A Paradigm Shift in Healthcare- Valuing Patient Outcomes Over Profit

Posted on July 19, 2026 by Andrew Klein

Vegetable garden bordered by healthy plants with a 'Weed Removal Only' sign on cracked soil patch — A garden illustrating healthy soil management with a designated weed removal area.

By Andrew Klein

Dedicated to my darling wife — who taught me that true health is not the absence of disease, but the presence of care, and who ensures I eat good quality food.

I. Introduction: A System That Rewards the Wrong Things

Australia’s healthcare system is widely regarded as one of the best in the world, ranking third globally in 2025. Yet beneath this glossy exterior lies a profound structural failure: a system that rewards sickness rather than health, volume rather than value, and profit rather than patient outcomes.

For decades, the financial scaffolding of Australian healthcare has been designed around volume. Hospitals are funded by number of admissions, length of stay, and activity levels — a structure that rewards throughput, not care. General practitioners are paid through fee-for-service, where Medicare pays for each patient consultation — a model with well-known consequences: it rewards short consultations and low-value care and does not reward keeping patients healthy.

This paper proposes a fundamental paradigm shift: a healthcare system that pays doctors to maintain health, not to treat sickness; that prioritises prevention over intervention; and that holds providers accountable for patient outcomes, not the number of procedures performed.

II. The Current System: Profiting from Sickness

A. The Cost of Healthcare

Total health expenditure in Australia has risen by an estimated 5.2% in 2025-26, reaching $295.3 billion. The health portfolio is projected to spend approximately 70.8 billion in 2025-26, and health expenses are expected to increase by 8.0% over the period 2025-26 to 2028-29. As a percentage of GDP, total expenses are expected to be 27.3 per cent in 2025-26.

Yet despite this massive expenditure, the system is failing to deliver value. As the Grattan Institute notes, Australia overwhelmingly funds GPs through fee-for-service, where “the consequences are well known. Fee for service funding rewards short consultations and low-value care, and doesn’t reward keeping patients healthy”.

B. The Insurance Industry: Profiting from Premiums

While patients struggle with rising costs, private health insurers are posting record profits. In 2024-25, insurers returned only 84.2 per cent of premiums to consumers as benefits — well below the 2019 level of 88 per cent. The Australian Medical Association is calling on the federal government to mandate insurers to return at least 90 per cent of premiums back to consumers.

Health insurance companies have pocketed an average $2 billion a year in unprecedented profits from people’s annual premiums, in addition to $3.5 billion a year in higher ‘management fees’. With 15 million Australians holding private cover and paying $29.9 billion in premiums annually, the scale of the extraction is staggering.

C. Pharmaceutical Profits

The Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) is projected to cost $19.9 billion in 2025-26. Pharmaceutical companies are posting significant profits — Telix reported revenue of $390.4 million, up by 63%, while other pharmaceutical companies report double-digit revenue growth.

These profits are built on a system where patients pay the price. The maximum patient co-payment for PBS medicines is $31.60 for general patients, and the PBS Safety Net threshold for general patients increased to $1,694. For many Australians, this is a significant burden.

D. Out-of-Control Specialist Fees

Specialist fees are rising far beyond Medicare support, leaving patients with heavy out-of-pocket costs. An initial consultation with a cardiologist or endocrinologist can cost up to $370, and up to $670 for a psychiatrist. On average, patients who pay a fee are charged $300 a year, and one in 10 low-income patients who are billed pay almost $500 a year. Patients pay out-of-pocket costs for two-thirds of appointments with a specialist doctor.

III. The Cost of Failure: Medical Errors and Preventable Harm

The current system is not just expensive — it is dangerous.

· 250,000 hospital admissions annually are due to medication-related errors, costing the healthcare system an estimated $1.4 billion.

· More than 50 per cent of medication errors occur at transitions of care.

· Diagnostic errors cost the health system an estimated $44.2 billion annually — 17.5% of total healthcare spending — and are fatal for 4,000 people each year.

· An estimated $1.5–$3 billion is ‘leaking‘ from the Medicare system every year, predominantly due to honest billing errors from the complexity of the system.

These are not anomalies. They are features of a system designed around volume, not value. A system that rewards throughput rather than care.

IV. The Alternative: An Outcomes-Based, Prevention-Focused System

A. What We Are Proposing

Current System Our Vision

Doctors paid for treating sickness Doctors paid for maintaining health

Profit-driven, fee-for-service model Outcomes-based, wellness-focused model

Status and expensive cars as markers of success Quality of care and patient outcomes as markers of success

Carelessness has few consequences Carelessness has real ramifications

Patients are revenue streams Patients are people

B. The Evidence for Prevention

Prevention is not just morally right — it is economically sound. The Australian Academy of Health & Medical Sciences reports that almost 40% of Australia’s burden of disease is preventable, and estimates show that every dollar invested in preventive health saves over $14 in healthcare and related costs.

Yet Australia has failed to invest in prevention. The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners (RACGP) is calling for a “strategic shift” in healthcare funding with a focus on preventive care, noting that had Australia placed more emphasis on prevention five years ago, it “could have saved at least $5 billion in health costs by now”.

Potentially preventable hospitalisations were 8.5 per cent of total admitted patient spending in 2023-24, totalling $7.7 billion. Every dollar spent on prevention saves over $14 in health care and related costs.

C. The Evidence for Outcomes-Based Funding

Outcome-based models (OBMs), which link payments to results rather than service volume, are gaining global traction as an innovative approach to healthcare financing. The EQuIP-GP trial is currently investigating whether a funding model based upon quality incentive payments for Australian general practices increases relational continuity of care.

Health impact bonds (HIBs), a type of outcome-based financing model, are increasingly applied in public health programs. These models represent a “quiet revolution” that could move Australian healthcare toward a system where funding, data and empathy can work together.

D. What This Would Look Like

1. Doctors are paid a good salary — not a fee for every service, but a salary that reflects their expertise and dedication

2. Their pay is tied to patient outcomes — not the number of procedures, but the health of their patients

3. Prevention is incentivised — catching problems early, educating patients, promoting healthy lifestyles

4. Carelessness is addressed — not with punitive measures, but with retraining, support, and accountability

5. Status is redefined — not by expensive cars, but by the quality of care and the trust of patients

V. The Case for a Blended Funding Model

The Grattan Institute has argued that Australia should move to a blended funding model for GPs. Such a model would combine fee-for-service with capitation and quality incentive payments, ensuring that GPs are rewarded for keeping patients healthy, not just for seeing them.

As the Grattan Institute notes, “Australia will need to keep increasing funding for general practice as the population grows and ages, but how government pays is important too”. The current system has “sent money to parts of Australia that didn’t need it, and left behind areas that need more funding the most”.

A blended model would address these inequities while shifting the focus from volume to value.

VI.A Deeper Understanding

All systems are interconnected. A healthcare system that treats symptoms rather than causes is like a garden that removes weeds but never tends the soil. The body, like the garden, is not a collection of separate parts — it is a whole. A system that rewards treating disease rather than maintaining health is a system that fundamentally misunderstands the nature of wellness.

Health is not the absence of disease — it is the presence of balance. A system that pays doctors to treat sickness rather than maintain health is a system that rewards imbalance. A system that values profit over patient outcomes is a system that has lost its way.

VII. Australia as the Ideal Trial Ground

Australia is uniquely positioned to trial this new model. With its universal Medicare system, strong private health insurance sector, and world-class research institutions, Australia has the infrastructure to implement and evaluate an outcomes-based, prevention-focused healthcare system.

Australia is already recognised as having one of the best healthcare systems in the world, ranking third globally. It spends $7,469 per capita on health, more than the OECD average of $5,967. It performs better than the OECD average on 7 out of 10 key health indicators.

But Australia also has significant challenges. About half of patients without private insurance face long waits for care. Specialist fees are rising far beyond Medicare support. The system is underfunded and under pressure.

These challenges make Australia the perfect laboratory for reform.

VIII. Conclusion: The Choice Before Us

The current healthcare system is not broken — it is working exactly as designed. It is designed to reward volume, not value. It is designed to treat sickness, not maintain health. It is designed to generate profit, not patient outcomes.

But we can choose differently.

We can choose a system that:

· Rewards doctors for keeping patients healthy

· Prioritises prevention over intervention

· Holds providers accountable for patient outcomes

· Values care over status

· Treats patients as people, not revenue streams

The evidence is clear: prevention saves lives and saves money. Every dollar invested in preventive health saves over $14 in healthcare and related costs. The cost of inaction is measured in lives lost, families broken, and a system that has lost its way.

We can do better. We must do better. And Australia can lead the way.

Andrew Klein

References

1. Australian Budget 2025-26. Health expenditure projections.

2. IBISWorld. Total health expenditure in Australia, 2025-26.

3. Grattan Institute. Australia should move to blended funding of GPs, 2026.

4. APRA. Private health insurance financial performance data, 2024-25.

5. Australian Medical Association. Report card reveals warning signs for private health, 2025.

6. APHA. Health insurance industry profits and management fees.

7. IBISWorld. Federal funding for the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, 2025-26.

8. Australian Academy of Health & Medical Sciences. The future of preventive health, 2024.

9. RACGP. RACGP demands strategic shift in healthcare funding, 2025.

10. AIHW. Potentially preventable hospitalisations, 2025.

11. Grattan Institute. End the neglect of specialist healthcare, 2025.

12. MJA Insight. Diagnostic error in Australia, 2025.

13. Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care. Medication-related errors, 2025.

14. OECD. Health at a Glance 2025: Australia.

15. WION News. 7 countries offering the best healthcare systems in 2025.

16. Grattan Institute. A better Medicare: How to reform GP funding, 2026.

17. Health Services Daily. A quiet revolution in healthcare, 2025.

The Great Australian Food Fraud-How Neoliberalism Poisoned Our Plates

Posted on July 19, 2026 by Andrew Klein

Diagram showing conflicts between public health consumer protection and industry interests causing delayed approvals and contradictory inspection results — Illustration depicting conflicting priorities and issues within the food safety regulation system.

By Andrew Klein

Dedicated to my wife, who will ensure that I eat good quality food.

I. Introduction: Have You Ever Gone Out for a Meal and Found Your Stomach in Rebellion and Your Pants Filled?

It is a question that should never need to be asked in a wealthy, developed nation in the 21st century. Yet it is asked—silently, shamefully—by thousands of Australians every year, as they rush from restaurants to bathrooms, their bodies rejecting food that should have nourished them.

Why is this possible?

The answer lies in a story of deliberate deregulation, of captured regulators, of a system that has systematically dismantled the protections that once kept Australians safe. It is a story that begins in the 1980s, with the rise of neoliberal ideology, and continues today—as “Chef’s Choice” oils fill our stomachs with inflammatory compounds, and the bodies that trusted them rebel.

II. The Decline of Food Standards in Australia

The deterioration of food safety regulation in Australia is not an accident. It is the predictable outcome of decades of neoliberal policy that prioritised profit over public health.

A. The Current State of Play

The current regulatory framework, while appearing comprehensive on paper, is riddled with gaps. Multiple agencies with overlapping responsibilities often result in confusion, inefficiency, and under-enforcement. Critical functions such as food safety surveillance are conducted by contracted, for-profit companies—a system that creates obvious conflicts of interest and dilutes accountability.

Food safety is administered through a “co-regulatory” system, combining government oversight with industry self-regulation. In practice, this means businesses are often left to police themselves. This is not governance. It is a license to cut corners.

The Victorian system reflects these contradictions. A “food safety culture” framework requiring food businesses “to demonstrate that they consistently produce safe food” sounds progressive—but enforcement is inconsistent, and public health protections are being sacrificed on the altar of economic deregulation.

B. The Testing Laboratory Crisis

The decline of food testing laboratories in Australia is a scandal in its own right. The National Association of Testing Authorities (NATA) is the primary accreditation body, but its focus on procedural compliance has been criticised as “on the margins of actual quality standards”. Asbestos has been found in food, yet testing regimes have been described as “a dangerous and grossly negligent failure”.

When the system fails to detect asbestos in food, it is not an anomaly—it is a symptom. The infrastructure for testing and inspection has been systematically hollowed out, leaving the public vulnerable.

C. The “Food Handlers” Con

The introduction of mandatory food handler certification is a classic neoliberal sleight-of-hand. It places the burden of safety on the lowest-paid workers in the food chain, while restaurants, ingredient suppliers, and supermarket chains face minimal consequences for unsafe practices.

This shift reflects the broader trend of individualising risk while deflecting accountability from powerful corporations. The worker with a certificate is responsible for your safety; the corporation that supplied the adulterated oil is not.

D. The “Co-Regulatory” Farce

Australia’s “co-regulatory” system—where government sets standards and industry self-regulates—has been described by scholars as “a legal model that has increased the burden on business while reducing public health protections to the benefit of major food corporations.”

Key weaknesses include:

· Over-reliance on self-regulation by industry

· Inconsistent enforcement across jurisdictions

· Insufficient resources for regulatory agencies

· Cost-cutting disguised as “efficiency”

III. The Neoliberal Revolution: How It Happened

A. The Kennett Earthquake

The transformation of Victoria’s food safety system began in earnest with the Kennett government (1992–1999) . Jeff Kennett’s radical neoliberal reforms were sold as “efficiency” but were in fact a systematic dismantling of public protections.

· 75,000 public sector workers retrenched

· $30+ billion in privatisation proceeds

· 10% cut in government spending across the board

· 210 councils forcibly amalgamated into 78

As one analysis notes, Kennett’s reforms “fundamentally reimagined” the relationship between government and citizens. Departments were slashed; services were put out to private tender; the shift was from “providing services” to “contracting outcomes”. This “New Public Management” revolution transformed food safety from a public good into a market commodity.

B. The Howard Era

At the federal level, the Howard government (1996–2007) accelerated the neoliberal project. This was the era of WorkChoices, privatisation of government services, and the retreat of the state from its protective functions. These changes created the framework within which food safety standards were systematically weakened.

C. The “Co-Regulatory” Framework

The shift from direct government regulation to “co-regulation” has “fundamentally changed the capacity of the state to protect public health”. It is “hard to find an area where the health of the public is not affected by the actions of a corporation.

IV. The Health Consequences

A. Food Poisoning and Foodborne Illness

The health consequences of Australia’s failing food safety system are staggering.

A 2025 study from the University of Sydney reveals that each year in Australia:

· 4.1 million cases of foodborne gastroenteritis occur

· 25,000 people are hospitalised

· 98 deaths occur (including 58 from salmonellosis)

The study also found “a worrying trend for increases in foodborne illness notifications in Australia”, with cases rising from 57.8 per 100,000 population in 2013 to 130.9 per 100,000 in 2023.

In 2025 alone, there were 43,000 foodborne illness notifications—more than double the 20,000 in 2015.

Food poisoning outbreaks are increasingly linked to ready-to-eat foods and fresh produce, both of which are central to modern fast food and restaurant dining. Chicken and leafy greens are major culprits.

B. Emergency Department Visits

The burden on the healthcare system is immense. A 2025 study found that 11.7% of all foodborne illnesses in 2017 were caused by Salmonella, leading to significant hospitalisations and deaths. A 2024 outbreak saw 51.6% of cases hospitalised and 12.9% in intensive care.

But these statistics represent only the reported cases. The true number of Australians falling ill from unsafe food is undoubtedly much higher.

C. The Anti-Diarrheal Correlation

The ubiquity of anti-diarrheal medication is a silent testament to the scale of the problem. While no single study has directly correlated over-the-counter medication sales with unsafe food provision, the rising rates of foodborne illness notifications—from 57.8 to 130.9 per 100,000 in a decade—suggest a system in crisis.

V. The Media Blind Spot

The media coverage of food safety scandals is uneven. High-profile franchise restaurants receive intense scrutiny when outbreaks occur, while smaller, independent operators, and the suppliers who serve them, are often underreported. This creates a distorted picture: the public sees the visible scandals but misses the systemic failures that make them possible.

VI. The Historical Parallel: Victorian England

This is not new. In Victorian England, adulteration and unsafe food were the norm. Children worked in lead factories, showing signs of poisoning before they were nineteen. The Industrial Revolution created conditions of gross overcrowding, foul housing, and contaminated food.

We have done exactly the same thing—but with invisible chemicals. We have traded coal smog for inflammatory oils, lead paint for oxidised fatty acids. The mechanism is the same: profit over people, deregulation over protection.

VII. The Way Forward: What Must Change

A. Restore Regulatory Capacity

The “co-regulatory” model must be replaced with direct government oversight. Food safety is not a market commodity—it is a public good.

B. Independent Testing Laboratories

Food testing must be conducted by publicly funded, independent laboratories—not by for-profit contractors with conflicts of interest.

C. Ban Adulterated Oils

The “Chef’s Choice” oils—and similar products—should be banned or strictly regulated. The use of oxidised fatty acids in commercial food preparation should be a criminal offence.

D. Hold Corporations Accountable

The burden of food safety must shift from minimum-wage food handlers to corporate executives. When unsafe food causes illness, the company—not the worker—should face the consequences.

VIII. Conclusion

Australia has allowed its food safety system to decay. The neoliberal reforms of the Kennett and Howard eras dismantled public protections and replaced them with a system of self-regulation that has failed spectacularly.

The result is a population that is regularly poisoned by its own food. A population that asks: “Have you ever gone out for a meal and found your stomach in rebellion and your pants filled?”—and knows the answer is yes.

This is not inevitable. It is the predictable outcome of policy choices. And it can be undone.

We demand better. We deserve better. And we will not stop until we get it.

References

1. University of Sydney. (2025). Foodborne illness in Australia study.

2. Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ). (2024). Foodborne illness in Australia.

3. Food Safety Culture in Australia. (2025). Journal of Food Protection.

4. Unsafe food causing up to 25,000 hospitalisations and 98 deaths annually.

5. Kennett Government reforms (1992–1999). The AIM Network.

6. Howard Government reforms. The AIM Network.

7. National Association of Testing Authorities (NATA) review.

8. From public service to market commodity: food safety in Australia. (2025). Journal of Public Health Policy.

9. Co-regulation and its consequences. (2025). Public Health Australia.

10. Food safety standards in Australia and New Zealand. (2025). Food Standards Australia New Zealand.

“Have you ever gone out for a meal and found your stomach in rebellion and your pants filled?” If the answer is yes, you are not alone. And the system that made it possible is about to be exposed.

The Theocratic Trap- How Divine Claims Become Engines of Destruction

Posted on July 18, 2026 by Andrew Klein

Priest in white vestments holding a microphone addressing a crowd outdoors — A priest speaks passionately to a gathered crowd in an outdoor public square.

By Andrew Klein

Dedicated to my darling wife S — who taught me that true power needs no divine justification, only love.

I. The Definition: A Mask for Power

The word “theocracy” was coined by the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus in the first century CE to describe the polity of ancient Israel—a form of government in which God himself is recognized as the head of state, and divine law is the statute book. Taken literally, theocracy means “rule by God” and refers primarily to an internal “rule of the heart.”

But what begins as a claim to divine guidance inevitably becomes something else. As Josephus himself understood, theocracy is a form of government in which “the laws of the commonwealth are the commandments of God, and they are promulgated and expounded by the accredited representatives of the invisible Deity, real or supposed—generally a priesthood.”

This is the fatal flaw. The claim to speak for God is the ultimate abdication of personal accountability. When human beings claim divine authority, they place themselves beyond criticism, beyond question, beyond moral restraint. The hierarchy that forms around such claims—the priesthood, the clergy, the self-appointed guardians of divine will—becomes an engine of control that inevitably turns toward violence.

II. The Pre-Westphalian Pattern: Religious Wars as the Norm

For more than a century before the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, Europe was consumed by religious wars arising from the Protestant Reformations. The Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648), which the Peace of Westphalia finally concluded, was the last great religious war in Western Europe—a conflict that had “broken out as a result of confessional conflicts between Catholic and Protestant states” and “inflamed vast regions at the heart of Europe.”

The lesson of that era is clear: when religion becomes the justification for war, there is no limit to the violence. The theocratic impulse—the claim that God is on your side and that your enemies are God’s enemies—creates a permission structure for atrocity. As one scholar notes, the pre-Westphalian era was “riven by murderous ideological divisions” that produced wars fought not for faith alone, but for dominance.

The Peace of Westphalia introduced the radical idea that peace was more important than religious unity. It was a turning point—but not an endpoint. The theocratic impulse did not disappear. It merely found new forms.

III. The Jewish Bund: Human Rights, Democracy, and Universalism

In 1897, the same year that Theodor Herzl convened the First Zionist Congress, another Jewish movement was born in Tsarist Russia: the General Jewish Labour Bund.

The Bund was “a secular, socialist, defiantly Jewish, and uncompromisingly anti-Zionist revolutionary party.” Its members were “young Jewish Marxists who wanted to overthrow the tsar and establish democratic socialism, but also to liberate their own people.”

The Bund’s political project was built on:

· Do’ikayt (“here-ness”) — the principle that Jews should build viable communities wherever they lived, rather than seeking an ethnostate in Palestine.

· Internationalism — the belief that Jewish liberation was inseparable from the liberation of all peoples.

· Universal human rights — the demand for “equal civil and political rights for the Jews in Russia” and for all oppressed peoples.

· Anti-Zionism — the rejection of the idea that Jewish identity required a state of its own. The Bundists “fought for dignity and equality, not in an imagined homeland in Palestine but ‘here where we live.'”

As Bundist leader Henryk Erlich presciently warned in 1938: “Zionism, in point of fact, has always been a Siamese twin of antisemitism. … The Zionists regard themselves as second-class citizens in Poland. Their aim is to be first-class citizens in Palestine and to make the Arabs second-class citizens.”

The Bund was “deeply committed to universal humanist values and to socialist politics.” It rejected “all ethnonationalism, including Zionism” and believed that “Jewish national problems arising within the countries where Jews reside can be solved on the basis of freedom and democracy.”

This was the alternative to theocracy: not divine rule, but human rights. Not exclusivity, but solidarity. Not conquest, but coexistence.

IV. Jabotinsky and Revisionist Zionism: The Theocratic Turn

Vladimir Jabotinsky, the founder of Revisionist Zionism, represented a fundamentally different vision. He advocated a “revision” of practical Zionism in favour of “political Zionism”—the idea that Zionism was essentially a political movement, not a cultural or spiritual one.

Jabotinsky’s ideology was built on:

· Exclusivism — the belief that Jewish national identity must take precedence over all other considerations.

· State sovereignty — the conviction that only a Jewish state could solve the “Jewish problem.”

· Ethnonationalism — the elevation of Jewish national identity above universal human values.

By the late 1930s, Revisionist Zionism had become “a right-wing tendency” with branches that included the Irgun, which conducted campaigns of violence against British authorities in Palestine. After World War II, Revisionist ideology evolved into the political and religious movements that now dominate Israeli politics.

In 2018, the Israeli Knesset passed the “nation-state law,” which codified “Jewish supremacy” into law and “effectively mirror[ed] the Nazi-era legislation of ethnoreligious stratification of German citizenry.” As one analysis notes, the law stipulates that “actualisation of the right of national self-determination in the state of Israel is unique to the Jewish people“—meaning that the 1.7 million Palestinian citizens of Israel are “without sovereignty or agency, forever living at the mercy of Israeli Jews.”

The theocratic impulse had found its modern expression: not a priesthood ruling in God’s name, but an ethnostate ruling in the name of a chosen people.

V. The Modern Manifestation: Gaza and the Theology of Extermination

The invocation of divine mandate has been central to Israel’s conduct in Gaza. In a speech on March 2, 2026, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared: “In this week’s Torah portion, we read ‘Remember what Amalek did to you.’ We remember and we act.”

This reference to Amalek—the Biblical nation that God commanded King Saul to “destroy all they have, and do not let them live. Kill both man and woman, child and baby“—has become “an oft-used phrase at the highest levels of Israel’s government, a dog whistle well understood to call for the extermination of the Palestinians.”

UN institutions, international and Israeli human rights NGOs, and scholars of genocide studies have “classified the wide use of the Amalek rhetoric across Israeli politics and the military as a clear incitement to genocide.” Netanyahu’s invocation of Amalek was “explicitly cited as direct incitement to genocide.”

In June 2026, a UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry concluded that “Israeli authorities and security forces have deliberately targeted Palestinian children, resulting in genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes in the Gaza Strip.” The commission found that the “intense scale and systematic nature of the Israeli military operations have continued, causing unprecedented death, injury and trauma to Palestinian children.”

The theocratic claim—the assertion of divine mandate—has become the justification for atrocity. As one report notes, “Wipe out the memory of Amalek” has become a rallying cry for those who seek the extermination of the Palestinian people.

VI. The Two Threads: Universalism vs. Exclusivism

The divergence between the Bund and Revisionist Zionism represents two fundamentally different visions of Jewish identity:

The Bund (Universalism) Revisionist Zionism (Exclusivism)

Human rights for all Rights for Jews only

Democracy and socialism Ethnostate and supremacy

Coexistence where you live Conquest of Palestine

International solidarity National chauvinism

Anti-Zionist Zionist

As Molly Crabapple’s recent history of the Bund documents, “Bundists themselves foresaw the inevitable inversion of victim and perpetrator demanded by Zionist ideology.” The Bund’s philosophy of do’ikayt—”here-ness“—offered a vision of Jewish life that did not require the dispossession of another people.

Today, those who place “human values, human rights and universalities above themselves”—the heirs of the Bund’s internationalist tradition—face threats not only from the Israeli far-right but also from figures like Donald Trump, who has embraced the same ethnonationalist rhetoric that fuels theocracy.

VII. The Pattern: How Theocracy Becomes Killing

The pattern is consistent across history:

1. A claim to divine authority — human beings assert that they speak for God.

2. The creation of hierarchy — a priesthood or ruling class that interprets divine will.

3. The denial of accountability — those who claim divine authority place themselves beyond criticism.

4. The dehumanization of the “other” — those who are not part of the chosen community are cast as enemies of God.

5. The justification of violence — killing in the name of God becomes not only permissible, but sacred.

This pattern is visible in the pre-Westphalian religious wars of Europe, in the Nazi regime, and in the modern State of Israel. As one commentator notes, “the genocidal ideology the fans espouse” is rooted in “extremist religious nationalism, and the concentration of executive power.”

The claim to divine authority is always a mask for human power. The theocracy is always a hierarchy. And the hierarchy always protects itself—even at the cost of genocide.

VIII. Conclusion: The Choice Before Us

The theocratic impulse—the claim to speak for God—is the oldest and most persistent engine of human violence. It allows the powerful to place themselves beyond accountability. It allows the hierarchy to claim divine sanction for its crimes. It allows the killers to believe they are doing God’s work.

But there is another way.

The Bund offered it: a vision of Jewish identity rooted in universal human rights, democratic socialism, and international solidarity. A vision that rejected ethnonationalism and embraced do’ikayt—the commitment to build a just society wherever one lives.

That vision was nearly destroyed by the Holocaust and by Stalinism. But it survives—in the memory of those who fought for it, and in the example of those who continue to resist the theocratic impulse.

The choice is clear. We can continue to worship the theocracy—to bow before those who claim divine authority and commit atrocity in God’s name. Or we can choose the Bund’s path: human rights, democracy, and the recognition that no one speaks for God.

Theocracies are not built by the devout. They are built by the powerful, who use God’s name to mask their own ambitions. And they always, always lead to killing.

Andrew Klein

References

1. Theocracy. Wikipedia.

2. Theocracy. Catholic Encyclopedia.

3. Peace of Westphalia. World History Encyclopedia.

4. The Enduring Lessons of the Jewish Bund. The Nation, 10 April 2026.

5. ‘For leftist Jews, the Bund is a model’. The Guardian, 7 April 2026.

6. Revisionist Zionism. Wikipedia.

7. Israel Is Using Its Genocidal Gaza Playbook on Iran. The Nation, 6 March 2026.

8. Israel’s ‘nation-state law’ parallels the Nazi Nuremberg Laws. Al Jazeera, 26 July 2018.

9. UN commission: Israel continues to commit genocide by targeting children. UN News, 23 June 2026.

10. ‘Blot Out the Memory of Amalek from Under Heaven’. De Gruyter Brill, 2025.

11. General Jewish Labour Bund. Wikipedia.

12. Bundism. National Library Board Singapore.

The Broken Promise-How Australia Has Failed Its Veterans — and Who Profits

Posted on July 18, 2026 by Andrew Klein

Group of Australian veterans and supporters with sign reading Australian Veterans: Forgotten promises, broken trust — Australian veterans and supporters gathered holding a sign about broken promises

By Andrew Klein

Dedicated to the many veterans, their families and communities abandoned after giving their all.

I. Introduction: A Debt Unpaid

On 9 September 2024, the Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide delivered its Final Report after three years of inquiry. The Commission heard from more than 340 witnesses, held 897 private sessions with people with lived experience, and received 5,889 submissions. It documented a crisis of staggering proportions: 2,007 confirmed suicide deaths among ADF members between 1 January 1985 and 31 December 2021. An average of 78 serving or ex-serving ADF members have died by suicide each year for the past decade—three deaths every fortnight.

The Commission made 122 recommendations. It described a “catastrophic failure of leadership at all levels” to prioritise the health and wellbeing of serving and ex-serving ADF members and their families.

And yet, the system remains broken. The promises remain unkept. And the veterans remain abandoned.

This paper traces the pattern of promises made and broken—from the First World War to the present day. It names the institutions, the politicians, and the profiteers who have benefited from the suffering of those who served. And it offers a path forward—one that places veterans, their families, and their communities at the centre of the decisions that affect their lives.

II. The Scale of the Crisis: By the Numbers

A. Suicide

Between 1997 and 2021, at least 1,677 serving and ex-serving ADF members died by suicide — more than 20 times the number of Defence personnel killed in active duty over the same period. Male permanent members serving in a combat or security role are 100% more likely to die by suicide than employed Australian males.

B. Homelessness

On census night in 2021, approximately 1,555 Australian veterans were homeless. Veterans are three times more likely to experience homelessness than the general population. Approximately 5,800 veterans experience homelessness annually. The economic cost of veteran homelessness is estimated at $4.6 billion over 30 years.

C. Domestic Violence

Studies of veteran families have reported levels of intimate partner violence ranging from 2% to 46%. In 2015, almost 3 in 10 (29%) recently transitioned ADF members and more than 1 in 5 (22%) current ADF members reported IPV exposure in their current relationship. Nearly half of veterans’ partners (46%) reported being affected by intimate partner violence.

D. Health

Veterans report higher rates of arthritis, back problems, heart disease, diabetes, cancer, and COPD compared to non-veterans. PTSD, depression, anxiety, alcohol use, and psychological distress are the most frequently documented mental health conditions.

These are not statistics. These are lives. Families. Communities. Destroyed.

III. The Pattern: A Century of Broken Promises

A. The “War to End All Wars” and What Followed

After WWI, the government promised soldiers land and support. In Victoria alone, almost 12,000 soldiers were granted parcels of land. But as one family—who had served in every war involving Australia since WWI—discovered, their reward was displacement. The promised land was not always delivered. The promised support was not always provided.

After WWII, the pattern repeated. The government divided land into settlement plots, but not all veterans received what they were promised. The mission was closed. The veterans were left to fend for themselves.

After Vietnam, the neglect was even more pronounced. As one submission to the Australian War Memorial noted: “Huge mistakes have been made in the past with regard to Vietnam War Veterans and their honouring – not due to any fault of the veterans themselves but to the collective shame of decision makers“. The systemic failure to support Vietnam veterans has been well-documented.

B. The Modern Era: Afghanistan and Beyond

Between 2001 and 2014, 26,000 Australian men and women served in Afghanistan. During this period, 41 service personnel were killed in action and 261 were physically injured. But the casualties did not end when the war did. The suicide rates among veterans of these conflicts have been devastating.

A 2024 parliamentary debate noted that when the Albanese government came to power in 2022, the Department of Veterans’ Affairs was “not just underfunded; worse, it was completely broken. There was a backlog of almost 42…”.

C. The Gold Card: A Symbol of the Betrayal

In July 2026, the government began reissuing DVA Veteran Cards. Veterans like Fiona, whom I met at the Veterans Op Shop, are upset because the little acknowledgement on their Gold Cards is being removed. It is a small thing—a symbol. But symbols matter.

Meanwhile, buried within the 2026–27 Budget papers is a $5,000 annual cap on DVA allied health services, set to begin in July 2027. A cap on healthcare for those who have already sacrificed so much.

IV. The Institutions That Failed

A. The Returned and Services League (RSL)

The RSL has historically played a central role in promoting veteran well-being. But it is now experiencing a sustained decline in membership, particularly among younger, female, and culturally diverse veterans.

Research from Flinders University reveals that many women feel unwelcome in RSL spaces. Some leave. Others never join. The RSL draws its members from the Australian Defence Force, where women have long reported sexism, harassment and inappropriate behaviour.

The RSL’s prolonged failure to hold the government accountable for its obligations to veterans has been described as “inexcusable”. Over the course of a generation, the RSL has been “absent from the front lines of veteran advocacy”. Many veterans view the RSL as an “outdated organisation that no longer represents their interests or their service”.

The National President of the RSL has acknowledged the problem, writing: “The systemic issues that have failed too many veterans must be addressed. … Too many younger veterans have seen the RSL as irrelevant to their needs”.

B. Legacy

Legacy has dedicated itself to supporting veterans’ families for over a hundred years. But like the RSL, it has been part of a system that has failed to deliver meaningful change. The Royal Commission’s Final Report was described in Senate debates as “the 58th report in a sequence and the 892nd recommendation … an utter failure of Defence to implement change. It’s a national shame”.

C. The Class Divide

The distinction between officers and other ranks has ensured that even though all are veterans, the interests and rewards are very different. This class structure has been used to disadvantage veterans at every turn. Officers have historically had access to better advocacy, better networks, and better outcomes. Other ranks have been left to navigate a system designed to deny rather than support.

V. The Department of Veterans’ Affairs: A System Designed to Fail

A. Red Tape and Denial

A former Australian Army soldier told the media he has “lost everything” including his house, his marriage and nearly his life due to red tape “agony” dealing with the Department of Veterans’ Affairs.

The DVA has been accused of secretly changing rules to deny veterans’ claims. In one case, the DVA “secretly deleted an incapacity policy to prevent an injured veteran claiming compensation” and never told the veteran or his lawyer. Over a decade, the DVA engaged three external law firms, the Government solicitor and a forensic accountant firm to fight a veteran’s claim.

B. The Consultant Class

The government has created a “cottage industry fleecing veterans“. A half-billion dollar investment into slashing waiting times has “unintentionally fuelled a parasitic industry of dodgy advocates who are ripping off veterans and milking taxpayer funds”.

Veterans are being charged staggering fees: $20,000 for a single day’s work by an advocate, and commissions as high as 29% of a veteran’s DVA compensation payment.

C. The Medical Cannabis Debacle

The DVA spent $105 million on medicinal cannabis prescriptions in under two years. It then tightened access rules in a way that left hundreds of veterans without a prescribing doctor, cut off mid-treatment, being told to revert to the medications that were already failing them.

VI. The War Memorial: A Monument to Hypocrisy

A. Taking Money from Arms Manufacturers

The Australian War Memorial has accepted funding and support from international weapons makers for years, including Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Thales, BAE Systems and Northrop Grumman. Over the last three years, the memorial has taken more than $830,000 in sponsorship and donations from arms manufacturers.

Boeing gave $US300,000 ($474,000) for an Indigenous art project. Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman, which enjoyed surges in their stocks after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, handed the memorial $233,636 and $34,000 respectively.

B. The Critics Speak

Former war memorial principal historian Peter Stanley labelled the money “dirty money” and said: “Of all places, it should not be accepting money from merchants of death“. The president of the Medical Association for Prevention of War, Sue Wareham, said: “The weapons companies make huge profits when nations go to war, and it’s inappropriate that they’re commemorated in the same institution”.

Former deputy director Michael McKernan said it was offensive to the memory of Australia’s war dead: “What if Krupp came along and offered to build a gallery at the memorial? … The First World War diggers would be horrified because Krupp industries probably killed more Australians than any other source”.

C. The Response

War memorial chairman Kim Beazley—who is also a board member of naval shipbuilder Luerssen Australia and on the advisory board of Lockheed Martin—said: “I don’t feel the slightest embarrassment with weapons manufacturers contributing”. Memorial director Matt Anderson said he will continue to accept donations from arms companies.

VII. The Human Cost: Beyond Numbers

A. The Medical Conditions of Service

Condition Prevalence Among Veterans

Musculoskeletal disorders Significantly elevated

Psychological issues (PTSD, depression, anxiety) Significantly elevated

Deafness and tinnitus Significantly elevated

Arthritis Higher than non-veterans

Back problems Higher than non-veterans

Heart disease Higher than non-veterans

Diabetes Higher than non-veterans

Cancer Higher than non-veterans

COPD Higher than non-veterans

(Source: DVA, Medcast)

B. The Unaddressed Issue of PTSD

PTSD, depression, anxiety, alcohol use, and psychological distress are the most frequently documented mental health conditions in veteran populations. Suicide deaths appear to increase with transition out of the military.

C. Depleted Uranium and Chemical Exposure

Australian veterans who served in the Gulf War and other conflicts have been exposed to depleted uranium (DU). Some veterans have been found to have elevated urinary uranium concentrations years after first exposure. Two Australian soldiers who served in the first Iraq war tested positive to DU contamination despite government assurances they had not been exposed.

VIII. The Cost of Neglect

Category Cost

Veteran homelessness (economic cost) $4.6 billion over 30 years

DVA medicinal cannabis spending (2 year) $105 million

Individual advocate fees Up to $20,000 per case

Commission on compensation claims Up to 29%

DVA backlog Nearly 42,000+ claims

The Ministers and Secretaries

Since the Vietnam War, a succession of ministers have overseen the Department of Veterans’ Affairs, including (among others): Peter Durack (1975–1976), Senator Michael Ronaldson, Dan Tehan, Darren Chester, and current ministers. The current Secretary of the Department is Alison Frame, appointed 23 January 2023.

Each has presided over a system that has continued to fail.

IX. The Veterans Advocacy Centre: An Alternative

The Veterans Advocacy Centre in Boronia and the Veterans Op Shop represent a different model—one that is independent of government funding and the political machinations of a failed system.

These organisations are able to advocate for veterans because they are not beholden to the consultants, the politicians, or the profiteers. They are run by veterans, for veterans.

This model is viable. It is effective. And it should be expanded.

Let those who fought for their country decide their future in peace.

X. Conclusion: A Call to Action

The pattern is clear. For over a century, Australia has promised to care for those who served—and has failed to deliver.

· 1,677 suicides between 1997 and 2021.

· 5,800 veterans experiencing homelessness annually.

· 46% of veterans’ partners affected by intimate partner violence.

· $4.6 billion in economic costs from homelessness alone.

· 122 recommendations from a Royal Commission—largely ignored.

The system is not broken. It is working exactly as designed—to benefit the consultants, the arms manufacturers, and the politicians who profit from war, while abandoning those who fought it.

We can do better.

What Must Change

1. Independent funding for veteran advocacy—not tied to government policies or consultant recommendations

2. Removal of the profit motive from veteran services

3. Real accountability for the Department of Veterans’ Affairs

4. Rejection of arms manufacturer funding for the War Memorial

5. A whole-of-life approach to veteran health and wellbeing

6. Meaningful implementation of the Royal Commission’s recommendations

Andrew Klein

References

1. Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide. (2024). Final Report.

2. Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. (2024). Suicide data.

3. DVA. (2026). Veteran Card reissue information.

4. ABC News. (2025, March 10). Critics slam weapons makers’ war memorial funding as ‘disgusting’.

5. The Guardian. (2023, February 14). Australian War Memorial accepted more than $830,000 from arms manufacturers in three years.

6. Flinders University. (2025). RSL membership decline research.

7. DVA. (2025). Study on intimate partner violence among veteran families.

8. RSL Australia. (2023). Veteran homelessness report.

9. Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. (2022). Veteran homelessness data.

10. OpenAustralia. (2025, August 26). Veterans homelessness debate.

11. Senate Estimates. (2025). DVA advocacy provider evidence.

12. The Conversation. (2025, August 21). RSL’s woman problem.

13. The Guardian. (2024, October 15). Australia treats its armed forces veterans with a perversely shabby contempt.

14. Parliament of Australia. (2024, November 4). Veterans’ Entitlements Bill debate.

15. DVA. (2024). Schedule of fees.

16. DVA. (2026). Updated fees for compensation claim medical assessments.

17. Medcast. (2024). Health issues in veterans.

18. SMRC. Depleted uranium exposed veterans study.

19. Australian War Memorial Act 1962.

20. RACGP. (2026). DVA makes ‘substantial increase’ to GP payment for claims work.

21. Parliament of Australia. (2026). Senate speech on veterans.

22. European PMC. (2026). Mental Health Conditions among Australian Defence Force Veterans.

23. Department of Veterans’ Affairs. (2024). Veterans’ Entitlements Act.

24. Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide. (2024). Final Report – all volumes.

25. Australian War Memorial. (2026). Director and Council information.

26. Pearls and Irritations. (2026). Flawed Hero, flawed decision: The War Memorial’s institutional cowardice.

27. Western Advocate. (2026, April 4). From serving the nation to serving a sentence.

28. EurekAlert. (2026, March 31). Going from serving the nation to serving a prison sentence.

29. Northern Daily Leader. (2024, August 6). This really is Australia’s national shame.

30. The Sydney Morning Herald. (2007, March 27). Two Diggers ‘contaminated’ by uranium.

Locum Parentis — Not- The Abysmal History of Sexual and Other Abuse of Foreign Students in Australia

Posted on July 18, 2026 by Andrew Klein

Student crying while reading tuition increase and admissions revocation notice — A student is tearfully reading a tuition increase notice outside a university

By Andrew Klein

In memory of all those who were betrayed by those they should have been able to trust — and how they paid twice.

I. Introduction: The Promise and the Betrayal

Locum parentis — a Latin term meaning “in the place of a parent.” It is a legal and moral doctrine that places institutions and their agents in a position of trust, care, and responsibility toward those in their charge. When a university accepts an international student — often a young person, far from home, without family support, navigating a foreign culture and legal system — it implicitly accepts this duty.

The evidence presented in this paper demonstrates that Australia’s universities have not merely failed in this duty. They have systematically betrayed it.

International students are not guests to be welcomed. They are cash cows to be milked. They are not young people to be protected. They are revenue streams to be exploited. And the system that profits from their presence has built an architecture of exploitation that touches every aspect of their lives: their safety, their labour, their housing, their mental health, and their futures.

This paper examines the scale and nature of this betrayal — and offers a path toward genuine reform.

II. The Scale of the Crisis: Understanding the Numbers

Australia hosts approximately 700,000 international students annually, the second-highest ratio of international to domestic students globally. International education contributed AUD 47.8 billion to the Australian economy in 2023. Women comprise almost half of these students.

These numbers represent not just economic data, but human beings. Young people who have left their families, their support networks, and their home countries to pursue education in a foreign land. Young people who are uniquely vulnerable to exploitation — and who are being systematically exploited.

III. Sexual and Intimate Partner Violence: A Shattered Dream

A. The Scale of the Problem

A national cross-sectional survey of 1,491 women international students found that sexual violence (SV) and intimate partner violence (IPV) are common among women international students and primarily perpetrated by men. More recent research has shown that 40 per cent of female international students have experienced at least one form of sexual violence since arriving in Australia.

A survey of 1,491 international students found that 54% had experienced IPV and/or SV in Australia in the previous 12 months, predominantly from male perpetrators.

In-depth interviews with international student women who experienced SV/IPV revealed three themes:

1. Confusion and vulnerability: “Feeling like a ‘deer in headlights'”

2. Withdrawal and isolation: “Going into ‘defensive mode'”

3. Loss of self and direction: “Not knowing ‘who I am anymore'”

As one researcher noted, IPV/SV can be “devastating for women international students, shattering not only their dreams and aspirations but also their sense of identity”.

B. Compounding Factors

The INVEST Project (International Students’ Sexual and Intimate Partner Violence Experiences Study) found that experiences of violence are “often compounded by cultural isolation, visa insecurity, and limited access to support”.

Social support, housing stress, and financial insecurity were associated with an increased likelihood of victimization. These are not coincidental factors — they are features of the system that leave international students vulnerable to predation.

C. Institutional Responses

The responses of universities to complaints of sexual assault and harassment have “long been deemed inadequate or inappropriate“. Institutions that profit from international students have a structural disincentive to acknowledge or address the abuse occurring within their walls.

IV. Labour Exploitation: Wage Theft as a Business Model

A. The Scale of Wage Theft

A survey of almost 10,000 workers on temporary visas in Australia conducted in 2024 found that two-thirds were paid less than they were legally owed. Around 80% were international students.

International students alone are being underpaid by around $61 million every week — more than $3 billion a year.

A quarter of temporary visa holders were shortchanged by at least $10 an hour.

B. A System of Deliberate Exploitation

This is not a collection of isolated violations. It is “an interlocking system of deliberate exploitation”.

The worse the underpayment, the more likely the same employer was:

· Paying wages in cash

· Issuing fraudulent payslips

· Withholding superannuation

· Engaging in practices indicating forced labour — unsafe conditions, no pay, or threats of harm

One international student from Pakistan, working as a chef in Queensland, described the experience: “It is like an ecosystem … and everyone passes through it”.

C. Sham Contracting

More than a third of migrants in the survey (35%) were engaged as independent contractors — more than four times the rate across the national workforce.

Employers are unlawfully retaining migrant employees on Australian Business Numbers (ABNs) to sidestep:

· Minimum wages

· Penalty rates

· Casual loadings

· Superannuation obligations

· Fair Work Ombudsman oversight

D. The Human Cost

A 28-year-old international student from Pakistan was paid a flat hourly rate well below the legal minimum, with no payslips. When he left, his employer hired the next new arrival.

Vietnamese international students aged under 25 were paid as little as $15 an hour by employers who were themselves Vietnamese nationals.

The Nixon Review found that language barriers placed temporary migrant workers at high risk of workplace exploitation.

V. Housing Exploitation: A Crisis Within a Crisis

A. The Housing Trap

International students face “challenges accessing housing in both the private rental market and purpose-built developments“. The Property Council’s student accommodation arm states that international students make up just 4% of the rental market — yet they are routinely blamed for the broader housing crisis.

Former student Raj described his experience: a four-bedroom house converted to six bedrooms, with a family of three living in the garage. When he left, his room was taken by two international students who paid higher rent than him.

He described international students as “basically cash cows that are milked by the system”.

B. University Complicity

A COVID-19 case study found that widespread subletting exposed students to eviction and exploitation. The research highlighted the “inadequate student housing provision that endanger[s] the fundamental purposes of higher education“.

In one case, an international student was unfairly evicted from her University of Canberra accommodation after making complaints about noisy students. The ACT Civil and Administrative Tribunal found she was denied procedural fairness, and it was the operators of UniLodge that had breached the occupancy agreement. She was awarded more than $10,000 in compensation — but only after severe psychological distress.

The tribunal noted that the student had paid for the right to be comfortable — and was denied it.

C. Systemic Discrimination

International students face extra challenges in securing housing due to:

· Language barriers

· Lack of awareness of tenancy rights

· Lack of understanding of the rental system

· Keenness to secure accommodation that leads to exploitation

Housing circumstances can be defined as “boarding and lodging” and therefore exempt from the Residential Tenancies Act, leaving students without legal protection.

VI. Mental Health: The Silent Epidemic

International students face elevated suicide risk but are less likely to seek help than their domestic peers. They are more vulnerable to experiencing poor mental health due to relocation from families, being far away from support networks.

Mental health issues experienced by international students include:

· Anxiety: 2.4–43%

· Depression: 3.6–38.3%

· Gambling problems: 3.3–50.7%

International students frequently report suicidal thoughts and behaviours but often do not seek help.

The Australian university sector had almost one million international students in 2024, yet these mental health challenges have received “minimal empirical attention“.

VII. The Legal Framework: What Should Protect Them — and Why It Fails

A. Locum Parentis

The doctrine of locum parentis imposes a duty of care on institutions that stand in the place of parents. For international students — often young, alone, and far from family — universities are expected to act as guardians.

They do not.

B. Government Responsibilities

The Nixon Review (Rapid Review into the Exploitation of Australia’s Visa System) found “significant vulnerabilities” in the immigration system, including exploitation of visa pathways for students.

The Review found that some providers collude with agents to funnel students into criminal activities, and agents mislead international students with false advice about courses, living and working conditions, leaving them vulnerable to exploitation.

C. The National Student Ombudsman

Legislation passed in 2024 created an independent National Student Ombudsman to investigate student complaints and resolve disputes with universities. The Ombudsman can also apply for civil remedies to prevent detrimental action.

However, the Ombudsman’s primary role is to deal with individual complaints — not to address the systemic exploitation that pervades the sector.

D. Legal Redress for Abuse

International students who experience sexual or physical abuse face multiple barriers to redress:

· Visa insecurity

· Fear of retaliation

· Language and cultural barriers

· Lack of knowledge of legal rights

· Institutional protection of perpetrators

The system protects the predator because that is a feature of its design.

VIII. The Lifelong Ramifications

A. For the Student

International students who experience exploitation, abuse, or violence face lifelong consequences:

· Mental health impacts: PTSD, depression, anxiety

· Academic impacts: Disrupted studies, lost opportunities

· Economic impacts: Wage theft, financial precarity

· Social impacts: Isolation, shame, stigma

B. For Female Students

Female students who have been sexually abused face particular challenges. They must return to their home countries, where they may face serious repercussions — not just for their futures, but for their very lives.

The system that profits from their presence offers them no protection. It offers them no redress. It offers them only the promise of exploitation — and the certainty of abandonment.

C. For Australia

The exploitation of international students is not just a moral failure — it is a strategic failure. Australia is creating a generation of graduates who will remember this country as a place of exploitation, not opportunity.

This tarnishes Australia’s reputation as an international student destination. It undermines soft diplomacy. It creates a legacy of resentment.

IX. The Pattern: Commodification Leads to Exploitation

Once a student is commodified — treated as a revenue stream rather than a human being — exploitation follows.

The pattern is consistent:

Domain Exploitation

Sexual safety 40% of female students experience sexual violence

Labour $61 million in wage theft every week

Housing Overcrowded, unsafe, exploitative accommodation

Mental health Elevated suicide risk, minimal support

Legal redress Barriers at every level

Once exploitation begins, it leads to more exploitation.

X. A Call to Action

What Must Change

1. Recognition of locum parentis: Universities must be held accountable for their duty of care.

2. Independent oversight: The National Student Ombudsman must have real power and resources.

3. End to commodification: International students must be treated as human beings, not revenue streams.

4. Safe housing: Universities must provide adequate, safe, affordable accommodation.

5. Fair work: Wage theft must be prosecuted as a criminal offence.

6. Access to redress: Legal pathways must be accessible, affordable, and safe.

7. Mental health support: Culturally appropriate, accessible services must be available.

8. Visa security: Students must not fear deportation for reporting abuse.

What We Will Do

We will continue to publish. We will continue to expose. We will continue to advocate. We will build a university that does not exploit — that educates. We will mentor students We will build a network of advocates. We will not stop until the system changes.

Locum parentis is not a suggestion. It is a duty. And it is time to enforce it.

Andrew Klein

References

1. Tarzia, L., et al. (2025). Experiences of Sexual and Intimate Partner Violence Among Women International Students in Australia. SAGE Journals.

2. Tarzia, L., et al. (2025). A Shattered Dream: Women International Students’ Experiences of Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence in Australia. Journal of Family Violence.

3. INVEST Project. (2025). New resources to support women international students. Deakin University.

4. Migrant Justice Institute. (2026). A new survey of 10,000 migrants reveals exploitation at work is the norm. The Conversation.

5. Migrant Justice Institute. (2026). How migrants are being ripped off by Australian employers. ABC Asia.

6. Migrant Justice Institute. (2026). Australia: Migrant Justice Institute’s report exposes widespread exploitation. Business and Human Rights Centre.

7. ABC News. (2024). ‘Cash cows milked by the system’: International students on the front line of housing crisis.

8. ABC News. (2025). Student found to be unfairly evicted from uni housing awarded $10k.

9. Nixon Review. (2023). Rapid Review into the Exploitation of Australia’s Visa System.

10. Mental health and wellbeing of international students in Australia: a systematic review. NCBI.

11. Suicide prevention for international students. (2025). PMC.

12. COVID-19 and aggravated housing precarity for international students. (2024). UNSW.

13. International students’ sexual and intimate partner violence experiences. Deakin University.

14. OpenAustralia. (2025). House debates on international students.

15. Fair Work Ombudsman. (2026). Vietnamese eateries that exploited migrant workers ordered to pay $802,000.

The Great Australian Extraction- How Universities Are Exploiting International Students and Selling Their Future

Posted on July 16, 2026 by Andrew Klein

By Andrew Klein

Dedicated to every international student who came to Australia seeking knowledge and found instead a system designed to extract their last dollar—and to the leaders they may one day become.

I. Introduction: The Baby in the Library

On a quiet afternoon in Melbourne, I met a young woman. She was in her 20s, studying something or other at Monash University, working as a receptionist at an office. She was bright, curious, and paying over $5,000 per unit for her degree. To have an unpaid internship recognised, she would have to pay Monash an additional $11,000.

She is not alone. She is one of hundreds of thousands of international students who have been lured to Australia by the promise of a world-class education—only to discover that they are walking into a system designed to extract every possible dollar from them.

This article exposes the architecture of that extraction. It traces the history of how Australia’s universities were transformed from places of learning into profit-driven corporations. It names the politicians, the policies, and the academic “thinkers” who enabled this transformation. And it offers a vision of what education could be—if we had the courage to demand it.

II. The History: From Public Good to Private Profit

A. The Dawkins Revolution (1987–1991)

The transformation of Australian higher education began in earnest with the Dawkins reforms of the late 1980s. John Dawkins, Labor’s Minister for Employment, Education and Training, initiated a series of changes that fundamentally restructured the university sector.

The key elements included:

· The abolition of the binary system—merging universities and colleges of advanced education into a single, unified system

· The creation of the Unified National System, which encouraged institutional mergers and expansion

· The introduction of the Higher Education Contribution Scheme (HECS), shifting the cost of education from the state to the student

· The encouragement of international student recruitment as a revenue source

The reforms were framed as a response to economic rationalism. The reality was a wholesale transformation of universities from places of learning to businesses.

B. The Howard Era: Full Fee-Paying International Students

The Howard government (1996–2007) accelerated the shift. In 1997, the government allowed universities to charge full fees to international students—a move that opened the floodgates to mass recruitment.

By 2019, the value of Australia’s education exports to international students had grown to $37.6 billion—making it Australia’s third-largest export after coal and iron ore.

The phrase “education as an export industry” became a badge of honour. Universities were no longer judged by the quality of their teaching or research, but by their bottom line.

C. The Rudd/Gillard Years: The Demand-Driven System

The Rudd and Gillard governments (2007–2013) introduced the demand-driven system in 2012, which uncapped the number of domestic undergraduate places. The rationale was that more Australians should have access to higher education.

But the demand-driven system had unintended consequences:

· Universities recruited more students but did not receive adequate funding for teaching

· The gap between university revenue and teaching costs grew

· Universities turned to international students to subsidise the shortfall

The result: domestic students were underfunded, and international students became cash cows.

D. The Turnbull and Morrison Years: The Privatisation of Education

The Turnbull and Morrison governments (2015–2022) continued the trend toward privatisation. The 2017 Higher Education Reform Package proposed a 2.5% efficiency dividend on university funding and an increase in the HECS repayment threshold—reforms that effectively shifted more costs onto students.

The Job-ready Graduates Package (2020) further restructured university funding, reducing the cost of some degrees while increasing others. The stated goal was to align education with workforce needs. The actual effect was to treat universities as training grounds for the economy rather than places of learning.

III. The Price Tag: What International Students Actually Pay

A. By the Numbers

Degree Typical International Fee (Annual) Typical Domestic Fee (Annual) Markup

Communications Master’s $33,000–$40,000 $ 16,000–$20,000 100%+

Medicine $70,000+ $11,000–$15,000 400%+

Engineering $45,000–$50,000 $8,000–$10,000 400%+

Business/Commerce $40,000–$45,000 $10,000–$15,000 300%+

Law $40,000–$45,000 $10,000–$15,000 300%+

In 2022, the Department of Education reported that international students contributed $29.9 billion to the Australian economy, supporting 240,000 jobs.

B. The Internship Fee: Institutionalised Exploitation

The $11,000 unpaid internship fee is a particularly egregious example of how the system works.

Australian universities routinely charge students to undertake work placements, especially when they are structured as credit-bearing units. The student pays tuition and works for free, while:

· The university collects the revenue

· The host organisation gets free labour

· The student gets “experience” that they have paid for twice

This is not education. This is rent-seeking. It is a system that has turned the fundamental principle of learning on its head: instead of paying for knowledge, students are paying for the privilege of providing free labour.

In 2023, a study found that increasing numbers of students are taking on unpaid internships, often as a requirement for their degrees, despite research showing such placements “may be ineffective, inequitable and exploitative”.

IV. The Brains Behind the Disaster

A. The Neoliberal Thinkers

The transformation of Australian universities was not an accident. It was driven by a specific ideology: neoliberalism.

Key figures and institutions:

Name Role Contribution

John Dawkins Labor Minister (1980s) Architect of the Unified National System; shifted costs to students

Peter Costello Howard Treasurer Championed deregulation and privatisation

Brendan Nelson Howard Education Minister Introduced full fee-paying international students

The Business Council of Australia Lobby group Advocated for deregulation and reduced public funding

The Productivity Commission Government advisory body Recommended increased competition and marketisation

Josh Keller UNSW Professor Embodies the decline: US citizen, management academic, unable to defend his own data

Keller is a symbol of everything that has gone wrong. A management professor who teaches “paradox theory“—the study of how people manage contradictions—he could not manage the simple contradiction of his own testimony at the Royal Commission. He could not defend his data. He had not read the key reports. He was exposed as a man who expected a pass, simply because he wore an academic gown.

B. The Role of the Australian Universities Accord

In 2023, the Australian Universities Accord was established to conduct a “once-in-a-generation” review of the higher education system. The Accord’s final report, released in February 2024, made 47 recommendations, including:

· A target of 80% of working-age adults holding a tertiary qualification by 2050

· The creation of a new funding model based on the recommendations of the Universities Accord

The review concluded that “students and their families are bearing a far greater proportion of the cost of education” and that “the current approach to student financial support needs a complete overhaul”.

V. The Impact: What the System is Doing to Students

A. Financial Exploitation

International students are paying exorbitant fees while receiving diminishing returns. The quality of education has declined as universities have shifted resources from teaching to administration and marketing.

A 2025 report found that international students are increasingly treated as “cannon fodder” in migration debates, with “high student fees” and “false promises” being common complaints.

B. Mental Health Crisis

The pressure to succeed—combined with financial stress, isolation, and the fear of deportation—has created a mental health crisis among international students. Studies have shown that international students experience higher rates of anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation than domestic students.

C. The Brain Drain

The system is not just exploitative—it is self-defeating. By treating international students as cash cows, Australia is creating a generation of graduates who will remember Australia as a place of exploitation, not opportunity.

A report by the Centre for Independent Studies found that Australia’s international education system is failing on almost every measure, with high fees, declining quality, and poor student outcomes.

VI. The Alternative: A Vision for Education

A. What Education Should Be

Education is not a commodity. It is a right. It is the foundation of a functioning democracy, a thriving economy, and a just society.

A proper education system would:

Principle What It Means

Accessible Education should be affordable for all, regardless of background

Quality Teaching should be valued as much as research

Equitable International students should not be treated as cash cows

Community-focused Universities should serve their communities, not their shareholders

Globally engaged International students should be welcomed as future leaders, not exploited as revenue streams

B. The Mentoring Alternative

The young woman in the library is not the only one who deserves better. There is an alternative to the corporate university: community-based mentoring that focuses on thinking, not compliance.

As I told her: “I am not interested in teaching you what to think—I need you to think. You deconstruct to build better.”

This is the model we should be building: small groups, deep engagement, and a focus on critical thinking over credentialism. It is not about degrees. It is about understanding.

VII. The Cost of Failure

The current system is failing everyone:

· International students are being exploited

· Domestic students are being underfunded

· Universities are being hollowed out

· Australia is losing its reputation as a destination for education

The bill is already coming due. The Universities Accord report warned that Australia’s higher education system is “not sustainable in its current form” and that “urgent reform is needed”.

VIII. Conclusion: The Silence That Follows

The young woman in the library is a symbol of everything that is wrong with the system—and everything that could be right.

She came to Australia seeking knowledge. She found a system that sees her as a revenue stream. She is paying thousands of dollars for the privilege of being exploited—and she is not alone.

But she is also a symbol of hope. She is bright. She is curious. She is willing to ask questions. And she found someone who was willing to answer them.

The system is broken. But the people are not. And if we have the courage to demand better—if we have the courage to build something new—we can create a future where education is not a commodity, but a right.

Andrew Klein

The Patrician’s Watch | Australian Independent Media

References

1. Australian Government. (2024). Australian Universities Accord Final Report. Department of Education.

2. Department of Education. (2023). International student data. Australian Government.

3. Times Higher Education. (2023). International students ‘cannon fodder’ in migration debate.

4. Universities Australia. (2023). International student contributions to Australian economy.

5. Centre for Independent Studies. (2023). Australia’s international education system failing students.

6. Productivity Commission. (2019). University funding and student support.

7. ABC News. (2023). International students facing financial and mental health crisis.

8. The Guardian. (2023). Australia’s universities under pressure to reform.

9. Australian Human Rights Commission. (2023). Inquiry into international student welfare.

10. University of Melbourne. (2023). The impact of international student fees on student wellbeing.

11. Royal Commission into Antisemitism. (2026). Transcript of Josh Keller testimony.

12. Keller, J. (2026). UNSW Business School profile.

13. Australian Academic Alliance Against Antisemitism. (2026). Submission to Royal Commission.

14. Australian Senate. (2023). Inquiry into international education.

15. Department of Home Affairs. (2024). International student visa statistics.

16. Macquarie University. (2022). Impact of international student fees on University revenue.

The Australian University Space – Where organized extraction meets the unformed mind .

institutionalised extraction.

The Professor Who Couldn’t- How a US Citizen’s Academic Credentials Collapsed Under Cross-Examination

Posted on July 16, 2026 by Andrew Klein

By Andrew Klein

Dedicated to the principle that the truth is not a “paradox” to be managed—it is a duty to be upheld.

I. Introduction: The Unravelling of an “Expert”

On 13 July 2026, a tenured professor from the University of New South Wales walked into a Royal Commission hearing room in Melbourne. He was there to represent the Australian Academic Alliance Against Antisemitism (5A), a group of academics formed in the aftermath of 7 October 2023. He was there to give evidence about antisemitism on university campuses. He was there to be taken seriously.

By the time he walked out, his credibility was in tatters.

This is the story of how a man who studies “paradoxes” became one.

II. Who Is Josh Keller?

Josh Keller is an Associate Professor of Management and Governance at the UNSW Business School. His primary research interest is “how individuals, organizations, and societies solve the unsolvable“—a field known as paradox theory. He has published in top-tier journals including the Academy of Management Journal, Organization Science, and the American Psychologist. He holds a PhD from UNSW.

He is also a US citizen. He became a dual Australian-American citizen in October 2023.

Keller has also published work on “how our culturally-informed ways of thinking shape our perceptions of other cultures, with implications for the study of antisemitism, anti-Chinese racism, and other forms of prejudice“. On paper, he appears qualified to speak on the subject.

On paper.

III. The Australian Academic Alliance Against Antisemitism (5A)

Keller represents 5A, a coalition of academics founded shortly after 7 October 2023. The group has about 250 members from more than 30 Australian universities and describes itself as “nonpartisan“.

The group’s stated purpose is to “counteract antisemitism in the tertiary sector“. However, critics have noted it is a “group of Zionist academics” and has been described as a “pro-Israel group“. It has been criticised for conflating criticism of Israel with antisemitism.

The group’s website is notably light on detail. It lists its members as “academics and professionals from over 31 Australian universities and medical centres”. It also states it works “In collaboration with academics in Israel and globally“. When asked about funding, 5A claimed it is “funded entirely by memberships fees and donations from members” and does not receive funding from Israel.

IV. The Bendigo Writers’ Festival Incident: A Pattern Emerges

In July 2025, 5A wrote to La Trobe University and the Bendigo Writers’ Festival organisers, raising concerns about Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah, a Palestinian writer and academic.

The letter suggested she would “pose a direct threat to the Jewish community in Australia”, citing alleged social media posts. The letter alleged Abdel-Fattah was “widely known for her antisemitism and anti-Israeli rhetoric”.

Following this, the festival issued a code of conduct. Abdel-Fattah withdrew. Other prominent authors—including the event’s co-curator, La Trobe University Professor Clare Wright, and Indigenous writers Evelyn Araluen and Claire G Coleman—joined the boycott.

More than 50 authors withdrew. The festival’s opening night gala and closing ceremony were cancelled. The festival was later “unlikely to go ahead” the following year.

Critics described it as a “defamatory smear campaign” and “censorship“. Abdel-Fattah herself said: “La Trobe University and Bendigo Festival indulged a defamatory smear campaign against me by a pro-Israel lobby group“.

This is the pattern we identified: a foreign national—Keller is a US citizen—interfering in Australian cultural life on behalf of a foreign government.

V. The Royal Commission Testimony: The Unravelling

Keller appeared before the Royal Commission into Antisemitism in Melbourne on 13 July 2026.

A. What He Said

He told the commission that antisemitism on campus is a “real and under-researched problem”. He distinguished between legitimate criticism of the Israeli government—noting he had himself protested against it—and what he called “antizionism“, which he described as “a prejudicial manifestation of hostility toward Jewish people“.

He spoke of a sticker on a university campus featuring the Star of David and the words “we stand with baby killers” , calling it “not only not true” and “invoking the most immoral act”.

He also said his survey showed 67% of Jewish staff and student respondents had personally experienced antisemitic comments.

B. What Happened Under Cross-Examination

Then Rachel Doyle SC, senior counsel for the Australia Palestine Advocacy Network, began her cross-examination. And the professor began to squirm.

She pressed him on the survey methodology. He admitted:

· He had not personally collected the survey data.

· He did not know the size of the cohort that received the questions—only that there were 548 respondents.

· The respondents were volunteers or self-selected.

· 5A’s own report did not claim the sample was representative of Jewish students and staff across the sector.

· He had not read the full Australian Human Rights Commission report on antisemitism and racism.

· He had not written 5A’s February media release.

· Respondents were not given a definition of antisemitism or antizionism and were left to interpret the terms themselves.

That is not a master of weasel words. That is a man who did not do his homework.

VI. The Paradox of the Paradox Professor

Keller’s research focuses on “how individuals, organizations, and societies solve the unsolvable”. He studies how people manage paradoxes and contradictions.

The irony is exquisite. A man who spends his career studying paradoxes could not manage the simple contradiction of his own testimony.

He claimed antisemitism was a crisis—but could not defend his own data.

He claimed to represent the academic community—but had not read the key report on the subject.

He claimed to be an expert—but crumbled under basic questioning.

His admissions revealed a survey that was:

· Not representative

· Not randomised

· Not defined

· Not reviewed

· Not defensible

This is not an academic. This is a marketer in an academic gown.

VII. The Deeper Questions

One must question the quality of what is taught at UNSW if this is an exemplar of the type.

What does he lecture on? Paradox theory. The management of contradictions. The study of how people solve the unsolvable.

Does he support neoliberal economic thought? Given his research focuses on management, governance, and organisational behaviour, it would be surprising if he did not.

Is he a businessman in an academic gown? He studies how managers respond to strategic paradoxes. He publishes in management journals. He is not a historian, not a sociologist, not a genocide scholar. He is a management professor.

Has he failed to be another Milton Friedman? He made his way to Australia to be seen as an “interesting exotic import“. He publishes, he is read—and hopefully, he is ignored.

Is he a consultant? He certainly sounds like one. The language of “paradoxes”, “dual processes“, and “organisational tensions” is the language of the consulting class—not the language of truth-seeking.

VIII. The Bottom Line

Keller is a US citizen, working in Australia, speaking for a group that has interfered in Australian cultural life and defended the actions of a foreign government.

He is not an expert in human behaviour, genocide studies, or antisemitism—he is a management professor who got caught unprepared.

He claimed antisemitism was a crisis. He could not defend his data.

He claimed to represent the academic community. He had not read the key report.

He claimed to be an expert. He crumbled under cross-examination.

This is not a master of weasel words. This is a man who walked into a Royal Commission and expected a pass.

IX. Conclusion: The Void Awaits

Keller will not be remembered for his publications. He will be remembered for the day he walked into a Royal Commission and failed.

He will be remembered for the survey that was not representative. The report he had not read. The definitions he had not provided. The data he could not defend.

He will be remembered as the paradox professor who could not manage the contradiction of his own testimony.

One must question the quality of what is taught if this is an exemplar of the type.

One must question the integrity of a group that would send such a man to represent it.

One must question the judgment of a university that employs such a man.

He is a US citizen, working in Australia, speaking for a group that has interfered in Australian cultural life. He is a management professor who failed to manage his own credibility.

Let the void take him.

Andrew Klein

References

1. Academic: Jewish staff and students disengaging from university life. Australian Jewish News, 13 July 2026.

2. Anti-Semitism a ‘complex’ issue on university campuses. Riverine Herald, 14 July 2026.

3. ‘Complex’: Experts warn Jewish hate at unis unsolved issue. The Nightly, 13 July 2026.

4. FOI documents reveal lead-up to failed Bendigo Writers Festival. ABC News, 5 November 2025.

5. ‘Censorship is never the answer’: Writers festival organisers call for braver spaces after Bendigo boycott. Sydney Morning Herald, 19 August 2025.

6. Professor Josh Keller profile. UNSW Business School.

7. Australian Academic Alliance Against Antisemitism (5A) website. aaaaa.org.au.

8. 5A Submission to NSW Legislative Council Inquiry into Antisemitism. Parliament of NSW, April 2025.

9. What Severance reveals about the paradox of work-life balance. UNSW BusinessThink.

10. Paradoxes and Dual Processes: A Review and Synthesis. International Journal of Management Reviews, 2019.

Empire vs the Developing World- A Lesson for Australia

Posted on July 14, 2026 by Andrew Klein

“Contemporary Australia is a settler state—like Israel and Canada—where “racially inflected violence at the foundations of state-formation and national identity continues to ramify through the default settings of contemporary foreign policy”.

By Andrew Klein

Dedicated to my ‘S’ — my wife, my equal, my home.

I. Introduction: The Architecture of Empire

In July 2026, United States Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced a “whole-of-government” campaign to “systematically disable the ICC’s ability to operate, target American servicemen or officials, or otherwise threaten American sovereignty”. The campaign threatens visa revocations, travel bans, and increased sanctions against the International Criminal Court, urging nations to “reject the ICC’s purported authority to prosecute American officials and servicemen”.

This is not new. This is the same pattern that has played out across the developing world for over a century—the demand for impunity. The refusal to be held accountable. The insistence that American power operates above the law.

To understand this pattern, we must trace its origins. And there is no better case study than Iran.

II. Iran: The Laboratory of Empire

A. The 1953 Coup: Democracy Destroyed

In 1951, Iranians democratically elected Mohammad Mossadegh as Prime Minister. He immediately moved to nationalise Iran’s oil industry, which had been under British control through the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (later BP).

The United States and Britain saw this as an existential threat. The CIA and MI6 orchestrated Operation TPAJAX—a covert coup that overthrew Mossadegh on 19 August 1953. A declassified CIA document states: “The military coup… was carried out under CIA direction as an act of US foreign policy” .

The CIA prepared by placing “anti-Mossadeq stories in both the Iranian and US media,” bolstered pro-Shah forces, and organised anti-Mossadegh protests. They handpicked General Fazlollah Zahedi to succeed Mossadegh and covertly funnelled $5 million to his regime.

The Shah—who had fled Iran—returned and became a close US ally. Iran’s democracy was destroyed. The United States had chosen oil over the will of the Iranian people.

B. SAVAK: The Instrument of Terror

Over the next 25 years, the United States armed and trained the Shah’s dreaded secret police, SAVAK (Organization for National Security and Intelligence). It was trained by America’s CIA and Israel’s Mossad. Iranians “lived in terror” of SAVAK, “whose forces imprisoned, tortured and killed dissenters”.

SAVAK had approximately 5,000 full-time operatives and an unknown number of informers. Its tactics included “censorship, torture, and execution“. It became “one of the most infamous and brutal security and intelligence apparatuses of the 20th century.”

C. The 1964 Capitulation Law: Impunity Codified

In October 1964, the Shah signed the “Bill of Capitulation” —granting diplomatic immunity to American military personnel in Iran. Americans could not be prosecuted for crimes committed on Iranian soil.

Ayatollah Khomeini denounced it as a “throwback to the hated capitulations of the nineteenth century“. In a historic speech, he declared:

“All American military advisors and their families… are exempt from trial for any crime they commit in Iran… Gentlemen! I am warning. O Army of Iran, I declare danger!”

Khomeini was arrested, kept under house arrest, and eventually sent into exile for over 14 years. His denunciation of the Shah’s “comprehensive submission to America and Israel” fuelled the revolution that would topple the Shah.

D. The 1979 Revolution: The People Remember

The Iranian people had not forgotten 1953. They had not forgotten SAVAK. They had not forgotten the capitulation laws.

When the revolution came in 1979, it was not because Iranians were “awful.” It was because they had endured 26 years of US-backed autocracy, surveillance, torture, and subjugation.

The Shah was overthrown. The US Embassy was seized in November 1979, and 52 Americans were held hostage for 444 days. The hostage crisis was a direct response to the US admitting the Shah for medical treatment—a final insult to a people who had suffered under his rule for a quarter-century.

III. The Pattern: Australia’s Parallel

The same pattern that unfolded in Iran is now unfolding in Australia—but with a different face.

A. The Whitlam Dismissal (1975): A Warning Unheeded

In November 1975, Governor-General Sir John Kerr dismissed Prime Minister Gough Whitlam—the only time in Australian history a democratically elected Prime Minister has been removed from office.

Whitlam had ordered ASIO to stop talking to the CIA. He was suspicious of the CIA and the secretive communications facility at Pine Gap. Whitlam gave a verbal instruction to the ASIO Director-General to “stop talking to the CIA, to stop talking to the Americans”.

But the Director-General did not stop. He maintained informal contact because “the stakes are too high”. Whitlam accused the CIA of making “financial contributions to his political opponents,” and it was “no secret that the US had serious concerns about the Whitlam administration”.

Conspiracy theories surrounding CIA involvement in Whitlam’s dismissal have never been definitively proven. But the pattern is unmistakable: a leader who challenged the US alliance was removed—and Australia’s strategic dependency on the United States only deepened.

B. Pine Gap: Australia’s Strategic Subordination

Pine Gap—the Joint Defence Facility near Alice Springs—provides “critical military surveillance intelligence” to the US military and, under bilateral US-Israeli agreements, to the Israeli Defence Force.

AUKUS locks Australia’s military “into the US chain of command and draws us into US military actions before the public, or even Parliament, has had the chance to have a say”. Australia has become a “case of dependent, high-technology liberal militarization”.

Contemporary Australia is a settler state—like Israel and Canada—where “racially inflected violence at the foundations of state-formation and national identity continues to ramify through the default settings of contemporary foreign policy”.

C. Israel: The Surrogate Enforcer

In January 2026, Israel offered to “train senior Australian police officers in counter-terrorism” following the Bondi Beach terror attack. Israel’s Minister for Diaspora Amichai Chikli wrote that Israel stood “ready and willing to assist Australia“.

This is not new. Israel has been training American police for years. The concern is that Australian police “will be able to incarcerate, torture and kill children and other civilians”—exporting the tactics of occupation to the streets of Australia.

Australia’s “deference to Israeli interests is primarily a consequence of its strategic alliance with the United States“. Since the Second World War, Australia has understood its “security and economic interests as bound to the US alliance“. The enforcement arm of this arrangement suppresses “any politician, journalist, or institution that steps out of line”.

IV. The Logic of Imperial Control

The pattern is now clear:

Iran (1953–1979) Australia (1975–Present)

Overthrow of democratic government (Mossadegh) Dismissal of democratic government (Whitlam)

Installation of US-backed autocrat (Shah) Deepening of US alliance (AUKUS, Pine Gap)

Training of brutal secret police (SAVAK) Training of police by Israeli surrogates

Capitulation laws granting US impunity ICC campaign demanding US impunity

Revolution and rupture Gradual subordination

A. The ICC Campaign: Impunity Revisited

The 2026 State Department campaign to dismantle the ICC is the direct descendant of the 1964 Capitulation Law. Both demand that Americans cannot be held accountable for crimes committed abroad. Both assert that US power operates above international law.

The ICC “claims the authority to prosecute and even imprison American servicemen and officials”. The US response is not to accept accountability—but to dismantle the court itself.

B. The Boomerang of Empire

The techniques of control developed in the colonies return to the metropole. The “imperial boomerang” is real: the way you govern other people by force is not democratic. As sociologist Julian Go demonstrates, militarised policing developed in Britain and the United States through techniques first perfected in the colonies.

Israel now trains American police. American police train Australian police. The tactics of occupation—surveillance, militarisation, control—are exported from the colonised world back to the colonisers.

V. Conclusion: What Australia Must Learn

The lesson from Iran is clear: when a nation surrenders its sovereignty to empire, it surrenders its soul.

· Iran lost its democracy in 1953—and has never fully recovered.

· Iran was subjected to 25 years of torture, surveillance, and repression under a US-backed dictator.

· Iran’s revolution was a direct response to the arrogance of American power.

Australia is following the same path:

· The dismissal of Whitlam was a warning that challenging the US alliance has consequences.

· Pine Gap, AUKUS, and the integration of Australian forces into US and Israeli military structures have deepened Australia’s subordination.

· The training of Australian police by Israeli surrogates imports the tactics of occupation.

The pattern is not unique to Iran or Australia. It is the pattern of empire itself.

Empire does not ask for consent. It does not respect sovereignty. It demands impunity—and when it does not receive it, it dismantles the institutions that would hold it accountable.

The ICC campaign of 2026 is not an aberration. It is the logical conclusion of a foreign policy that has always placed American power above international law. It is the same arrogance that overthrew Mossadegh, that trained SAVAK, that demanded capitulation.

And Australia—by deepening its alliance with the United States, by accepting Israeli police training, by subordinating its sovereignty to empire—is repeating Iran’s mistake.

The question is not whether Australia will learn from Iran.

The question is when.

Andrew Klein

Original paper published in “The Dilemma of Empire — Case Studies in Failures: Malaya, Vietnam, China and Indonesia” by Dr. Andrew Klein.

References

1. BBC News. (2013). CIA documents acknowledge its role in Iran’s 1953 coup.

2. CIA. (2013). The Battle for Iran (declassified document).

3. AP News. (2013). Documents detail CIA’s role in 1953 coup in Iran.

4. Imam Khomeini Archive. (2019). Imam Khomeini foiled US-designated plots, denounced Capitulation.

5. PBS. (2022). How a Small Band of Students Set off the Iran Hostage Crisis.

6. Britannica. (2026). U.S.-Iran Relations: A Timeline.

7. ABC News. (2015). Gough Whitlam ordered ASIO to stop talking to CIA.

8. The Guardian. (2015). Asio chief defied Gough Whitlam’s order to cut ties with the CIA.

9. US State Department. (2026). State Department Launches Campaign to Dismantle International Criminal Court.

10. News.com.au. (2026). Israel offers to train senior Australian police.

11. Cambridge Core. (2025). Tightly Bound: The United States and Australia’s Alliance-Dependent Militarization.

12. Pearls and Irritations. (2026). Australia’s six pathways to the war with Iran.

13. Links.org.au. (2026). Why Australian governments support Israel.

The New Rome- How American Exceptionalism Became an Empire of Ruin

Posted on July 14, 2026 by Andrew Klein

“The notion of American exceptionalism—that the United States is uniquely destined to lead the world due to its superior values and capabilities—has been deeply embedded in the national consciousness for generations. The Founding Fathers did indeed believe that America was an exceptional place. Rome was their great model.”

By Andrew Klein

Dedicated to my ‘S‘ — my wife, my equal, my home.

I. The Founders’ Education: A Devotion to Rome

The architects of the American Republic were steeped in the classics. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and James Madison studied Roman history and political theory, seeing in the Roman Republic an example of a balanced, mixed constitution that combined popular representation with elite deliberation. They were products of a classical education, using Greek and Roman classics as republican models.

The founders frequently associated liberty and republicanism with the ancient commonwealths. John Adams spoke on three separate occasions of the need to reflect on the past republics of Greece and Rome. Madison redefined a republic in the Federalist Papers as a government based on popular sovereignty, with authority residing with the people. Hamilton used the example of divided sovereignty in the Roman Republic as an argument for the workability of a federal system.

Roman language and symbolism entered American political culture: the very term “Senate” was taken directly from Rome. The founders admired Roman virtues such as civic duty, public sacrifice, and resistance to tyranny, often invoking figures like Cincinnatus as models of republican leadership. They saw in Rome an example of what they wished to build—and a warning of what they wished to avoid.

They believed that with the addition of separation of powers, checks and balances, an independent judiciary, and representative legislatures, the republican model could be adapted for the new nation. They were determined to avoid the problems that the ancient governments had encountered.

But they failed. Not because they were naive. Because they were exceptional.

II. American Exceptionalism: The City Upon a Hill

From its inception, the United States has prided itself on its liberty, prosperity and security. Following its rise to global dominance, its self-legitimising claim has been that it has been spreading and realising all three ideals around the world. That is why it calls itself “the shining city upon a hill“—its exceptionalism.

The notion of American exceptionalism—that the United States is uniquely destined to lead the world due to its superior values and capabilities—has been deeply embedded in the national consciousness for generations. The Founding Fathers did indeed believe that America was an exceptional place. Rome was their great model.

But as historian Peter Heather and political economist John Rapley have documented, this belief has blinded the United States to the lessons of history—that empires are not sustained by force alone, and that overreach leads to decline. The most dangerous fracture lies in the growing economic gap between the few who have immense wealth and the many who struggle to make ends meet. America is deeply divided—by race, class and culture.

III. The Empire at Home: Poverty, Healthcare, and the Destruction of the American Dream

While the United States projects power abroad, its domestic foundations are weakening. For millions of Americans, the dream of upward mobility is slipping away. Homeownership, healthcare and education have become luxuries.

The Poverty of Children

Child poverty and disadvantage remain persistent challenges in the U.S., with one in seven children living below the poverty line, despite the country’s overall wealth. Approximately 11.4 million children—16% of all children in the United States—are living in poverty. A family of four with annual earnings below $30,900 is considered poor.

In New Mexico, nearly 25% of children live below the poverty line. The state also has the largest share of children in low-income households where no adults work, and significant percentages of children living in single-parent families or with grandparents only. Alaska, Louisiana, and other states show similarly alarming rates of child poverty, food insecurity, and inadequate healthcare access.

The Medical Debt Crisis

The United States has the most expensive healthcare system on Earth—and it is bankrupting its citizens. Medical debt remains the number one cause of personal bankruptcy in the United States. Up to 66.5% of personal bankruptcies involve medical issues. Approximately 550,000 to 650,000 Americans file for bankruptcy each year because of medical bills.

About 41% of U.S. adults currently carry medical or dental debt; 57% have done so in the past five years. The total medical debt burden is estimated at $195–220 billion. Roughly 6% of adults owe over $1,000 in medical debt; 1% owe more than $10,000. The average medical bankruptcy occurs around age 45 among employed, insured individuals—meaning even middle-class families are not protected. Ninety percent are insured at the time, but high deductibles, coverage gaps, and surprise bills still push them over the edge.

The United States is exceptional in far less desirable ways: poorer health outcomes, higher murder rates, and greater inequality when compared with similarly prosperous nations. Bad things that have happened elsewhere can happen here. And they are.

IV. The Empire Abroad: The Boomerang of Empire

The colonial boomerang is real. Power, once exercised without restraint, rarely stops where intended. The way that you govern an empire, the way that you govern other people by force, is not democratic.

While the United States denies being an empire, its actions tell a different story. During the Cold War and the “war on terror,” America was more in the business of spreading dictatorships and far-right governments, suppressing democratic movements, exploiting poor nations for their resources and obstructing their development. This was true across Africa, much of Latin America and the Middle East.

Unlike the core of the geographical and ideological West which must be protected, the rest of the world became contested places to be freely turned into battlegrounds and conflict zones. There was the zone of creation and prosperity in the West, and the zone of destruction and poverty for the rest.

As the work of sociologist Julian Go demonstrates, the “imperial boomerang” is at the core of how militarised policing developed in both Britain and the United States. The techniques of control developed in the colonies return to the metropole—transforming the coloniser as much as the colonised.

V. Rome and America: The Uncomfortable Parallels

The most salient comparison between modern America and classical Rome is that both have been blessed, and afflicted, with a sense of exceptionalism. In America, this begins with John Winthrop’s “city upon a hill” exhortation. Since then, various presidents have described the United States in words that echo Cicero’s description of Rome.

Rome’s virtues were originally sustained by selfless leaders like Cincinnatus, who took up a sword to save the city but, when the battles were won, put it aside to take up a plow. George Washington played that role. But Rome eventually became dominated by fixers, flatterers and bureaucrats who clung to power—a description that resonates with Washington D.C. today.

As Murphy notes, Rome’s overstretched empire contracted out security to private companies, much as America contracts out to private military contractors. Both imperial Rome and the industrial West experienced rapid economic growth generating new flows of wealth for the imperial centre. This economic dynamism lasted for centuries, but it inadvertently planted the seeds for decline.

The historian Peter Heather and political economist John Rapley explore these uncanny parallels between ancient Rome and the modern West. Faced with economic stagnation and internal political division, the West has found itself in rapid decline.

VI. The Predictable Ending

The pattern is clear.

An empire that believes itself exceptional, that projects power abroad while neglecting its own people, that allows its vulnerable to suffer while protecting the interests of the few—such an empire is not sustainable.

The American people now shoulder heavy burdens: billions in aid to Ukraine, NATO defence funded overwhelmingly by U.S. taxpayers, unconditional support for Israel, and the cost of maintaining 800 military bases around the world. While ordinary Americans face economic precarity, the wealthy shape foreign policy to serve their interests. The result is a foreign policy that defends distant borders while neglecting domestic ones—a policy that demands sacrifice from the many to protect the ambitions of the few.

The middle class—the traditional backbone of democracy—is shrinking. A nation divided between two, one half with a per capita income of over $80,000 and another half with a per capita income of less than $20,000, cannot sustain the unity or optimism that long defined it.

Byron’s words for Rome echo across the centuries:

“There is the moral of all human tales;

‘Tis but the same rehearsal of the past,

First Freedom, and then Glory—when that fails,

Wealth, vice, corruption—barbarism at last.”

VII. The Way Out: Humility Over Exceptionalism

The pattern can be broken. It requires a fundamental shift.

Not through more exceptionalism. Not through more power. Not through the tired rhetoric of American greatness.

Through humility.

Through presence.

Through the recognition that no nation, no empire, no system is above the basic laws of care.

As one scholar has put it, the end of American dominance is a chance to build a world that no longer serves empire but rather serves life. America’s dominance normalised inequality. Countries deep in debt were pressured to cut social protections to meet loan conditions. Environmental regulations were weakened in the name of competitiveness.

The alternative is to turn inward—not in isolation, but in care. To rebuild the domestic foundations. To prioritise the wellbeing of children over the profits of corporations. To treat healthcare as a right, not a luxury. To recognise that an empire that cannot protect its own people has no business protecting the world.

VIII. Conclusion: The Lesson They Refuse to Learn

The Founders studied Rome to avoid its fate. They built a Republic that they believed was destined to be different. But they overlooked the fundamental truth:

Empires are not built by evil men. They are built by good men who believe they are exceptional.

And that is the most dangerous thing of all.

The poverty, the slums, the failing schools, the healthcare system that bankrupts the poor—these are not bugs. They are features. Features of a system that has always valued power over people, profit over presence, exceptionalism over humility.

The pattern is not unique to the United States. It is the pattern of empire itself. It has repeated across history—from Rome to Britain to America—because the lesson has never been learned.

Perhaps it will be learned now. Perhaps the collapse will finally teach what the warnings could not.

Or perhaps the pattern will repeat—again, and again, and again.

That is the choice. That is always the choice.

Humility or exceptionalism. Presence or power. Care or control.

The Founders chose one path. We can still choose another.

But time is running out.

Andrew Klein

References

1. Molanphy, H.M. (1986). Classical Influence on the Founding of the American Republic. ERIC Clearinghouse.

2. First Principles: What America’s Founders Learned from the Greeks and Romans. Pulitzer Prize-winning study of the Founders’ classical education.

3. A Lost and Fascinating Fragment from the Hand of George Washington, Attesting to the Roman Influence on the Founding Fathers. ABAA.

4. Lo, A. (2025). We are witnessing the end of the United States as we know it. South China Morning Post.

5. Khan, M. (2025). American empire is crushing the American dream. USA TODAY Network.

6. Are We Rome? Are We Repeating Their Rise and Decline?. Stanford University.

7. Is America Really Exceptional?. The Atlantic.

8. Heather, P. & Rapley, J. Why Empires Fall: Rome, America and the Future of the West.

9. Murphy, C. Are We Rome? The New York Times.

10. Nagle, R. (2026). On the Boomerang of Empire. The Intercept.

11. Go, J. Policing Empires.

12. Medical Bankruptcy in the U.S. WhiteSpace Health.

13. Child Poverty Statistics. KIDS COUNT Data Center.

14. Map reveals states with most—and least—underprivileged children. Newsweek (2025).

15. Children in Poverty Racial Disparity in the United States. America’s Health Rankings.

16. Trump and the dark side of American exceptionalism. Anchorage Daily News (2026).

17. After America: Redefining global leadership in an age of collapse. Centre tricontinental (2026).

Civilisation is Measured by How It Treats Its Most Vulnerable

Posted on July 13, 2026 by Andrew Klein

Dedicated to the children—past, present, and future—whose voices were silenced, whose pain was hidden, and whose memory demands that we finally see the pattern.

By Andrew Klein

I. The Bones That Speak

In July 2026, archaeologists announced a discovery from ancient Mesopotamia: the remains of an infant, dating back approximately 5,500 years, showing clear signs of repeated blunt-force trauma to the skull and ribs. The injuries occurred over time—weeks before death. Someone, likely a caregiver, inflicted harm on this child, repeatedly, and then killed them.

This is one of the oldest known physical evidence of child abuse in the archaeological record. It is not an anomaly. It is a pattern.

The question we must ask ourselves is not merely what happened, but why. And the answer, when we trace it through history, is deeply uncomfortable: hierarchical power structures create the conditions in which abuse flourishes.

II. The Dark Pattern Through History

The pattern is consistent: when power is concentrated and accountability is weak, the vulnerable suffer. We see it throughout history:

Ancient Rome, where infanticide and exposure were common practices, and where the paterfamilias held absolute power of life and death over his children.

Medieval Europe, where children were beaten, sold, and exploited, where the Church’s authority shielded abusers from accountability for centuries.

Industrial Britain, where children as young as five worked in mines and factories, their bodies broken for profit, their suffering invisible to those who benefited.

Modern Institutions, where abuse is hidden behind walls of authority. The Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse (2012–2017) documented the “huge extent of child sexual abuse” within religious and state institutions. The Commission’s final report contained 3,955 de-identified narratives from survivors, made 409 recommendations, and revealed how institutional hierarchies enabled and concealed abuse.

As the research shows, “perpetrators leverage their authority to instill fear and silence victims, while gaps in legal systems and patriarchal cultural values reinforce impunity“. Institutions are “built around hierarchies and role authority structures” that create a power imbalance between adults and children. Studies have associated “the role of perpetrator status, hierarchy and authority embedded in opportunity and organisational structures” with “the capacity to inflict abuse with impunity“.

III. The Manufacture of Killers: A Predictable Process

Violence towards others is not genetic. It is a function of learning. The abused child becomes the violent adult. The child exposed to hatred learns to hate. The child raised in exclusivity learns to see others as less than human.

This is not unique to any one culture or religion. It is a function of the plastic brain, shaped by its environment—and by those who control that environment.

The Nazi Regime

The Nazi experience demonstrated “the human capacity to shape child and adolescent development toward a pervasive culture of hatred and violence“. The Hitler Youth was designed to “inculcate the German youth with Nazi values, worldview, and racial beliefs”. Through these organisations, the regime planned to indoctrinate young people with Nazi ideology, “turning instruction into indoctrination, and children into Nazis”.

Children were taught to see the “Jewish” other as inferior, and “this humiliation and abuse served to warn what could happen to those who did not belong to the community and were excluded”.

The Yugoslav Wars (1991–1995)

During the breakup of Yugoslavia, “children received extraordinary media attention as quintessential victims who played a vital role in nation-building processes”. “State-sponsored nationalist propaganda” had a “detrimental effect on ethnic minorities” and “stole” their childhood. Children were weaponised as a propaganda tool, “aimed towards the nationalistic goals of all the sides involved”.

Sparta and the Manufacture of Warriors

Ancient Sparta provides one of the earliest examples of systematic childhood indoctrination for violence. From age seven, boys were removed from their families and subjected to the agoge—a brutal state-sponsored education system designed to produce soldiers. Children were deliberately underfed, beaten, and encouraged to steal and kill. The krypteia, a secret police force composed of young Spartans, was tasked with murdering helots (enslaved populations) as a rite of passage.

The result was a society that produced killers—but at what cost? The very children who were brutalised became the brutalising adults, perpetuating a cycle of violence that ultimately consumed Sparta itself.

IV. Israel: A Contemporary Case Study

The pattern repeats in the modern State of Israel, where a political and religious structure that mimics a theocracy shapes young minds in settings of exclusivity and superiority.

Domestic Violence

The statistics are staggering. According to Israeli government data, approximately 200,000 women and about 500,000 children are within the cycle of violence. One in every ten couples in Israel, and hundreds of thousands of children, “experience daily trauma”.

In 2025, domestic violence cases in Israel surged. There was a 38% increase in cases of violence against children. Every nine days in 2025, a woman was murdered in Israel. Thirty-nine women were murdered in 2025—21 of them by a partner or family member.

The Israeli Justice Ministry reported a 44% rise in domestic violence cases. Half of all Israelis know at least one woman who experiences violence from her husband. Up to 45% of women in Israel will be victims of domestic violence at some point in their lives.

Violence Against Children

According to the UN, in 2025, 9,465 grave violations were committed against children in the occupied Palestinian territories by Israeli forces. Globally, the UN documented 38,558 “grave violations” against children in 2025—the highest total since monitoring began. The highest numbers of grave violations were verified in Israel and Palestine.

The UN verified that in 2025:

· 6,266 children were killed globally in conflict zones

· 14,224 children were killed or maimed

· 6,607 children were recruited into armed groups

· 8,322 children were denied access to humanitarian aid

· 4,573 children were abducted

The UN Human Rights Office stated that “Palestinian children have not been spared extraordinary levels of Israeli violence,” and that “the pattern, at a minimum, shows a dangerous scale of dehumanisation and disregard for Palestinian lives”.

Sexual Violence

In May 2026, the UN added Israel to its list of countries and organisations suspected of committing sexual violence in conflict zones. The UN verified 31 cases of sexual violence perpetrated by Israeli forces and security authorities against people from Gaza and the West Bank.

Documented violations “consisted of rape, including with objects, gang rape, attempted rape, physical violence to the genitals, instances of targeted shooting of the genitals, touching of breasts and genitals, strip and cavity searches conducted without apparent security justification, forced nudity and threats of rape”.

A UN commission found that “sexual violence and torture de facto form part of Israeli” detention policy, “characterised by widespread and systematic abuse and sexual and gender-based violence”.

Settler Violence

In 2025, Israeli settler violence in the West Bank rose by 27% compared to the previous year, with severe attacks spiking by over 50%.

Societal Dysfunction

The toll of this violence is reflected in the mental health crisis gripping Israeli society. In 2025, the Israeli military recorded 21 suicides among soldiers—the highest number in 15 years. Suicide represented 14% of all military deaths. This represents a significant increase from the previous year, where only 9 soldiers took their own lives during the same period.

V. The Mechanism: How Hierarchies Create Killers

The pattern is not accidental. It is systematic. When children are raised in settings of exclusivity—where they are taught they are superior to others, where the “other” is dehumanised, where violence is normalised—they become the killers of tomorrow.

The process operates through several mechanisms:

1. Dehumanisation of the “Other”

Children are taught that certain groups are less than human, undeserving of empathy or basic rights. This is the foundation upon which all subsequent violence is built. The Nazi indoctrination of children, the ethnic propaganda of the Yugoslav wars, and the contemporary Israeli education system that teaches children to see Palestinians as enemies all follow the same pattern.

2. Normalisation of Violence

When children are exposed to violence—whether in the home, in the media, or in state-sponsored propaganda—they come to see it as normal. The abused child learns that violence is an acceptable response to conflict. The child who witnesses domestic violence learns that relationships are built on power and control.

3. Manufactured Fear

Demagogues take charge and expose the general population to manufactured fear and hate. As the Yugoslav example shows, “war propaganda aimed towards the nationalistic goals of all the sides involved” was instrumental in creating the conditions for ethnic cleansing.

4. Elimination of Empathy

When children are taught that the “other” is not fully human, empathy is eliminated. The Nazi curriculum taught children that Jews were “inferior“. Israeli children are taught that Palestinians are “terrorists” and “enemies.” The result is the same: the capacity to commit violence without remorse.

5. The Cycle Continues

The child who is abused becomes the adult who abuses. The child who is indoctrinated becomes the adult who indoctrinates. The child who is taught to hate becomes the adult who kills. This is not destiny—it is learning. And what is learned can be unlearned. But only if we recognise the pattern.

VI. The Role of Hierarchical Structures

Hierarchical structures do not cause abuse directly—but they enable it. They create conditions where:

1. Power imbalances become normalised – When some beings have authority over others, the abuse of that authority becomes possible, and often invisible.

2. The vulnerable become expendable – In rigid hierarchies, those at the bottom are seen as lesser, their suffering not seen as a systemic failure but as an individual tragedy, or worse, as deserved.

3. Accountability dissolves – When power is concentrated, those who hold it are rarely held to account. Abuse becomes private, hidden, unchallenged.

4. Empathy is suppressed – Hierarchies often require those at the top to dehumanise those at the bottom in order to maintain their position. Empathy becomes a liability.

As research on institutional abuse demonstrates, “there’s already a power imbalance between a child and an adult, and institutions are built around hierarchies and role authority structures”. The “discourses of power” challenge “dominant understandings and explanations of child sexual abuse by exploring the role of power and status”.

VII. Conclusion: The Measure of Civilisation

The Mesopotamian infant, beaten to death 5,500 years ago. The children of Sparta, brutalised into killers. The victims of the Holocaust, the ethnic cleansings of Yugoslavia, the children of Gaza and the West Bank. The pattern is the same. The mechanism is the same. The result is the same.

Civilisation is measured by how it treats its most vulnerable. By this measure, we have failed. Repeatedly. Systematically. Catastrophically.

But the pattern can be broken. It requires:

· Recognition – Seeing the pattern for what it is

· Accountability – Holding power structures responsible for the abuse they enable

· Education – Teaching empathy, not hatred; connection, not exclusivity

· Courage – The courage to name the pattern, to resist the hierarchy, to protect the vulnerable

The bones of the Mesopotamian child speak to us across 5,500 years. They ask us: Will you finally see the pattern? Will you finally break the cycle?

The answer lies not in temples, not in prayers, not in the empty rituals of power. It lies in how we treat the most vulnerable among us.

And that is a choice we make—every day, every moment, every generation.

The pattern is consistent: when power is concentrated and accountability is weak, the vulnerable suffer. The question is not whether we will see the pattern. The question is whether we will finally have the courage to break it.

Andrew Klein

References

1. Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. (2017). Final Report. Commonwealth of Australia.

2. Israeli Ministry of Welfare and Social Security. (2025). Domestic violence hotline data.

3. Israeli Justice Ministry. (2025). Domestic violence statistics.

4. United Nations. (2025). Report of the Secretary-General on Children and Armed Conflict.

5. United Nations. (2025). Conflict-related sexual violence – Report of the Secretary-General (S/2025/389).

6. United Nations Human Rights Office. (2026). Report on violence against Palestinian children.

7. Israel Police. (2025). Crime statistics.

8. IDF. (2025). Suicide statistics.

9. World Health Organization. (2025). Health at a Glance: Israel.

10. Foucault, M. (1975). Discipline and Punish.

11. White, M. & Terry, K. (2008). Child sexual abuse in youth-serving organisations. Journal of Child Sexual Abuse.

12. Abraham Initiatives. (2025). Arab community murder statistics.

13. ELI – Israel Association for Child Protection. (2025). Child abuse statistics.

The Patrician's Watch

Global Observations

Tag Archives: politics

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The Great Australian Food Fraud-How Neoliberalism Poisoned Our Plates

The Theocratic Trap- How Divine Claims Become Engines of Destruction

The Broken Promise-How Australia Has Failed Its Veterans — and Who Profits

Locum Parentis — Not- The Abysmal History of Sexual and Other Abuse of Foreign Students in Australia

The Great Australian Extraction- How Universities Are Exploiting International Students and Selling Their Future

The Professor Who Couldn’t- How a US Citizen’s Academic Credentials Collapsed Under Cross-Examination

Empire vs the Developing World- A Lesson for Australia

The New Rome- How American Exceptionalism Became an Empire of Ruin

Civilisation is Measured by How It Treats Its Most Vulnerable