Europe is not collapsing in a single dramatic rupture. It is steadily losing the capacity to generate new wealth while still living off the capital, institutions, and cultural inheritance built by earlier generations. Political leaders across much of the continent have treated expanding public spending, multiplying rules, and assertions of mo...

We are not facing "disturbances," but an act of war that distinguishes between "us" and "them." Opinion. France is in chaos and the government imposed a curfew in certain areas, after Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez resigned: "In some cities we have lost control". Pascal Bruckner speaks of a "silent coup d'état" in Le Figaro: "What is striking is t...

 There was a time when a trip to the supermarket involved a relatively simple transaction. One purchased groceries, the checkout operator placed them in plastic bags, and the customer carried them home. The bags were lightweight, strong, reasonably waterproof and capable of being reused for numerous household purposes. They could serve as rubb...

The prosecution of Australia's most decorated living soldier, Ben Roberts-Smith VC, has become one of the most contentious legal and military controversies in Australian history. The former Special Air Service Regiment corporal, once celebrated for extraordinary courage in Afghanistan, now faces five charges of war-crime murder arising from alleged...

Australia and the European Union concluded negotiations on a free-trade agreement in March 2026 after nearly eight years of talks. The government presents it as a straightforward win: almost all tariffs fall, Australian goods gain near-duty-free access to a market of 450 million people, critical minerals and hydrogen face fewer barriers, and a few ...

Children as young as 6 continued receiving AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine in a 2021 U.K. clinical trial, even though U.K. government advisers were aware of a potentially deadly blood clot risk, a newly released document reveals. Dr. Angus Dalgleish, professor of oncology at City St George's, University of London, said the blood clot risk should hav...

There is a seductive quality to a single, well-publicized genetic paper. It arrives with the authority of a Nature headline, gets compressed into a Reuters paragraph, and suddenly a century of archaeology and linguistics is supposed to fold itself quietly into a footnote. The 2021 Nature study of the Tarim Basin mummies has been wielded precisely t...

There is something profoundly disturbing about the economics of modern warfare. While civilians are killed, soldiers risk their lives, families struggle with rising prices and entire regions suffer destruction, other participants in the economic system may discover that war is exceptionally profitable. The contrast has been brought into sharp focus...

In recent years, tech moguls like Elon Musk have increasingly prophesied a post-labour future brought on by artificial intelligence and advanced robotics. In this techno-optimist vision, human labour becomes entirely obsolete. Robots mine the earth, manufacture goods, grow food, and code software. Meanwhile, the state steps in to distribute a Unive...

On October 22, 2026, French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu sent a letter to the CEOs of the country's four main mobile operators. He asked them to prepare to block Snapchat, TikTok, and Instagram by DNS filtering for several hours. X was added to the list afterward. The trigger was recent urban violence and protests; the government argued that th...

Australia's major banks are among the most powerful and profitable institutions in the country. They occupy a privileged position in the national economy, handling the savings, mortgages, business loans and financial transactions of millions of Australians. Yet their enormous economic influence is not always accompanied by an equally impressive com...

Éric Zemmour described the 17 October violence as "the true face of the Great Replacement": hordes of "barbarians" rampaging through cities, flying Palestinian, Algerian and Moroccan flags, allied with Antifa, backed by La France Insoumise deputies, and driven by hatred of France and revenge for colonisation: his terms. Trump and the Kremlin offere...

Elon Musk's recent public warning to Democrats was unusually direct. Responding to reports that a Democratic takeover of Congress would trigger multiple investigations into him, his companies, and his time leading the Department of Government Efficiency, he wrote on X: "Live by the sword, die by the sword. Those who pick fights with me should under...

Helen Haines had barely reached hospital before her suffering became ammunition against Pauline Hanson, One Nation, conservative commentators and men generally. The accusations practically outran the investigation. Political opponents were being handed responsibility for an alleged crime without evidence connecting them to it. Labor MP for Macarthu...

The claim that the political Left is structurally prone to violence is not a new one, but it remains one of the more durable observations in modern politics. Collectivist ideologies, whether framed as socialism, communism, or various strains of social justice, treat the individual as secondary to the group or the state. When the promised equality f...

Australia's universities have turned the international student trade into a core business model, and the wider society is paying the price. At 27 per cent of total enrolments, Australia hosts a higher share of foreign students than any other major developed economy. University leaders treat any attempt to rein this in as an act of vandalism. The ne...

The late English philosopher Sir Roger Scruton devoted much of his intellectual life to defending Western civilisation against those who regarded its inherited institutions, traditions and values as obstacles to progress. His conservatism was not simply a political programme concerned with taxation, economic management or the size of government. It...

The riots in France and subsequent return to peace show that the road to civil war is paved with restored order, leaving a more combustible environment for the next crisis, say David Betz and Michael Rainsborough. Our recent essays in the Daily Sceptic on the prospect of civil war in Western societies have examined the fragmentation of communities,...

Nick Freitas, the former Green Beret and Virginia legislator who hosts Making the Argument on BlazeTV, has argued that the unrest unfolding in France is not merely a local cost-of-living or education protest. It is the visible expression of a broader ideological project, one that pairs radical Left "decolonization" rhetoric with political Islam, an...

Modern medicine has achieved extraordinary things. Antibiotics, advanced surgery, diagnostic imaging, emergency medicine and numerous pharmaceutical treatments have saved countless lives. Yet alongside these achievements, something has gone seriously wrong with the organisation and delivery of healthcare. The medical profession, traditionally centr...