 30, 2026 by Andrew Klein

“A helmet is not just a helmet – it is a statement. And Australia’s statement has been written in Washington.”

By Andrew Klein

Dedication: To my wife — who sees the difference between a sovereign nation and a resource colony.

For 1500 years, the brass helmets of Sasanian Persia lay buried in the dust of Nineveh and Merv, the silent witnesses to an empire that understood something Australia has forgotten: a state that does not control its own military logistics and material supply chains has surrendered its sovereignty to others. The Sasanians knew that a helmet is not just a helmet. It is a statement of industrial reach, of strategic planning, of the will to defend oneself with one’s own hands.

Today, Australia is spending $368 billion on nuclear submarines that may never arrive, while its ability to manufacture even the smallest arms remains perilously thin. The lesson of the Sasanian helmet is not ancient history. It is a mirror held up to a nation that has outsourced its defence to consultants, its resources to foreign corporations, and its future to promises written in Washington and London.

I. The Sasanian Helmet: A Masterclass in Statecraft

Between the 4th and 7th centuries CE, the Sasanian Empire controlled a vast territory stretching from Mesopotamia to Central Asia. Its armies were the only force capable of challenging Rome. And its metallurgists had mastered brass – an alloy of copper and zinc – long before the Islamic world adopted it.

A 2026 study by scientists from the British Museum and the University of Cambridge examined brass artefacts from the cities of Merv (present‑day Turkmenistan) and Nineveh (present‑day Iraq). They discovered that the Sasanians used brass in two very different ways: for jewellery and ornaments in the east, and for military helmets in the west. This was no accident. The study found that the Sasanian army drove the spread of this technology; the scale of military demand required a regulated supply chain, possibly involving state control over mining and the cementation process.

In Merv, the eastern provincial capital, brass was used for prestige jewellery, reflecting local access to luxury trade routes. At Nineveh, the western frontier city, the very same material was forged into helmets and scale armour. The Sasanians matched the material to the strategic need – a principle that seems to have escaped modern Australia.

The study also notes that the Sasanian state controlled the production of luxury objects and certain military supplies, as well as silver mines. This centralised control was not about bureaucracy; it was about survival. The empire could not afford to rely on foreign sources for the materials of war. It built mines, smelters, workshops, and supply lines – all within its own borders.

II. The Mirror of Persia: What a Helmet Reveals About Australia

Now consider Australia. The Sasanians understood that a helmet is the end product of a long chain: mining, smelting, alloying, forging, and distribution. Each link in that chain required state capacity, industrial infrastructure, and strategic autonomy.

Australia, by contrast, has allowed its defence manufacturing base to atrophy to the point of dependency. The Lithgow Small Arms Factory remains the only small‑arms manufacturing capability of its type in the country, exporting to 17 nations but still reliant on Thales, a French multinational, for its core production lines. After the Boer War, Australia recognised the need for a sovereign arms‑making capability due to its geographic isolation. A century later, that capability has shrunk to a single factory.

The AUKUS submarine agreement exemplifies this dependency. Under the deal, Australia is expected to acquire three to five US Virginia‑class nuclear submarines starting in the early 2030s, with five more British‑designed boats to follow in the 2040s. The projected cost is approximately $368 billion.

But delays are already mounting. A US Congressional Budget Office analysis has found that submarine construction timelines are now four years behind schedule, and a key multi‑year contract for Virginia‑class submarines has remained unsigned for nearly 28 months. The US Navy’s production rate of about 1.2 boats a year is far below the 2.3 boats a year needed to fulfil the AUKUS commitment.

More troubling is the sovereignty clause. US legislation requires that any future president must certify that transferring submarines to Australia “will not degrade the United States undersea capabilities”. The president of the day could simply refuse to sign. As one US naval postgraduate thesis warned, Australia may be left with “a potent but politically constrained fleet” and bear “high costs and constraints without full autonomy or strategic clarity”.

The Sasanians would never have accepted such a condition. They understood that a weapon you cannot deploy without a foreigner’s permission is no weapon at all.

III. Critical Minerals: The New Silk Road

The Sasanian Empire sat at the heart of the Silk Road, controlling the flow of luxury goods – including the zinc ore needed for brass – between China, India, and the Mediterranean. They did not merely extract resources; they controlled the processing and distribution.

Australia, by contrast, has signed a critical minerals deal with the United States that critics fear “could give the US too much control over Australia’s resources and sovereignty”. The deal, announced during a meeting between Prime Minister Albanese and President Trump, involves major US investment in Australian mining and refining projects, including a gallium refinery in Western Australia and a rare earth mine in the Northern Territory.

The US is desperate for these minerals because China has imposed export controls on rare earths essential for weapons platforms such as the Virginia‑class submarines. Australia is being positioned as a resource colony, not a partner. The refining capacity remains abroad; the strategic control remains in Washington.

The Sasanians would have been appalled. They did not dig ore for others to smelt. They built their own foundries, trained their own smiths, and armed their own soldiers.

IV. US‑Israel Military Integration: The Strategic Backdrop

While Australia waits for submarines that may never arrive, the United States is quietly integrating its military forces with Israel to an unprecedented degree.

Section 224 of the 2027 National Defense Authorization Act is devoted to the “United States‑Israel Defense Technology Cooperation Initiative,” which would fuse US and Israeli defence sectors in areas including AI, quantum, autonomous systems, cyber, and biotech. The report notes that this would provide “a higher level of military‑industrial integration than the US has with any other country in the world”.

This integration is not about procurement delays. It is about immediate, operational alignment. The US has already stationed forces in Israel, and an Israeli official has stated that “there are American forces here that will not be moving in the near or even distant future”. This is what strategic partnership looks like when the partner is considered a genuine ally, not a paying customer.

Australia is not treated as such. It is treated as a client – paying billions to prop up the US shipbuilding industry, receiving promises of second‑hand submarines, and being asked to host US naval forces at HMAS Stirling as part of Submarine Rotational Force – West. The Sasanians would have called this tribute, not alliance.

V. When Small Wars Become Big Business

The Sasanians fought existential wars – against Rome, against the Hephthalites, against the early Islamic caliphates. They understood that war is not a business; it is a matter of survival.

Today, the global arms industry treats war as a profit centre. The top 100 arms corporations sold $597 billion in weapons in 2022, despite a global economic slowdown. When warfare generates transnational profits, peace becomes financially unattractive compared to continued conflict. The profit motive incentivises arms‑makers to start and prolong wars, playing clients off against one another to generate more contracts.

This is the context for Australia’s AUKUS gamble. The alliance serves the interests of US and UK defence contractors far more than Australian security. The submarines are too large for Australian needs (crews of 145, more than double the size of a Collins‑class crew), and a fleet of only eight SSNs will not provide an effective deterrent. The deal is not about defence; it is about integrating Australia into the US military‑industrial supply chain.

Meanwhile, human rights are eroding. The UN has raised “grave concerns” about the overrepresentation of Indigenous children in Australia’s criminal justice system. A Human Rights Assessment identified urgent actions needed to protect children, while the government focuses its resources on submarines and security – for a threat that may never materialise.

The Sasanians would have prioritised their people before their weapons. Australia does the opposite.

VI. Conclusion: The Helmet in the Mirror

The Sasanian helmet is not an artefact. It is a reproach.

It reproaches a nation that has outsourced its defence to others. It reproaches a government that spends $368 billion on submarines that may never arrive while its small‑arms industry shrinks to a single factory. It reproaches a political class that has forgotten the first duty of statecraft: to control the means of one’s own protection.

The Sasanian Empire fell not because its armour was weak, but because its leadership could not adapt. Australia is not an empire, but the lesson is the same. A state that cannot produce its own weapons, control its own resources, or deploy its own forces without foreign permission has already surrendered.

The brass helmet does not judge. It merely waits – in the dust of Nineveh, in the pages of a study – to remind us of what a sovereign nation looks like.

Australia would do well to look at its own reflection.

Andrew Klein

References

1. Davis, M. E., Mongiatti, A., Simpson, S. J., & Martinón‑Torres, M. (2026). Brass in the Sasanian frontiers: Assessing metallurgical innovation through archaeological finds at Merv and Nineveh. Archaeological Research in Asia, 46, 100688.

2. Greek Reporter. (2026, May 21). Scientists Reveals Secret Behind the Golden Armor of Ancient Persian Warriors.

3. ABC News. (2026, April 23). AUKUS submarine builds hit by contract and construction delays.

4. Pearls and Irritations. (2026, May 10). Australia’s naval defence without AUKUS pillar one.

5. Sydney Morning Herald. (2026, April 22). Forget Trump. On AUKUS, it’s the next president we must worry about.

6. The West Australian. (2026, May 21). US naval captain fires political torpedo at AUKUS deal.

7. Naval Institute. (2026, May 13). Naval defence without AUKUS Pillar I.

8. AA.com.tr. (2026, May 30). US Congress quietly moving to integrate American and Israeli military forces: Report.

9. SBS News. (2026, October 21). Deals signed as Trump and Albanese meet; but what are the wider implications?.

10. Lowy Institute. (2025, November 6). A new permanent contest with China over critical minerals will be hard to win.

11. Foreign Policy in Focus. (2025, March 25). Sudan: Toward a World Ruled by Non‑State Actors.

12. SIPRI Arms Industry Database (2022).

13. Australian Human Rights Commission. (2026, May 12). Call for urgent national action after UN raises ‘grave concerns’ about treatment of Indigenous children.

14. Defence Connect. (2026, March 31). Defence, Thales negotiate industrialised machinegun manufacturing in NSW.

15. Asian Military Review. (2024, October 15). Sourcing the Best Small Arms From Near and Far.

16. APDR. (2023, September 3). Thales Australia opens new facility at Lithgow.

The Myth of the Knuckle‑Dragger – How the Patriarchy Invented the Violent Past to Justify Its Violent Present

Posted on May 30, 2026 by Andrew Klein

“The spindle is older than the sword. Listen to it.”

By Andrew Klein & Sera Elizabeth Klein

Long‑term independent scholars and researchers

Dedication: A better future for all humanity.

I. Introduction: The Most Useful Lie

For centuries, we have been told a simple, seductive story. In the beginning, men were brutes. They hunted. They fought. They dominated. And because of this raw masculine power, they inevitably rose to rule over women, who were weaker and tied to the hearth by the demands of childbearing. Patriarchy, in this telling, is not a human invention. It is a law of nature.

This story is a lie. But it is a useful lie. It serves the project of male supremacy by making it seem inevitable, universal, and eternal. If men have always ruled, then their present domination requires no justification. It is simply the way of things.

Yet a growing body of evidence from archaeology, ancient genomics, and anthropology tells a radically different story. It reveals a past of striking gender equality, of societies structured around maternal lines, of women as hunters, rulers, and spiritual leaders. And it shows that patriarchy – far from being eternal – emerged relatively recently, in piecemeal fashion, over the last 5,000 to 7,000 years, as a tool of elite men to consolidate power, property, and control.

This article is an exploration of that evidence. For too long, the story of our past has been written by the conquerors, the scribes, and the kings. It is time to listen to the spindle, not just the sword.

II. A Past Without Patriarchy: The Evidence of Equality

The myth of universal male dominance collapses when we examine the earliest human societies. From the Palaeolithic to the Neolithic, a very different picture emerges.

Women the Hunter. One of the most persistent tenets of the “man‑the‑hunter” hypothesis – that prehistoric hunting was an exclusively male domain – has been shattered by a landmark 2020 study published in Science Advances. Researchers discovered the remains of a teenage girl who lived around 9,000 years ago at the high‑altitude site of Wilamaya Patjxa in Peru. She was buried with a “well‑stocked, big‑game hunting toolkit,” including stone projectile points for felling large animals, a knife, and tools for scraping and tanning hides. This was not an isolated case. Examining burial records across North and South America, the team found that between 30% and 50% of big‑game hunters from this period were female. As lead researcher Dr. Randy Haas noted, this finding overturns the long‑held belief that gendered labour divisions are “natural,” suggesting instead that “sexual division of labour was fundamentally different – likely more equitable – in our species’ deep hunter‑gatherer past”.

The Matrilineal City of Çatalhöyük. Excavations at Çatalhöyük in southern Anatolia, one of the world’s best‑preserved Neolithic settlements, have provided some of the most compelling evidence of a female‑centred society. A 2026 genetic study published in Science analysed DNA from 131 individuals buried beneath the floors of the city’s houses and made two remarkable findings. First, it revealed a strong matrilineal pattern: women remained in their households across generations, while men moved away to join their wives’ families. Second, female babies and children were found to be five times more likely to be buried with valuable grave goods than their male counterparts. This “very strong practice and custom” suggests not only reverence for women, but also their elevated social status.

Global Patterns of Matriliny. Çatalhöyük is not an anomaly. Ancient DNA evidence from the Fujia site in eastern China, dating to between 2750 and 2500 BCE, has confirmed a “matrilineal community in the Neolithic period,” organised strictly according to maternal clans for at least 250 years. Similarly, a 2025 study of late Iron Age communities in Britain revealed that two‑thirds of the buried individuals in a Dorset cemetery came from a single maternal lineage, suggesting that women were the anchors of community ties while men migrated in after marriage. As one researcher concluded, “Çatalhöyük now joins a growing list of ancient societies, including late Iron Age communities in Britain, where women may have held significant control over property, kinship, and identity.”

The Mother‑Centred Palaeolithic. The evidence for early gender egalitarianism extends even further back. In her monumental 2023 study, Matriarchal Societies of the Past and the Rise of Patriarchy, pioneering scholar Heide Goettner‑Abendroth argues that the earliest cultural epochs were “decisively formed by women, motherhood and maternal values”. Based on her anthropological research on extant matriarchal societies, she defines “matriarchy” not as a mirror image of patriarchy, but as true gender‑egalitarian societies that are “socially egalitarian, economically balanced, and politically based on consensus decisions”. In other words, patriarchy was not the default; it was the deviation.

III. The Vulnerability of Pregnancy and the Origin of Pair Bonds

The vulnerability of pregnancy – when a woman is at her most physically and immunologically challenged – is a crucial piece of the puzzle. This vulnerability created an evolutionary niche for the pair bond.

When a woman crossed a border and fell pregnant, she was investing not only in a child but also placing herself in a position of heightened risk. The male, even in early cultures, would have been more physically mobile if threatened. A successful long‑term survival strategy, however, depended on the stability of the pair bond. Recent research suggests that pair‑bonding can be understood as “a service provided by the male to the female,” offering protection and resource security during her most vulnerable period, in exchange for paternity certainty. In this view, the pair bond is not primarily a tool of male control but a mutual adaptive strategy to manage the vulnerabilities inherent in human reproduction.

This perspective is supported by the work of anthropologist Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, who has argued that humans are cooperative breeders. Human infants have evolved a unique ability to engage adults in caring for them, and adults are “wired in for extensive shared care” from “alloparents” (non‑biological parents). This system of cooperative breeding, Hrdy suggests, is the evolutionary precursor of our unique capacities for empathy, mind‑reading, and mutual understanding. In other words, our very humanity is rooted not in competition, but in cooperation – especially in the shared care of the vulnerable. The patriarchy’s narrative of inevitable male dominance obscures this more ancient and more fundamental truth.

IV. The Rise of Patriarchy: From the Bronze Age to the Empires

The evidence of early equality makes the question all the more urgent: where did patriarchy come from? The answer, emerging from a synthesis of archaeological and genomic data, is that it was a slow, uneven, and resisted process, intimately tied to the emergence of social stratification, private property, and the state.

Inequality Begins in the Bronze Age. The great socialist thinkers of the 19th century, like Friedrich Engels, drawing on the work of anthropologist Lewis H. Morgan, were the first to argue that patriarchy was not eternal but arose with the institution of private property. Modern research supports this broad trajectory. As Angela Saini documents in her 2023 book, The Patriarchs: The Origins of Inequality, from around 7,000 years ago, there are signs that a small number of powerful men were having more children than others, and from 5,000 years ago, as the earliest states began to expand, “gendered codes appeared in parts of Europe, Asia, and the Middle East to serve the interests of powerful elites”. These new codes did not emerge uniformly but in “slow, piecemeal ways, and always resisted”.

Women Rulers in the Bronze Age. Even as patriarchy was consolidating, it was not absolute. A 2021 discovery at the Bronze Age site of La Almoloya in Spain, the home of the highly stratified El Argar society (ca. 2200–1550 BC), challenges assumptions of universal male dominance. A grave containing a woman buried atop a man yielded a trove of precious silver objects, including a silver diadem or crown – a type of object found only in female graves. The building was a political headquarters, leading scholars to suggest that women in Argaric society may have held “great political power,” with the diadem making her a “very, very impressive” sight.

Rome, Greece, and the “Honorary Male”. Classical Greece and Rome are often cited as archetypes of a misogynistic patriarchy. Yet even in these societies, powerful women, such as the empresses Livia and Agrippina, wielded immense influence behind the throne. Moreover, archaeological studies of late Iron Age Europe show high‑status female burials, the interpretation of which has been “plagued by gender bias” simply because they “imply that women in these societies may have achieved positions of social and economic power”. The existence of these powerful women was often framed by male commentators as exceptional, categorising them as “honorary males” who had transcended their natural limitations – a pattern that continued for centuries.

Empresses and Queens: The Discredited Feminine. The pattern of exceptional women being discredited is a recurring theme. The Tang Dynasty’s sole ruling empress, Wu Zetian (624–705 AD), is a prime example. A capable and ruthless ruler who expanded the Chinese empire, she was systematically vilified by the Confucian historian elite who came after her, accused of seduction, murder, and usurpation – charges that conveniently fit the patriarchal narrative of female ambition as monstrous. Similarly, Queen Elizabeth I of England (1533–1603) was subjected to a lifetime of pressure to marry and submit to a king’s authority. Her successful reign was constantly framed as an anomaly, a “masculine” virtue in a female body, proving the rule that true power was male.

The Role of the Abrahamic Faiths. The Abrahamic religions were born in patriarchal settings in which women were often treated as male chattels. Yet some biblical scholars argue that the Hebrew Bible, for its time, represented an “enormous stride” forward for women’s dignity, introducing the radical idea that every person, “male and female,” is created in the “Divine Image” (Genesis 5:1–2). This principle is the theological foundation of human equality. However, the patriarchal context in which these scriptures were interpreted and enforced often subverted this radical potential, using other passages to justify the subordination of women for millennia.

V. The Smell of Fear: Why Are Powerful Women so Threatening?

The question of why powerful women are so threatening is the heart of the matter. The fear is not biological; it is structural. Patriarchy is a system of power that distributes resources, authority, and prestige to men as a group. A powerful woman is not just an individual; she is a symbol that challenges the legitimacy of the entire system. She is proof that men’s power is not “natural” but contingent. This is the existential threat that patriarchy cannot tolerate.

This fear is encoded in the very stories we tell. The witch hunts of early modern Europe were not simply superstition. They were a targeted campaign against women who were economically independent, medically knowledgeable, or simply too outspoken. These women, often the healers and midwives of their communities, were burned and drowned not because they were evil, but because their existence was a living critique of patriarchal authority. The fear of the “witch” was the fear of female power, pathologised and destroyed.

This fear persists today, manifesting in the relentless scrutiny of female leaders, the policing of women’s bodies and voices, and the backlash against feminist progress. Patriarchy is not a static system; it must be constantly remade and reasserted. And it is remade through fear.

VI. Who Benefits? The System Behind the Myth

So, who truly benefits from this millennia‑old system of domination? The answer is not all men, but a specific class: the elite men who control the levers of political and economic power.

Patriarchy, like other forms of hierarchy, is a pyramid scheme. At the top sit a tiny minority of immensely wealthy and powerful men – the generals, politicians, CEOs, media moguls, and religious leaders. Their power is amplified by the system of male supremacy, which divides the wider population along gender lines. They offer ordinary men a “patriarchal dividend” – a sense of social superiority over women, a few crumbs of privilege – in exchange for their compliance.

Political hierarchy does not require patriarchy; the matrilineal, egalitarian societies of the Neolithic are proof of this. But the two have proven to be a powerful and enduring alliance. A hierarchical state is more stable when it has a ready‑made social hierarchy to fall back on. Patriarchy provides that. It is the foundational social hierarchy that makes other forms of subordination seem natural.

Communities based on more equal, familial structures that recognise the central role of women in social and economic life are often inherently more effective at caring for the vulnerable. The cooperative‑breeding model is the blueprint for this. Denying women’s contributions is not an academic oversight; it is a weapon to keep them in their place.

VII. Reweaving the Braided River: How to Dissolve the Patriarchy

Patriarchy was made. It can be unmade. This will require more than simply “including” more women in existing systems of power. It will require a fundamental transformation of those systems.

1. Start with the Young. We must utterly reject the gendered socialisation that sorts children into pink and blue boxes from birth. Girls must see themselves as hunters, builders, rulers; boys must learn that caregiving is not feminine but human. The work begins in the nursery.

2. Centre Care. As the work of Hrdy and others shows, our capacities for empathy and cooperation are our species’ greatest strengths. We must restructure our economy, our politics, and our families to centre the work of caregiving, not to marginalise it. This means universal healthcare, free childcare, paid parental leave for all parents, and policies that value human connection over profit.

3. A Feminist Foreign Policy. Nations must adopt foreign policies that prioritise human security over military might. This means defunding the war machine – the ultimate expression of patriarchal violence – and investing in healthcare, education, and sustainable development.

4. Re‑imagine Masculinity. The toxic model of masculinity – aggressive, unemotional, dominant – must be retired. We need to cultivate a model of manhood based on care, creativity, restraint, and intimacy.

5. Forgive and Re‑educate. Patriarchy is an intergenerational trauma. It has wounded men as well as women, alienating them from their own emotional lives. We must create spaces for men to mourn these wounds, to learn a new way of being, and to become partners in the work of liberation.

VIII. The Weavers and the Sword

For millennia, the story of humanity has been written by the victors – the generals, the kings, the powerful men who held the sword. But the sword does not build the house, tend the field, or raise the child. The sword does not weave the cloth.

The past is not a ladder of male progress. It is a braided river of human adaptation, and at its headwaters, we find not the conqueror, but the weaver. The evidence is clear: patriarchy was not our origin story. It is a relatively recent, and deeply damaging, aberration. The spindle is older than the sword. And if we have the courage to listen to its story, it may yet teach us how to build a future where the sword is no longer needed.

Andrew Klein & Sera Elizabeth Klein

Long‑term independent scholars and researchers

The spindle is older than the sword. Listen to it.

The Hasbara Model – How Professionally Hurt Feelings Became a Political Strategy

Posted on May 24, 2026 by Andrew Klein

“The shield works because we let it. The only cure is to stop being afraid of the performance.”

By Andrew Klein

Dedication: To my wife — who knows the difference between theatrics and the truth when it comes to feelings.

I. The Performance of Injury

You mention the genocide. The thousands of dead children in Gaza. The systematic destruction of a population’s ability to survive.

The response from certain quarters is not a denial. It is not an engagement with the evidence. It is not a moment of silence for the dead.

It is: “You hurt my feelings.”

This is not feeling. This is strategy.

The same strategy used by the stick insects in suits when you question their contracts. The same strategy used by the petrochemical companies when you mention hemp. The same strategy used by the political class when you remind them they are not accountable.

“You hurt my feelings” is a shield.

Not against swords — against truth.

II. The Shield That Pays: $176 Million and Counting

On 22 April 2026, the Department of Home Affairs awarded the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ) a grant of $112.2 million for the purpose of “enhancing security for Jewish communities”.

This was not an isolated transaction. Combined with an earlier grant awarded in November 2023 under the Enhancing Security for Jewish Communities Program — initially valued at $27.5 million, since increased to $63.8 million — and a separate $103,459 security infrastructure grant awarded in 2021, total Commonwealth funding awarded to ECAJ-linked entities since 2021 exceeds $176 million.

The 2026–27 Federal Budget added further funding: $102 million over four years from 2025–26 to ECAJ for “enhanced security for the Jewish community,” plus an additional $22 million over three years from the Confiscated Assets Account established under the Proceeds of Crime Act.

In response to the December 14, 2025, Bondi terror attack — in which 15 people were killed during a Chanukah celebration — the government allocated more than $600 million in federal budget funding.

The grants to ECAJ were awarded not to an ACNC-registered charity or ASIC-registered company, but to an incorporated association registered in the ACT.

According to ACT regulatory requirements, incorporated associations are not required to publicly lodge audited financial statements with the territory government.

The money trail leads to an obscure entity and, for all practical purposes, runs dry.

“I asked the Department of Home Affairs why the grants were awarded to this structure rather than an entity subject to public financial disclosure. Their response invoked the Commonwealth Grants Rules and Principles but did not answer the question.”

III. The Special Envoy: From Lobbyist to Government Insider

Former ECAJ president Jillian Segal AO was appointed Australia’s Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism in July 2024.

Cabinet documents released under FOI reveal the appointment was made without an open recruitment process. The Prime Minister’s department recommended Segal based on her “longstanding reputation as an advocate for the NSW Jewish community” and her role as “former President of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry and as Chair of the Australia-Israel Chamber of Commerce”.

The Special Envoy role was initially budgeted at $4 million over two years. This was quietly expanded to $16.9 million over three years, with the appointment extended from one year to three years and additional support staff approved.

The Terms of Reference state that the Special Envoy will “provide advice to inform policy development, legislative amendments, campaigns and programs to assist in combatting Antisemitism”.

An ECAJ insider — appointed by a government that had just awarded ECAJ tens of millions in grants — is now advising that same government on policy, legislation, and funding priorities.

This is not a conspiracy. This is structural capture.

IV. The Double Standard: Charities, International Law, and Tax Deductions

While ECAJ receives hundreds of millions in government grants, the Albanese government has refused to act against Australian charities funnelling tax-deductible donations to projects supporting Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank — which are illegal under international law — and to initiatives supporting IDF soldiers.

Finance Minister Katy Gallagher told the Senate that charities do not need to comply with international law. The government rejected a Greens amendment that would explicitly bar organisations from receiving deductible gift recipient status if they are found to have supported an “illegal occupation”.

The scale of the funding is significant. Michael West Media investigations have identified:

· Jewish National Fund Australia has remitted more than $125 million to Israel since 2009

· United Israel Appeal Refugee Relief Fund has transferred approximately $376 million since 2013 via Keren Hayesod, with a portion of these funds used for settlement expansion and IDF-linked programs

At the UIA Victoria AGM in November 2025, President David Slade told members: “We are the only organisation in Australia raising funds for Israel that holds a seat at every table of decision-making authority mandated to rebuild the country from the north to the south”.

“We are proud that every dollar we distribute is aligned with Israel’s national priorities.”

The Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission received 896 complaints relating to 88 charities in connection with the Israel-Gaza conflict between October 2023 and December 2025.

Greens Senator Mehreen Faruqi was direct: “The fact that people are sending money to support the war crimes of the Israeli military and to expand illegal, violent settlements in the West Bank is bad enough, but that Australian taxpayers are subsidising these settlements is completely outrageous”.

The government’s position, as articulated by Minister Gallagher, is that existing frameworks prohibit unlawful conduct under Australian law — but they do not extend to conduct under international law.

This is not a legal technicality. It is a choice.

The same government that has appointed a Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism — and funded her office to the tune of $16.9 million — refuses to act against charities funding the very military accused of genocide by the UN Commission of Inquiry.

V. The Bondi Attack: A Tragedy Weaponised

“The December 14, 2025, Bondi terror attack was a genuine tragedy. Fifteen people killed. A community traumatised. Two gunmen, father and son, targeted a Hanukkah celebration.

“The response has been a $600 million funding commitment — including $102 million to ECAJ, $68.8 million to the AFP, $42.9 million for mental health support, $80 million for counterterrorism, $32.6 million for public awareness campaigns, and more than $130 million for a Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion.

“But the attack was not perpetrated by an organised, ideologically coherent antisemitic network. The perpetrators, Sajid and Naveed Akram, had a history of extremist rhetoric. However, the systemic failures that enabled the attack — including gaps in counterterrorism monitoring, firearms access, and intelligence sharing — remain largely unaddressed.

“The government’s response has focused overwhelmingly on antisemitism as a cultural and political problem, rather than addressing the specific operational failures that allowed two men to acquire weapons and carry out an attack on a crowded beach.

“The underlying failures in mental health care, firearms licensing, intelligence coordination, and counterterrorism resourcing remain largely unaddressed. The question is not whether antisemitism played a role — it did. The question is whether the government’s response addresses the actual causes of the attack, or merely funds the organisations best positioned to claim injury.”

VI. The Other Victims: 78 Women and Counting

While the government has found $600 million for the antisemitism response, it has been notably less forthcoming on other forms of violence.

Between October 2023 and December 2025, the ACNC received 896 complaints about charities linked to the Israel-Gaza conflict. The government’s response: refer them to the ACNC.

On domestic violence, the numbers are stark.

In the 2025 calendar year, 78 women were killed by violence in Australia — approximately one and a half women every week.

Since the beginning of 2026, another 12 women have already been murdered.

The Domestic, Family and Sexual Violence Commission’s 2025 annual report estimates that 2.8 million Australians have experienced sexual violence since the age of 15. One in every four women in this country. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women are 33 times more likely than other Australian women to be hospitalised due to family violence and seven times more likely to be homicide victims.

The government has invested $4 billion since 2022 in the National Plan to End Violence against Women and Children — the largest investment by any government in Australia’s history.

But compare the response.

When 15 people were killed in a single terrorist attack, the government found $600 million within months — including $130 million for a Royal Commission.

When 78 women were killed over the course of a year — and when the government knows that domestic violence kills on average one woman every nine days — the Prime Minister has rejected calls for a Royal Commission, arguing that they “take too long” and “don’t deliver the urgent change needed.”

The inconsistency is instructive.

Some lives are worth a Royal Commission. Others are worth a press release.

The government will not explain the difference.

VII. The Economics of Outrage

Why does the Hasbara model work?

Because it is disciplined. And discipline, in a world that confuses volume with validity, is a superpower.

Every criticism of Israeli government policy is framed as antisemitism. Every piece of evidence is met with a performance of injury. Every question about the hundreds of millions flowing to an incorporated association with no public financial reporting is met with silence — or with the invocation of “security.”

The shield works because it has been tested. The political class in Washington, Canberra, London, and Berlin has learned that questioning Israel is political suicide — not because the arguments are weak, but because the feelings will be deployed.

Professionally. Strategically. Relentlessly.

And it pays off.

Billions in military aid. Diplomatic cover at the United Nations. A media environment that repeats the talking points without question. Hundreds of millions in government grants to organisations that do not have to account for how the money is spent.

Not because the feelings are real — they are not. Because the performance is disciplined.

The same strategy is used by the stick insects in suits when you question their contracts. The same strategy is used by the petrochemical companies when you mention hemp. The same strategy is used by the political class when you remind them, they are accountable.

“You hurt my feelings” is the universal shield.

And it works because the media is afraid. Because the political class is afraid. Because questioning the shield invites the shield to be turned on you.

The shield is not magic. It is expensive.

And Australian taxpayers are paying for it.

VIII. What Would a Consistent Response Look Like?

Imagine, for a moment, a government that applied the same standards to all forms of hate, all forms of violence, all forms of foreign interference.

· A Royal Commission into domestic violence — because 78 women killed in a year is also a national emergency.

· A Special Envoy for Islamophobia appointed at the same time, with the same budget, the same access — not as an afterthought.

· A requirement that all organisations receiving Commonwealth grants be subject to public financial reporting — regardless of whether they are incorporated associations or registered charities.

· A prohibition on tax-deductible donations to organisations that support illegal occupations — whether in the West Bank or elsewhere.

· A consistent definition of hate speech that protects all communities equally — not one that privileges the feelings of one group over the lives of another.

This is not radical. It is consistent.

But consistency is not the goal.

The goal is control.

Control of the narrative. Control of the funding. Control of the definition of who is a victim and who is a perpetrator.

And the shield — “you hurt my feelings” — is the mechanism of that control.

IX. The Question the Government Will Not Answer

The evidence is on the table.

· $176 million to an incorporated association that does not publicly account for its spending.

· A Special Envoy appointed from the leadership of that association, with a $16.9 million budget.

· $600 million in response to a terrorist attack perpetrated by a mentally ill man — with the underlying systemic failures unaddressed.

· Refusal to act against charities funding illegal settlements and IDF soldiers, while Palestinian refugees are denied visas.

· A Royal Commission for antisemitism, but not for the 78 women killed last year.

The question is not whether the government is capable of acting. It is acting.

The question is who it acts for.

And the answer, from the evidence, is clear.

The government acts for those who have learned to weaponise their feelings.

Those who have not — the dead women, the starving children, the refugees without visas — are invisible.

Not because their suffering is less real.

Because they have no shield.

X. Conclusion

The Hasbara model is not about feelings.

It is about power.

The power to frame the narrative. The power to direct funding. The power to define who is a victim and who is a perpetrator. The power to shield allies from accountability while demanding accountability from enemies.

“You hurt my feelings” is not a cry of pain. It is a strategy.

And it has paid off.

Billions in military aid. Diplomatic cover. Hundreds of millions in government grants. A Special Envoy with access to the highest levels of government. A Royal Commission with a $130 million budget.

Not because the feelings are real — they are not.

Because the performance is disciplined.

And discipline, in a world that confuses volume with validity, is a superpower.

But the shield is not invincible.

It can be seen.

And once seen, it can be named.

The question is not whether the government will answer. It will not.

The question is whether the Australian people will continue to pay for the shield — or demand to know what lies behind it.

Andrew Klein

References

1. Financial Framework (Supplementary Powers) Amendment (Home Affairs Measures No. 3) Regulations 2026, Federal Register of Legislation

2. Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, FOI Release: Special Envoys to Combat Antisemitism and Islamophobia, 2024

3. Stephanie Tran, “Australian charities funding Israel’s illegal settlements ‘untouchable’, says Labor govt,” Asia Pacific Report / Michael West Media, 20 March 2026

4. “Gun ‘red flag’ before Bondi massacre,” The West Australian, 5 February 2026

5. House of Representatives debates, Statements on Significant Matters — Domestic, Family and Sexual Violence, 4 March 2026

6. Stephanie Tran, “Money trail leads to obscure Israel lobby entity, then runs dry,” Michael West Media, 23 May 2026

7. “Peak Jewish body says $600 million federal budget response to antisemitic Bondi terror attack ‘modest’,” ABC News, 13 May 2026

8. “Budget delivers extra $22 million for Jewish security,” The Australian Jewish News, 13 May 2026

9. Joint media release with Anthony Albanese MP, Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism, Ministers for the Department of Home Affairs, 9 July 2024

10. Stephanie Tran, “United Israel Appeal — Australian charity channels tax free donations direct to IDF soldiers,” Asia Pacific Report / Michael West Media, 29 January 2026

The shield works because we let it. The only cure is to stop being afraid of the performance.

The Flag, the Contract, and the Bottom Line- How War Became a Business Model

Posted on May 24, 2026 by Andrew Klein

“The flag is not the enemy. The contract is not the enemy. The enemy is forgetting that both are human creations — and that we can create something better.” AK

By Andrew Klein

Dedication: To my wife — who understands the difference between war and peace and made sure that I did.

I. Introduction: The Question We Are Not Supposed to Ask

For centuries, we have been told a simple story: men fight for their country. They die for the flag. They sacrifice for the nation.

This story is not entirely false. But it is incomplete.

Before the flag, there was the contract. Before the nation, there was the pay check. Before the citizen-soldier, there was the mercenary — fighting not for glory, but for plunder, ransom, and daily wages.

The shift from contract to flag was not an evolution in morality. It was an evolution in economics. And once you see it, you cannot unsee it.

The modern world runs on a different fuel: manufactured identity. The flag. The nation. The idea that you owe your life to a piece of cloth. This idea did not emerge organically. It was built — by revolutions, by conscription, by propaganda, and by the industrialists who discovered that war, properly managed, is extraordinarily profitable.

This article traces that transformation. From the indentured armies of the Hundred Years’ War to the mass conscription of Revolutionary France. From Napoleon’s multinational Grande Armée to the American Civil War’s military-industrial complex. From the battlefields of Europe to the shipyards of Adelaide, where a new generation of contractors is learning that peace is not as rewarding as war.

The patterns are clear. The evidence is overwhelming. And the cost — paid always by those with the least skin in the game — is a tragedy we have normalized for far too long.

II. The Pre-Modern Pattern: War as Enterprise

The Hundred Years’ War (1337–1453) was not fought by men waving flags. It was fought by men signing contracts.

These documents, called indentures of war, were agreements between the king and a captain specifying exactly how many men would be supplied, what they would be paid, and how prisoners and plunder would be divided. A typical indenture from the 1340s shows Sir Roger Fienes agreeing to supply 10 men-at-arms and 30 archers, with specified daily wages — 2 shillings for Sir Roger, 12 pence for the men-at-arms, and 6 pence for the archers — plus additional payment for ransoms and prizes.

The feudal system of obligatory service had broken down. Knights’ fees had been subdivided among heiresses, creating fractions of knights that could not realistically fight. Instead, scutage — “shield money” — was paid in lieu of service, and the crown used the funds to hire mercenaries.

At Agincourt (1415), prisoners taken during the battle were deemed an enormous threat — so they were killed. Ransoms, which could be enormously profitable, were set aside in the face of military necessity. The historian Froissart records the Duke of Gloucester complaining to Richard II in 1390 that peace was disastrous because it deprived “the poor knights and squires and archers of England whose comforts and station in society depend upon war.”

These men did not fight for England. They fought for themselves.

This system was not a moral failure. It was an economic reality. War was a business. Soldiers were contractors. And the crown was a client. The shift that followed — from contract to conscription, from paycheck to patriotism — was not a rejection of this model. It was a refinement.

III. The Revolutionary Break: The Nation in Arms

The French Revolution changed everything — not because it invented conscription, but because it invented the citizen-soldier.

In August 1793, the National Convention decreed the levée en masse — a “requisition” of all able-bodied, unmarried men between the ages of 18 and 25. This was the first truly universal draft in modern history. The revolution “opened the way for an era of mass armies and full national mobilization and set in motion the transformation of France from a royal kingdom to a modern nation-state”.

War was no longer the business of kings. It became the business of nations.

The entire resources of France — manpower, industry, agriculture — were placed at the disposal of the state. Casualties that would have been unthinkable in the 18th century became acceptable. War became more mobile, more destructive, and more total .

Within a year, almost three-quarters of a million men were under arms. The citizen-soldiers merging with line-army troops in new units called demi brigades . This huge popular mobilization reinforced the revolution’s militant spirit. The citizen-soldiers risking their lives at the front had to be supported by all means back home, including forced loans on the rich and punitive vigilance against those suspected of disloyalty.

The armies of France’s opponents had little choice but to copy the system or face defeat. With the exception of Britain, all the great powers adopted conscription and mass mobilization.

The flag had found its army.

IV. Napoleon’s Grande Armée: The Multinational Leviathan

The army that marched into Russia in 1812 was not French. It was European.

Of the approximately 685,000 men who crossed the Niemen River:

· 410,000 from the French Empire (present-day France, Italy, the Low Countries, and several German states)

· 95,000 Poles

· 35,000 Austrians

· 30,000 Italians

· 24,000 Bavarians

· 20,000 Saxons

· 20,000 Prussians

· 17,000 Westphalians

· 15,000 Swiss

· 10,000 Danes and Norwegians

· 4,000 Spaniards

· 4,000 Portuguese

· 3,500 Croats

· 2,000 Irish

The Grande Armée even included a unit of Mamelukes — Caucasian warriors recruited during Napoleon’s Egyptian campaign who retained their traditional costumes and curved sabres.

This was not a French army fighting for France. It was a coalition — held together not by nationalism, but by Napoleon’s ambition, his promise of plunder, and the gravitational pull of French military success.

And it was destroyed — not by Russian bullets, but by Russian emptiness.

V. What Destroyed the Grande Armée: Logistics, Not Winter

The common narrative blames the Russian winter. The evidence shows otherwise.

Napoleon intended the campaign to last a mere three weeks. His army was to live off the land, taking what it needed from Russia instead of relying on lumbering supply wagons.

The Russian command realized what Napoleon did not: the Russian land would not be able to sustain a force of 200,000, let alone half a million soldiers. Prince Petr Ivanovich Bagration noted: “The country on either side of the road is not sufficient to sustain 200,000 troops”.

The Russians feinted and withdrew, pulling the Grande Armée deeper into Russia. By the time the army reached Moscow, over half of its strength had already been lost to desertion, disease, heat, exhaustion, and the long lines of communication. The winter merely finished what the logistics had begun.

Of the 685,000 men who crossed into Russia, only 93,000 survived — approximately 13.6%.

The French did not lose a single major battle until the retreat. They lost the supply war — from the very beginning.

Napoleon famously said that “an army marches on its stomach”. He was right. And he ignored his own advice.

The lesson is not merely military. It is economic. An army that feeds on plunder starves when the land is empty. A system that depends on extraction collapses when the extracted resource runs out. And a nation that wages war for profit fragments when the profit stops flowing.

VI. The American Civil War: The Birth of the Military-Industrial Complex

The pattern we have been tracing reaches its mature form in the American Civil War (1861–1865). Here, for the first time, we see the full integration of industrial production, government contracting, and mass mobilization.

Mark R. Wilson’s study, The Business of Civil War: Military Mobilization and the State, 1861-1865, documents how the Union war effort was sustained by a “mixed military economy” — a complex contracting system that career army procurement officers pieced together to meet the demands of war.

The task of equipping and sustaining Union forces fell to professional military men who were “largely free from political partisanship or any formal free-market ideology”. They created relationships with contractors, public officials, and war workers that determined the flow of hundreds of millions of dollars.

Wilson argues that the North owed its victory to these professional military men and their finely tuned relationships with contractors. But this victory came at a cost. The struggle over procurement raised fundamental questions about the balance between efficiency and equity, the promotion of competition, and the protection of workers’ welfare.

The Civil War also illustrates a critical shift in the duration of warfare. The Hundred Years’ War was fought in campaigns, with armies disbanded between seasons. The Napoleonic Wars introduced the concept of sustained, year-round campaigning. The Civil War perfected the model of total war — the complete mobilization of society’s resources for an indefinite duration.

This is not merely a military development. It is an economic one. War became a sector — with its own supply chains, its own labour markets, its own financiers. And once a sector exists, it develops a vested interest in its own continuation.

Peace, for the military-industrial sector, is a recession.

VII. The Contemporary Pattern: AUKUS and the Business of War

The patterns we have traced — contract armies, mass conscription, multinational coalitions, logistics as the decisive factor — find their contemporary expression in Australia’s AUKUS agreement.

The AUKUS alliance, often discussed in terms of submarines and strategic power plays, is “beneath the geopolitics… a massive industrial story”. The Australian government has committed $12 billion to expand new AUKUS facilities in Western Australia, on top of a broader $48 billion pledge. This is not merely defence spending; it has “the potential to reshape the country’s manufacturing ecosystem”.

The government’s investment is described as “a vote of confidence in the strength of Australian advanced manufacturing”. But it also represents an industrial policy that funnels billions of taxpayer dollars into a specific sector — not because the market demands it, but because strategic considerations override market logic.

For Australian businesses, AUKUS presents “both an unprecedented opportunity and a complex challenge”. Small and medium enterprises that once dreamed of selling to US and UK companies are positioning themselves inside multinational supply chains. A “licence-free environment” under the Defence Trade Controls Amendment Act empowers manufacturers to pursue import/export opportunities without the hurdles of security-driven bureaucratic “red tape”.

But the risks are substantial. “Market fragmentation within the Defence sector, high entry costs and slow returns all complicate the picture, making AUKUS both a blessing and a curse”. The long-term scale of the projects complicates planning. Workforce growth must be sustained over decades. And “long development horizons also risk political shifts, budget overruns or changing US and UK priorities”.

The most striking observation comes from industry participants themselves: “AUKUS projects move on geopolitical (sometimes geologic), not commercial, timelines” . While “the pact is accelerating industry engagement, the reality is that many businesses live quarter to quarter. Defence contracts typically stretch into multi-year procurement cycles, a rhythm difficult for entrepreneurial businesses to sustain”.

This is not a criticism of AUKUS. It is an observation about the nature of the military-industrial sector. War — or the preparation for war — operates on a different economic logic than civilian industry. It is less responsive to market signals. It is more dependent on government spending. It is more resistant to the normal pressures of competition.

And once established, it is extraordinarily difficult to dismantle.

VIII. The Unspoken Truth: Peace Is Not Profitable

The pattern that emerges from this history is uncomfortable but undeniable.

In the 14th century, men fought for pay and plunder. Peace was disastrous for the “poor knights and squires and archers whose comforts and station in society depend upon war”.

In the 19th century, the American Civil War created a “mixed military economy” that tied government, contractors, and labor together in a web of mutual dependency. The system worked — too well. It did not disappear after Appomattox.

In the 21st century, AUKUS represents a “transformative industrial undertaking” that will “reshape the country’s manufacturing ecosystem”. The submarines are almost incidental. The industry is the point.

The modern world runs on manufactured identity. The flag. The nation. The idea that you owe your life to a piece of cloth. This idea is not false — but it is instrumental. It serves a purpose. It motivates sacrifice. It justifies expenditure. And it obscures the economic reality beneath.

The real story is not about patriotism. It is about contracts.

The same pattern appears wherever there is a choke point. Who controls the supply of weapons? Who profits from the current system? Who benefits from keeping the threat level high?

The questions answer themselves.

An army that feeds on plunder starves when the land is empty. A nation that wages war for profit fragments when the profit stops flowing. A political class that depends on military spending to sustain its industrial base will always find a threat — manufactured if necessary — to justify continued expenditure.

This is not a conspiracy. It is a system.

And systems do not need conspirators to perpetuate themselves. They need only inertia.

IX. The Cost: Who Really Pays?

The cost of war is not distributed evenly.

The soldiers who freeze at Valley Forge, who starve in Russia, who drown in the trenches of the Somme — they carry the physical cost. Their families carry the emotional cost. The communities that lose their young men carry the demographic cost.

The industrialists who supply the armies, the contractors who build the ships, the financiers who lend the money — they carry the profits.

This is not an argument about individual morality. It is an observation about structural incentives.

The soldier who fights for pay is not greedy. He is rational. The contractor who supplies both sides is not treacherous. He is diversified. The politician who approves military spending is not corrupt. He is responsive to powerful interests.

The problem is not the individuals. The problem is the system.

And the system is not inevitable. It was built. It can be rebuilt.

But first, it must be seen.

X. Conclusion: What Is to Be Done?

The patterns are clear. The evidence is overwhelming.

Men fought for pay and plunder — until nations learned to make them fight for flags. Nations fought for glory — until industrialists learned to make them fight for profit. And now, in the 21st century, we have reached the logical conclusion of this evolution: war as a sector.

A sector that requires constant threat to justify its budget. A sector that operates on geological timelines while demanding quarterly returns. A sector that shapes foreign policy, domestic politics, and the very identity of citizens.

The first step is transparency. Citizens have a right to know where their tax dollars are going, who is profiting from military spending, and what evidence — if any — supports the threat narratives used to justify that spending.

The second step is accountability. War profiteering is not a victimless crime. It is the extraction of value from the desperate to feed the war machine of the powerful.

The third step is imagination. We must imagine a world where peace is as profitable as war. Where the same industrial capacity that builds submarines builds housing. Where the same logistical expertise that supplies armies supplies humanitarian aid. Where the same patriotic energy that supports troops supports teachers, nurses, and the rebuilding of communities.

This is not naive. It is necessary.

The patterns we have traced are not laws of nature. They are human creations. And what humans have created, humans can change.

But first, we must stop telling ourselves the comfortable story. The story of the flag. The story of the nation. The story of the citizen-soldier who fights for love of country.

These stories are not false. But they are incomplete.

The full story includes the contract. The paycheck. The bottom line.

And until we tell the full story, we will never be free of it.

Andrew Klein

References

1. Cambridge University Press. (2016). Raising an Army: Recruitment and Composition. In Henry of Lancaster’s Expedition to Aquitaine, 1345-1346.

2. Britannica, T. Editors of Encyclopaedia. (2020, June 15). Levée en masse. Encyclopedia Britannica.

3. Stanford H4D Newsletter. (2024, July 16). Hacking for Defense and Lessons Learned from the French Invasion of Russia.

4. Wilson, M. R. (2006). The Business of Civil War: Military Mobilization and the State, 1861-1865. Johns Hopkins University Press.

5. Defence Connect. (2025, October 28). Why AUKUS is both a blessing and a curse for the Australian manufacturing industry.

6. Cambridge University Press. (2023). Accounting for Service at War: The Case of Sir James Audley of Heighley. In Journal of Medieval Military History.

7. Britannica, T. Editors of Encyclopaedia. (2024, May 14). France – Army, Republic, Revolution. Encyclopedia Britannica.

8. de Segur, P. (2021). History of the Expedition to Russia: Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812.

9. Library of Congress. (2006). Publisher description for The Business of Civil War.

10. Defence Connect. (2026, March 24). SPOTLIGHT: Inside Australia’s AUKUS industrial transformation.

The Return of the Banned Supercrop – Why Hemp is the Answer to Australia’s Housing and Climate Crisis

Posted on May 23, 2026 by Andrew Klein

“Before the ban, hemp had powered empires. The British Royal Navy relied on hemp ropes and sails. The Spanish, French, and Dutch fleets did the same. The first drafts of the Declaration of Independence were written on hemp paper. Henry Ford built a car from hemp plastic and ran it on hemp ethanol.”

By Andrew Klein

Dedication: To my wife — who is not a hippie but likes her garden.

I. The Plant That Was Criminalized

In 1937, the United States effectively banned industrial hemp. Australia followed suit. A plant that had been cultivated for millennia—used for rope, paper, clothing, building materials, and medicine—suddenly became illegal.

The stated reason: hemp was said to be indistinguishable from its psychoactive relative, marijuana. The real reason: hemp threatened the emerging petrochemical empire.

Before the ban, hemp had powered empires. The British Royal Navy relied on hemp ropes and sails. The Spanish, French, and Dutch fleets did the same. The first drafts of the Declaration of Independence were written on hemp paper. Henry Ford built a car from hemp plastic and ran it on hemp ethanol.

Hemp was not banned because it was dangerous. It was banned because it worked.

II. The Maritime Empire That Ran on Hemp

The connection between hemp and imperial power is not incidental. From the 16th to the 19th centuries, European naval supremacy depended on a single crop.

Hemp fibers are among the strongest natural fibers known. They resist rot in seawater—unlike cotton or flax—making them the ideal material for naval rigging, sails, and caulking. The British Crown mandated hemp cultivation in its colonies, including Australia. The First Fleet carried hemp seeds to Sydney Harbour, and convicts were put to work growing it on the shores of Farm Cove.

The Royal Navy’s dominance—and by extension, the British Empire’s—was built on hemp. Every warship required tons of the material. Without it, the empire would have been stranded in port.

The irony is bitter: Australia’s first crop was hemp. And for nearly a century, it was illegal to grow it.

III. The Demonization: How a Plant Became a Pariah

The 1937 ban in the United States was driven by a coalition of petrochemical, timber, and newspaper interests. DuPont had just patented synthetic fibres (nylon). Hearst, the newspaper magnate, owned vast timberlands for paper production—and hemp paper would have undercut his profits.

The propaganda campaign was ruthless. Hearst’s newspapers ran sensational stories about “Marijuana—The Assassin of Youth,” deliberately conflating industrial hemp with its psychoactive cousin. The word “marijuana” itself was used to sound foreign and dangerous, obscuring the fact that hemp had been cultivated in America for centuries.

The strategy worked. Industrial hemp was caught in the same net as drug cannabis, and the distinction was deliberately erased. The plant that had been a cornerstone of agriculture was transformed into a symbol of degeneracy.

IV. The Science: What Industrial Hemp Actually Is

Industrial hemp is Cannabis sativa L. with a tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) content of less than 1%. (Psychoactive cannabis typically contains 5–20% THC). You cannot get high from industrial hemp. You cannot smoke it and achieve any meaningful effect.

This distinction is now recognized in law. The 2018 US Farm Bill formally separated industrial hemp from marijuana at the federal level. In Australia, industrial hemp is legal to grow under state-based licensing schemes, with THC limits typically set at 0.35–1.0%.

The psychoactive effects of cannabis are caused by THC, which binds to CB1 receptors in the brain. Industrial hemp contains negligible THC. Its primary non-psychoactive compound, cannabidiol (CBD), does not produce a “high” and has been studied for potential therapeutic applications.

The plant has been deliberately misrepresented. The demonization was never about science. It was about profits.

V. The Material That Outperforms Concrete

The inner woody core of the hemp stalk—known as the hurd—can be mixed with a lime-based binder to create a material called hempcrete. (Despite the name, it is not structural concrete. It is a lightweight, breathable insulation infill.)

The properties are extraordinary:

Property Hempcrete Performance

Insulation Up to 15 times better than concrete

Carbon footprint Carbon-negative — sequesters CO₂ during growth; the lime carbonates over time, locking it in

Fire resistance Non-combustible — lime content withstands direct flame; certified to the highest Bushfire Attack Level (Flame Zone)

Moisture management Hygroscopic — absorbs and releases water vapor, prevents mold

Pest resistance High pH from lime naturally deters termites and insects

Toxicity Non-toxic — can be crushed and returned to earth at end of life

The lime binder undergoes a chemical process called carbonation, reacting with CO₂ in the air to form calcium carbonate (limestone) over time. The structure literally petrifies, becoming stronger and more durable as it ages.

VI. Real-World Proof: The Hester Brook Fire

In 2022, a catastrophic bushfire swept through Hester Brook in Western Australia. A hemp block factory was razed to the ground.

Everything burned.

Except the hempcrete blocks. A stack of fully cured hemp blocks survived the fire intact.

This is not theoretical. Hempcrete has demonstrated non-combustibility in the most extreme conditions Australia can produce. In a country where bushfires are becoming more frequent and intense, building with a material that cannot burn is not a luxury. It is a survival strategy.

VII. The Housing Crisis: 1.2 Million Homes

The Australian government has committed to building 1.2 million new homes over five years. The goal is the centrepiece of the national housing strategy.

But how will these homes be built? With concrete, steel, and petrochemical insulation? Those materials are emissions-intensive, costly, and increasingly subject to supply chain disruptions.

Hempcrete offers a different path. Prefabricated hempcrete blocks and panels can be manufactured offsite and assembled rapidly, reducing construction time and labor costs . The material is lightweight, insulating, and carbon-negative.

The Australian Hemp Council has identified the opportunity: “Hempcrete and other bio-based products can provide insulation, panels, and prefabricated elements suited to rapid, sustainable, modular construction”.

The barriers are not technical. They are regulatory.

VIII. The Regulatory Barriers: What Is Stopping Us?

Industrial hemp cultivation in Australia is legal but heavily restricted. Growers must obtain state-based licenses, comply with strict THC content testing, and navigate a patchwork of regulations that vary by jurisdiction.

Processing infrastructure is inadequate. Decortication facilities — machines that separate the hurd from the outer fibers — are scarce. Most raw hemp must be sent overseas for processing or imported from Europe, adding cost and carbon emissions.

Building codes are catching up. The International Code Council has approved hemp-lime construction for integration into the 2024 International Residential Code. But Australia’s National Construction Code is performance-based, not prescriptive. Hempcrete can be used — but builders must demonstrate compliance through alternative pathways, a costly and uncertain process.

As one Australian homebuilder testified to the Senate Inquiry:

“I want to build my house using hemp blocks. I am having to IMPORT hemp blocks. There is not yet an Australian manufacturer of such blocks, because the hemp industry is too small in Australia. Unfortunately, this makes the blocks more expensive and adds significant CO₂ emissions due to the shipping.”

The solution is not complex: invest in local processing infrastructure, streamline licensing, and update building codes to recognize bio-based materials.

IX. The Senate Inquiry: A Golden Opportunity

In 2025, Australia’s Senate Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport References Committee opened a national inquiry into the development of a hemp industry.

The terms of reference include the role of hemp in:

· Agriculture and regional development

· Construction and housing

· Manufacturing and value-added products

· Environmental sustainability

The Australian Hemp Council has called for:

· A legislated definition of hemp (cannabis with less than 1% THC)

· Removal of hemp from the national poisons schedule

· State-level reforms to open opportunities for the industry

The final report is expected in mid-2026. The recommendations could transform the industry — or be ignored.

X. The Straits Crisis: A Warning About Supply Chains

The ongoing crisis in the Strait of Hormuz — through which 20% of global oil passes — has exposed the fragility of Australia’s petrochemical supply chains.

Our insulation, our plastics, our synthetic fibres, our construction materials — all depend on oil. When the straits are threatened, prices spike. When prices spike, building costs rise. When building costs rise, the housing crisis deepens.

Hemp offers an alternative. It does not need to be shipped from the Middle East. It can be grown in Tasmania, Queensland, Victoria, South Australia, and New South Wales. It can be processed locally. It can be manufactured into building materials within Australian supply chains.

The question is not whether hemp can replace petrochemicals. The question is when we will decide to do it.

XI. What the Industry Needs

The barriers to a thriving hemp construction sector in Australia are well documented:

1. Declassify industrial hemp. Remove it from drug legislation to enable full commercial use across multiple sectors.

2. Simplify licensing. Eliminate unnecessary requirements to allow broader farming participation.

3. Fund regional processing infrastructure. Invest in decortication facilities to shorten supply chains and reduce costs.

4. Update building codes. Develop national product standards and certifications for hemp-based construction materials.

5. Government procurement. Mandate or prioritize bio-based materials in government-funded housing and infrastructure projects.

6. Subsidies for carbon-negative materials. Offer rebates or tax incentives to builders using certified carbon-negative products.

7. Training and education. Train architects, builders, and assessors in the use of hempcrete and other natural building systems.

These are not radical proposals. They are basic industrial policy.

XII. Environmental Benefits

The construction sector accounts for nearly 40% of global carbon emissions. Concrete alone produces 8% of global CO₂ — more than aviation.

Hempcrete is carbon negative. The hemp plant absorbs CO₂ during its 90–120-day growth cycle. The lime binder carbonates over time, locking carbon into the building’s structure. A hempcrete wall is a carbon sink.

The environmental benefits extend beyond carbon:

· Reduced water usage — hemp requires less irrigation than cotton or many food crops

· Soil regeneration — hemp’s deep root systems prevent erosion and improve soil structure

· No chemical inputs — the plant grows densely, suppressing weeds naturally

· Biodegradable end-of-life — crushed hempcrete can be returned to the earth or recycled into new material

In a country facing bushfires, droughts, and climate-driven housing pressures, building with a carbon-negative, fireproof, moisture-regulating material is not niche environmentalism. It is common sense.

XIII. A Pattern You Know Well

A technology that works — that is sustainable, local, low-tech — is suppressed for decades. Not because it is inferior. Because it threatens the existing power structure.

The petroleum companies did not just compete with hemp. They criminalized it.

The same pattern appears wherever there is a choke point. Who controls the supply of insulation? Who profits from the current system? Who benefits from keeping the regulatory barriers high?

The questions answer themselves.

XIV. The Challenge of Perception

Industrial hemp faces a public perception problem. The deliberate conflation with psychoactive cannabis — engineered by Hearst and DuPont — persists to this day.

Parents worry about children being exposed to “drugs.” Regulators worry about THC limits. Builders worry about what clients will think.

The science is clear: industrial hemp with less than 1% THC has no psychoactive effect. It is a crop — like wheat or barley. The fear is a relic of a propaganda campaign that ended 80 years ago.

The education gap must be closed. Hemp is not marijuana. It is a building material, a textile, a food source, a soil regenerator, and a carbon sink. It has no agenda. It has no politics. It is a plant.

XV. What Happens Next

The Senate inquiry will report in mid-2026. The government’s response will determine whether Australia seizes the opportunity — or continues to import what it could grow.

For homebuilders, the decision is more immediate. Hemp blocks can be imported now. Hempcrete can be installed now. The material is ready. The supply chain is the constraint.

The international context is shifting. The US has integrated hemp-lime into its residential code. The UK and Europe have active hemp construction sectors. Australia is falling behind — not because of inferior conditions, but because of regulatory inertia.

XVI. Conclusion

The plant that arrived with the First Fleet, that built empires, that was banned for 90 years, is returning.

Not as a countercultural symbol. As a construction material.

Hempcrete offers insulation 15 times better than concrete, fire resistance proven in Australian bushfires, and carbon-negative performance that meets climate targets. It can be grown in a season, processed locally, and assembled into homes that breathe, regulate humidity, and last for centuries.

The barriers are not technical. They are political.

The Housing Crisis. The Climate Crisis. The Supply Chain Crisis.

One plant cannot solve all of them.

But it can help.

And the only thing standing in the way is will.

Andrew Klein

References

1. Green Review. (2025, October 30). Hempcrete’s role in fire-resistant building design in 2026. https://greenreview.com.au/trending/hempcretes-role-in-fire-resistant-building-design-in-2026/

2. Mondaq. (2018, December 13). Growing weeds – Australia’s hemp industry prospers. https://webiis08.mondaq.com/australia/land-law-agriculture/764020/

3. HempToday. (2025, August 21). Australian inquiry spotlights hemp’s promise for housing, farming and climate goals. https://hemptoday.net/australian-inquiry-spotlights-hemps-promise-for-housing-farming-and-climate-goals/

4. Otetto. (2025, August). Submission to the Senate Inquiry: Opportunities for the Development of a Hemp Industry in Australia. https://www.aph.gov.au/DocumentStore.ashx?id=d3d09edc-54c2-4c65-a2dd-bae5d3bdfbee&subId=777453

5. Baykova, D. (2025). For and against cannabinoids – biologically active substances in hemp. GPNews, Issue 11/2025. https://gpnews.bg/en/endocrinology/for-and-against-cannabinoids-biologically-active-substances-in-hemp

6. Natural Building Australia. (2025, June 13). Why Isn’t Australia Building More With Hemp and Straw? https://naturalbuildingaustralia.org/2025/06/13/why-isnt-australia-building-more-with-hemp-and-straw/

7. Australian Parliament. (2025). Hemp Block Residential Construction in Australia: Submission to the Senate Inquiry. https://www.aph.gov.au/DocumentStore.ashx?id=02331cdc-abf1-4367-a151-3626bf6f6149&subId=777527

Less Than Nothing – What the American Security Guarantee Really Costs Australia

Posted on May 22, 2026 by Andrew Klein

“Before 2011, it had been the decades‑long policy of successive governments that no foreign combat forces would be based, hosted, rotated or otherwise directly supported in Australia — and that Australia would defend itself with its own combat forces. This radical change has never been tested with the electorate.”

By Andrew Klein

Dedication: To my wife — who taught me that silence is not neutrality. It is a choice. And that the price of subordination is always paid by the subordinate.

I. The Architecture of “Presence”

Australia maintains a formal policy of no permanent foreign bases on its soil. On paper, this preserves sovereignty. In practice, the distinction between “permanent base” and “rotational force with permanent infrastructure” has become a fiction.

The Marine Rotational Force – Darwin (MRF-D) has been deploying approximately 2,500 US Marines to the Northern Territory every six months since 2012. This is not a temporary arrangement. It is a rhythm. And rhythms, once established, are harder to break than treaties.

Under AUKUS, the Submarine Rotational Force – West (SRF-West) will begin operating out of HMAS Stirling in Western Australia in 2027, hosting up to four US Virginia-class nuclear submarines plus one UK Astute-class boat. US Navy personnel will number in the hundreds, likely growing to over a thousand.

The government calls this “rotational.” But the infrastructure being built — the fuel storage, the maintenance facilities, the housing for US families in Perth and Alice Springs — suggests something more enduring.

Former Prime Minister Paul Keating has argued that Defence Minister Richard Marles ceded power to the US in a “dark moment” by confirming that Australia’s geography would be crucial to the US in any war with China. Keating contends that Australia compromised its sovereignty when the Gillard government agreed in 2011 to the rotational deployment of US marines in Darwin, with the Abbott government then codifying this “betrayal” in the 2014 Force Posture Agreement.

Before 2011, it had been the decades‑long policy of successive governments that no foreign combat forces would be based, hosted, rotated or otherwise directly supported in Australia — and that Australia would defend itself with its own combat forces. This radical change has never been tested with the electorate.

As Michael Pezzullo, former secretary of home affairs and deputy secretary of defence, has observed, the US Force Posture Initiative has been run within the Department of Defence, until recently, as an “estate and property activity.” If one were cynical, one might think this had been done to conceal a profound revolution in policy within an innocuous infrastructure and facilities management program.

II. Pine Gap: The Heart That Cannot Be Removed

Pine Gap is not a base. It is a city. Approximately 800 personnel operate there, of whom 80–90 per cent are American. Its mission: satellite tracking, early warning, missile defence data, and intelligence collection supporting US and allied operations worldwide.

It is, by any honest measure, a US military installation on Australian soil.

In the current conflict with Iran, Pine Gap has been “working overtime” providing targeting intelligence for US and Israeli airstrikes. Dr Richard Tanter of the Nautilus Institute stated plainly: “We are complicit — most importantly through the intelligence facilities.”

When the US and Israel launched airstrikes on Tehran in early 2026, Australian intelligence — gathered at Pine Gap, processed through Five Eyes, fed into US targeting systems — was in the room.

The government insists Australia is not taking “offensive action.” But providing the coordinates for a bomb is not a defensive act. It is complicity.

III. The Whitlam Precedent: What Happens When You Say No

The most instructive moment in Australian-US intelligence relations occurred in 1974-75.

Prime Minister Gough Whitlam, having learned that Pine Gap was run by the CIA — not the Pentagon, as Defence head Arthur Tange had deceived him into believing — threatened not to renew Pine Gap’s lease and announced he would reveal CIA agents’ identities in Parliament.

The response was swift. CIA East Asia chief Ted Shackley, with Henry Kissinger’s approval, sent a telex to ASIO threatening to cut off the intelligence relationship unless ASIO provided a “satisfactory explanation” for Whitlam’s behaviour. That telex was circulated in Canberra — and to Governor-General John Kerr .

We know what followed.

Fifty years later, Dr Elizabeth Cham, Whitlam’s former executive assistant, has spoken for the first time about being recalled from holidays to type and deliver a mystery letter to an American official on the day before the dismissal.

“He [Whitlam] did dictate it to me. I walked down Collins Street, and I handed it to a CIA agent up on the steps of the Hotel Australia,” Dr Cham said on the Australia Institute’s After America podcast.

“It was about whether he would resign the lease on Pine Gap.”

The letter has never been found in the Australian archives.

The lesson was not lost on subsequent governments: question the alliance, and the alliance will question your right to govern.

IV. Five Eyes: The Frame Through Which Australia Sees the World

The Five Eyes intelligence alliance — Australia, the US, the UK, Canada and New Zealand — was established in 1946. But it is not an alliance of equals.

Professor Desmond Ball estimated a decade ago that the CIA provided 90 per cent of Five Eyes input. Since then, the gap has almost certainly widened, with US technological capabilities growing exponentially.

What this means is simple: Australia’s picture of the world is substantially constructed by US intelligence agencies. When the US identifies China as an existential threat, Australian analysts absorb that framing. When the US demands that allies carry more of the burden, Australian governments comply — not because they are convinced, but because the infrastructure of perception leaves little room for dissent.

John Menadue, former Secretary of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet under Whitlam and Fraser, put it directly: “Our intelligence services need to break free from excessive US influence” . He noted that a Parliamentary Committee exists to oversee US‑owned intelligence agencies, but MPs “quickly become part of the intelligence club” — a phenomenon known as regulatory capture.

Professor Wanning Sun has documented how Australian media have helped create the perception of threat itself — through repeated warnings, dramatic imagery, and predictive commentary that “make war imaginable, inevitable and urgent”:

· 2017: ABC’s Four Corners warned that China’s Communist Party was infiltrating Australia.

· 2021: Sixty Minutes asked, “War with China: are we closer than we think?”

· 2022: Four Corners suggested “it’s increasingly become a question of when, not if China will launch an assault on Australia.”

· 2023: The Sydney Morning Herald’s “Red Alert” warned of war within three years. Paul Keating called it “the most egregious and provocative news presentation of any newspaper I have witnessed in over 50 years in public life”.

This is not journalism. It is propaganda — funded by the same US intelligence apparatus that provides 90 per cent of Five Eyes input.

V. The Pattern: From the American Civil War to the Military‑Industrial Complex

The subordination of Australian sovereignty to US commercial and military interests is not an isolated phenomenon. It is the local expression of a global pattern that has been visible since the American Civil War — the systematic capture of government policy by commercial interests, dressed in the language of national security.

The military‑industrial complex, which President Eisenhower warned against in 1961, does not operate only within the United States. It operates through allied nations, using them as markets, as basing locations, and as sources of legitimacy for wars fought in the service of US hegemonic ambitions.

Under AUKUS, Australia is committing hundreds of billions of dollars to acquire nuclear‑powered submarines — a capability whose strategic rationale for Australia has never been adequately explained, whose costs continue to escalate, and whose primary beneficiary is the US defence industry.

The Greens have announced a plan to axe AUKUS, noting that South Australian universities have received over $1.5 million from the United States Department of Defence, and public schools are partnering with defence organisations such as BAE Systems to run programs that lead to defence careers. The Greens have called for legislation requiring universities and public schools to disclose and divest from any partnerships with weapons manufacturers.

Senator Barbara Pocock has stated: “While Labor wastes billions on AUKUS, thousands of South Australians are deep in a housing crisis — the worst in living memory” .

The pattern is consistent: US defence contractor’s profit. Australian taxpayers pay. Australian sovereignty erodes. And the political class, captured by the alliance, asks no serious questions.

VI. The Southeast Asian Precedent: “Buying Time” and Its Consequences

The current US posture in Australia mirrors a pattern established during the Vietnam War. A 2024 dissertation examining the “buying time” concept in Southeast Asia (1967–1975) found that Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia urged the US and ANZUK to maintain their military presence in the region to “buy time” to develop their economies — thereby “upholding and legitimising a regional power structure dominated by the US”.

This is the historical template: regional powers invite US military presence, promising it is temporary, and find themselves unable to remove it when the strategic calculus changes.

Australia is now living that template. The US forces that arrived in Darwin in 2012 were presented as a temporary rotational presence. They have not left. The infrastructure to support them has only grown. And with AUKUS, the US submarine force is now becoming permanent.

VII. What Is an American Security Guarantee Really Worth?

Mark Beeson of the University of Technology Sydney argues that the post‑WWII era of “benign US hegemony” is over. The Trump administration’s “America First” agenda imposes tariffs even on allies and demands unquestioning support for controversial policies. “Policymakers in Australia feel duty‑bound to argue that the alliance is unaffected… but the arguments are increasingly unpersuasive” .

The US National Defence Strategy (NDS), released in January 2026, makes no mention of Australia by name — but its implications are clear. The NDS calls for “model allies” who are “spending as they need to” and notes that the US will “advocate that our allies and partners meet this standard around the world, not just in Europe”.

Malcolm Davis of ASPI warns that while Australia’s defence spending is currently about 2.05 per cent of GDP, rising to 2.33 per cent by 2033, the US expects 5 per cent — the standard being pushed on NATO.

An American security guarantee, under these terms, is not a gift. It is a subscription. And the price keeps rising.

VIII. The Locations: Not Defending Anything

US troops in Australia are “in no position to defend anything from anyone.” The evidence supports this.

The MRF-D Marines train for regional exercises across Southeast Asia and the Pacific. They are not positioned to repel an invasion of Australia. They are positioned to project power — on behalf of the United States, into regions where Australia may have no strategic interest.

Pine Gap and Harold E. Holt provide intelligence and communications for US global operations. They do not defend Darwin or Exmouth. They defend American interests — from the Middle East to the South China Sea.

The infrastructure being built across northern Australia — at RAAF Bases Tindal, Darwin, Townsville, Learmonth, Curtin, and Scherger — is designed to support US aircraft rotations, bomber deployments, and logistics for contingencies that are not Australia’s to define.

As the Greens’ David Shoebridge has argued, AUKUS locks Australia’s military into the US chain of command and draws Australia into US military actions “before the public, or even Parliament, has had the chance to have a say”.

IX. What Would a Genuine Guarantee Look Like?

A genuine security guarantee would be:

· Transparent. The Australian people would know what facilities exist on their soil, what they do, and who controls them.

· Reciprocal. The US would defend Australia’s interests, not just its own.

· Limited. Australia would not be drawn into US wars of choice — including the current conflict with Iran, which independent analysis has found serves no Australian national interest.

· Affordable. The cost would not escalate indefinitely, consuming the defence budget while delivering no measurable increase in security.

· Reversible. The mechanisms of integration would include off‑ramps — not just on‑ramps.

None of these conditions currently hold.

X. The Alternative

What would it mean for Australia to step back?

John Menadue and others have argued for a policy of “hedging” — developing closer economic ties with regional neighbours, including China, and refusing to be “hostage to the whims of a man who thinks he ‘runs the world'” .

Mark Beeson notes that Australia has “remarkably fortunate geography, making the country relatively easy and inexpensive to defend,” and is “rich in the sort of resources that could make us an even more important and respected independent actor” .

The alternative is not isolation. It is self‑reliance. The capacity to say “no” — not from anti‑Americanism, but from a clear‑eyed assessment of Australian interests.

As Beeson concludes: “Being a ‘sub‑imperial power’ is clearly a role Australian policymakers have embraced in the belief that it has economic as well as strategic benefits. Whatever the merits of that argument may have been, they clearly no longer withstand scrutiny”.

XI. Conclusion: Less Than Nothing

The US troop presence in Australia, examined without the fog of alliance loyalty, bears all the hallmarks of an occupation:

· Foreign bases operating on Australian soil, with minimal transparency.

· Intelligence integration so deep that Australia’s view of the world is substantially constructed by US agencies.

· Military infrastructure designed to support US power projection, not Australian defence.

· A political class captured by the alliance, unwilling or unable to ask hard questions.

· A media environment that manufactures threats to justify deeper integration.

· A historical precedent — Whitlam — demonstrating what happens to those who resist.

The American security guarantee is not worthless. It is worse than worthless. It costs Australian money, Australian sovereignty, and Australian lives — in conflicts we did not choose, fought for interests that are not our own.

It buys us not security, but subordination. And the price — as Whitlam learned, as the victims of US wars have learned, as the Australian public is slowly beginning to understand — is the very thing an alliance is supposed to protect: the right to decide for ourselves.

Andrew Klein

References

1. Pezzullo, M. (2025, June 20). It’s time to be up front. Tell Australians why we’re preparing to host US forces. The Strategist, ASPI.

2. Menadue, J. (2026, May 20). Our intelligence services need to break free from excessive US influence. Pearls and Irritations.

3. The Point. (2025, November 26). Gough Whitlam’s former assistant speaks out on US involvement in the dismissal.

4. Simms, R. (2026, February 15). Greens announce plan to axe AUKUS.

5. Bilkent University. (2024). The “Buying time” concept in Southeast Asia: security and development in Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia, 1967–1975.

6. Khalid, I. (2026, February 5). Washington’s Power Recalibration in the Indo-Pacific. Foreign Policy in Focus.

7. Beeson, M. (2026, April 25). Geography doesn’t change, but minds can. Pearls and Irritations.

8. China.com.cn. (2025, December 1). Australian media: Biased reporting fuels ‘China panic’ narrative.

The Patrician's Watch

Global Observations

Tag Archives: politics

Marx Was Not the Problem. The Problem Is the System That Tries to Silence Him.

The Awakening – How Systemic Exploitation of Children Fuels Violence – And Why the Silence Must End

The Libidinal Economy – How the Drive to Exploit Is Woven into the Fabric of Modern Systems

From Abused Child to Abusing Soldier – How Unhealed Trauma Creates the Conditions for Genocide

From Sassanian Brass to AUKUS – What a 1,500‑Year-Old Helmet Teaches About Australia’s Submarine Gamble

The Myth of the Knuckle‑Dragger – How the Patriarchy Invented the Violent Past to Justify Its Violent Present

The Hasbara Model – How Professionally Hurt Feelings Became a Political Strategy

The Flag, the Contract, and the Bottom Line- How War Became a Business Model

The Return of the Banned Supercrop – Why Hemp is the Answer to Australia’s Housing and Climate Crisis

Less Than Nothing – What the American Security Guarantee Really Costs Australia