The reader of Bret Stephens latest what to name it?
University administrators sometimes ask how their institutions can best serve democracy. For decades, many believed that their role was to serve as instruments of social change. Diversity, equity and inclusion programs, especially in hiring and admissions, were one part of the tool kit. Politicized academic departments, often with the word “studies” attached to them, were another.
A new report from a committee of Yale professors takes a different view. The purpose of the university, it says quite simply, is “to preserve, create and share knowledge.” The method is academic excellence. To the extent that universities are supposed to serve democracy, it’s by becoming considerably more meritocratic.
Editor: Reader explore Mr. Stephens’ educational portfolio via Wikipedia
Bret Stephens was educated at the University of Chicago, where he earned a Bachelor of Arts (BA) with honors in 1995, and the London School of Economics, where he earned a Master of Science (MSc). He attended boarding school at the Middlesex School in Concord, Massachusetts.
Editor: Reader be sure to read McGeorge Bundy’ reviews of Buckley’s ‘God and Man at Yale’ from November 1951, as a kind of model that Stephens might have attempted to model his latest diatribe: except his political/intelectual ignorance got in his way!
The Attack on Yale
“God and Man at Yale, written by William F. Buckley, Jr., is a savage attack on that institution as a hotbed of ‘atheism’ and ‘collectivism.’ I find the book is dishonest in its use of facts, false in its theory, and a discredit to its author.”
Editor: M.F. Burnyeat supplies to the reader, of the political present, in the New York Review of Books of 1985, Stephens political precursors… that even such a fellow traveler as Francis Fukuyama has abandoned ship for ‘Liberalism’ ?
Editor: M.F. Burnyeat eviserats the Strasssian Cadre, from October 10, 1985Q
Glad as I am to have helped Professor Cropsey understand the book he edited, I beg to remind him that not everything written in code deserves the effort, be it large or small, of deciphering the author’s meaning. The intention of being profound is not the same as a profound intention.
Likewise, while the effort which has been devoted to translating Strauss into various languages is evident from the (incomplete) listing in the bibliography to Studies in Platonic Philosophy, this effort has not been rewarded by the emergence of a following, let alone a cult like that which Strauss and Straussian teachers have managed to create in the US. For example, Strauss in Italian has been received with sustained and often hostile criticism, which is documented by P. Taboni in Studi Urbinati 48 (1974), pp. 191–220, and G. Giorgini in Il Mulino 33 (1984), pp. 396–416. In fact, the hypothesis of “Mr. Strauss’s charisma” (a phrase to be appreciated by initiates who have read Strauss on Weber) seems to be amply confirmed by Professor Jaffa’s letter.
Let me then assure Professor Jaffa that, whatever the historical genesis of his belief in the meaningfulness of the great questions, there are lots of non-Straussians who dispute the fact-value dichotomy and who have never even been tempted by the historicist fallacy as he describes it. What has Jaffa been reading for the past forty years? He illustrates non-Straussian political philosophy by quoting one statement from a book published in 1922 and inventing for it a positivistic meaning which, in its context (p. 277), it does not have. He surely has had time to catch up with the 1942 reprint of Becker’s book, whose preface states that the brutalities of Nazism have enabled men once more to believe that “liberty, equality, fraternity” and “inalienable rights of men” are phrases that denote realities.
Becker was interested in the conditions which make certain beliefs possible (a worthwhile and important inquiry, which need not lead to relativism). He meant that in 1942 it had become possible to return to a faith that the nineteenth century had lost. In his humane, gentlemanly way he would perhaps have wondered at the intellectual environment and educational influences which enabled Jaffa in 1959 to write that the differences between Lincoln and Aristotle on the justice of slavery are more apparent than real, on this basis commending to his twentieth-century readers the proposition that in circumstances of economic scarcity it could be just to sanction the ownership of slaves (Harry V. Jaffa, Crisis of the House Divided, Doubleday, 1959, pp. 342–346). So much for Jaffa on natural right as “an abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times.”
The manner in which Jaffa commends his proposition about slavery can be compared to the manner in which Strauss commends to his readers the proposition that the just citizen is one who helps his friends and harms his enemies: by exegetical pleading rather than by independent argument. We are not given reasons why we should believe these propositions true, only reasons why Lincoln/Aristotle/Xenophon’s Socrates should be thought to have believed them true. Disturbing recommendations with far-reaching political consequences are to be accepted on the strength of nothing more than a systematic misreading of “old books” (Jaffa’s understanding of Aristotle is abysmal). No wonder Jaffa appeals to the tablets of law brought down by Moses from Sinai. But no wonder also that my review, when considering the enormous influence of Strauss and his ideas in the US, should call attention to the presence of a Straussian on the National Security Council, which directs the work of the CIA and advises the President on his dealings with “enemies.”
The point, as I expressed it, was that “something more than an academic quarrel is taking place” when Strauss defends his eccentric views. His misreadings of old books are not merely influential. They could have consequences in the real world of politics. If I had been writing a critique of monetarism, showing it to be an ill-conceived theory derived by special pleading from data inadequately grasped, it would not, I submit, be McCarthyite to note the presence of a leading monetarist among the President’s economic advisers.
We need not debate “the precise sense” of the term McCarthyite (that rhetorical flourish merely reveals the imprecision of the writer’s sense). For Professor Bloom’s letter is itself a prime example of Straussian hermeneutics. The idea of a Straussian political conspiracy was hatched in Bloom’s mind; it appears nowhere in the text of my review. Nor did I argue, “Carnes Lord served in the National Security Council, therefore he lacks scholarly integrity.” (For the record, Lord’s published work shows him to be a better scholar in the field of ancient political philosophy than either Strauss or Bloom.) Would it be McCarthyite to add that Bloom’s systematic misreading of my text is designed to have practical consequences?
The saddest feature of Bloom’s response is his apparent inability to distinguish between criticism and persecution, irony and malice. Rather than give a reasoned reply either to my essay or to Charles R. Kesler’s calmly argued critique in the National Review, he immediately divides the world into friends and enemies of the Straussian truth. The same “paranoid logic” (to borrow Bloom’s precise phrase) is evident in Professor Cropsey’s letter. Never mind that my review was gentleness itself compared to the scorn and derision with which Strauss reviewed Collingwood, for example, or Eric Havelock. The Master must be sacrosanct; he is too serious a thinker for reasoned discussion, not to mention David Levine’s cartoon.
It is all so unlike Strauss’s hero (and mine) Plato, who believed that the essence of philosophy is to be found in argument and discussion infused with irony and playful levity, and who surrounded himself, in the Academy he created, with men who disagreed with his ideas and did their best to refute them. That is why I put quotation marks round the word “philosopher” as it occurs in Straussian writings. Cropsey may be indignant but Strauss’s conception of what a philosopher is stands so far from Plato’s that it would be misleading to appear to accept that they are talking about the same thing. For the same reason I am happy to acknowledge that I belong to the “conventional establishment” consisting of readers of Plato since the fourth century BC who have found in the expressed meanings of Plato’s dialogues the paradigm of great philosophy.
This brings me to the arguments of Professors Weinrib, Pangle, and Orwin—and all honor to them for replying with arguments, at least on questions of interpretation—about the role of the philosopher in Plato’s Republic.
Weinrib’s argument supposes that one can derive or discern a general principle or definition of justice from a single example of just action. This is a mistake; a mistake, moreover, of a type which Plato’s Socrates is constantly correcting (e.g., at the beginning of the Euthyphro). The philosophers’ undertaking to rule the ideal city does fall under the principle of helping one’s friends and harming one’s enemies, but it also falls under thirty-one other principles, including Thrasymachus’s definition of justice as serving the interests of the stronger. Thus the nonphilosophical majority is the largest and so the strongest group in the city, and Socrates has already shown how their interests will be best looked after if they are governed by philosophers. By parity of reasoning Weinrib should conclude that Thrasymachus’s definition “remains decisive” despite being the main target of Socrates’ criticism both in Book I and in the remainder of the Republic.
The truth is that to discover what principle of justice motivates the philosophers to rule it is necessary to read Plato rather than Strauss. In the context we are considering Socrates does not simply say that it is just for the philosophers to undertake the tasks of government. He explains why it is just, as follows:
It’s not the concern of law that any one class in the city fare exceptionally well, but it contrives to bring this about in the entire city, harmonizing the citizens by persuasion and compulsion, making them share with one another the benefit which each person is able to bring to the community. And it produces such men in the city not in order to let them turn whichever way each wants, but in order that it may use them in binding the city together.
(Republic, 519e–520a; Bloom’s translation, with corrections)
This implies that the claim on the philosophers arises from the impartial justice of a set of social arrangements which requires everyone, without exception, to contribute what they are able to contribute to the good of everyone else. (If the philosophers are able to contribute more than other people; so be it: they will be the first to recognize that it is only just that they do so.) This principle of everyone doing what they are best suited to do to the benefit of everyone else is the principle established in Book IV of the Republic as constitutive of the justice of the ideal city. We have no alternative but to accept it as Plato’s answer to Weinrib’s question “Under what principle of justice is it just for the philosophers to rule?”
Besides, from Plato’s point of view Weinrib’s answer has the priorities the wrong way round. The citizens of the ideal city do not benefit each other because they are friends; rather, they are friends because they benefit each other (Republic 462a ff.)
So much for the question whether the philosophers can be induced to rule in the ideal city itself. Professors Pangle and Orwin are quite right that the passage under discussion presupposes the ideally just city already in existence. In a state which is not run for the benefit of all but only for the mutual advantage of some group of “friends,” there is no social justice to make claims on the philosopher to participate. Accordingly, I did not argue, as Pangle and Orwin imagine, that the passage shows that the ideal city can come into existence. I argued that, when correctly understood, the passage does not show, as Strauss imagined (The City and Man, p.124), that the ideal city cannot come into existence. I was rebutting Strauss’s contention that the ideal city is intrinsically impossible, because the philosophers could not be induced to rule. Pangle and Orwin appear to agree with me, against Strauss, that they could be induced to rule if the ideal city is already in existence. In which case we have to look elsewhere in the Republic to decide whether Plato means us to think that the ideal city could not come into being.
Socrates says emphatically at 499d that it is not impossible that somewhere, sometime, a divine inspiration should give those in power a passion for philosophy or that some necessity should constrain one or more philosophers to take charge of a city; perhaps it has already happened far away or in the distant past. As in the passage discussed above, Socrates insists that a philosopher will take part in politics only with reluctance and from necessity, i.e., because he sees compelling reasons to do so. The compelling argument will be different from the argument from social justice which constrains the philosophers who have been educated within the ideal city, but that difference provides no basis for impugning Socrates’ sincerity when he asserts here, as elsewhere, that it is possible for Utopia to get started. The ideal city will get started by one argument and continued by another: there is no logical absurdity in that, merely the difference between an argument about preserving justice and an argument about bringing it into being.
If Pangle and Orwin reply that the passage they quote implies that it would actually be unjust for philosophers who have not been educated in the ideal city to take part in the launching of Utopia, the answer is that the original Greek implies no such thing. There is a difference between the philosophers’ not having a duty to take part in politics and their having a duty not to take part. Bloom’s translation, used by Pangle and Orwin for the second sentence of their quotation, may suggest the latter, but the former would be more adequate to Plato’s Greek. This is not the place to discuss the nuances of a translation (where Bloom writes “has justice on its side,” Plato is not using his normal word for justice but a more archaic one, appropriate to the situation he is describing in which social justice does not yet exist), but the substance of the point I am making is confirmed at 496d, where Socrates gives as the reason why a philosopher will keep out of the present-day politics of actual cities the lack of “an ally with whose aid one could safely champion the cause of justice.” The consideration is conditional. It would lapse if an ally was found with enough power to help make justice real. (I wonder whether Weinrib believes that a Platonic philosopher would find many such allies in the present administration of the US.)
Weinrib, however, has a more general argument for supposing that Plato does not mean what Socrates explicitly says in the various passages we have now examined. He appeals to Plato’s Phaedrus and to the Seventh Letter as favoring Strauss’s approach to “the meaning” of a Platonic text rather than mine. Strauss had the same thought (The City and Man, pp. 52–54), though he wisely refrained from mentioning the Seventh Letter, which may be a forgery. But Strauss had to use Straussian hermeneutics on the Phaedrus to get that dialogue to justify using Straussian hermeneutics on other Platonic texts. An appeal to the Phaedrus does nothing to extricate the Straussian approach from the vicious circularity with which I charged it.
Platonic scholarship urgently needs a decent understanding of what the Phaedrus means to say about writing. But that understanding will require literary methods more sophisticated than any that Strauss purveyed. Nor can it be assumed in advance that the Phaedrus aims to tell us how to read the Republic. One of the many objectionable features of the Straussian approach is the blunderbuss way it treats all dialogues alike. In place of the scintillating variety which Plato’s artistry created, Strauss puts “the Platonic dialogue” and a uniform Maimonidean recipe for decoding its hidden meaning. And yet, if Professor Gordis is right, this whole saga of misreading began with a misreading of Maimonides.
In considering this, the last but certainly not the least important letter, we should distinguish two Straussian claims:
(1)The Guide of the Perplexed is an example of “esoteric literature,” whose message is “written between the lines.”
(2) The message between its lines is that philosophy and religion cannot be reconciled.
I did not endorse claim (2), but wrote of Strauss “having, as he thought, discovered” that Maimonides meant the opposite of what he said; Gordis truncates the relevant passage in my review, omitting “as he thought.” Nevertheless, Gordis’s confirmation of my skepticism about claim (2) is a sufficient answer to Pangle and Orwin’s complaint that I neglected Strauss’s treatment of “the theological-political problem.” There is a limit to the number of confusions one can tackle in a single review.
As regards claim (1), however, I plead guilty. I was impressed with the fact that Maimonides does—Gordis seems not to deny this—instruct the learned reader how to gather his meaning from hints, indications, and deliberate contradictions. For example, the seventh cause of contradiction is the following:
In speaking about very obscure matters it is necessary to conceal some parts and to disclose others. Sometimes in the case of certain dicta this necessity requires that the discussion proceed on the basis of a certain premise, whereas in another place necessity requires that the discussion proceed on the basis of another premise contradicting the first one. In such cases the vulgar must in no way be aware of the contradiction; the author accordingly uses some device to conceal it by all means.
(p. 18 in the Pines translation)
Two pages later Maimonides tells us that contradictions from this seventh cause are to be found in The Guide of the Perplexed. Strauss certainly has more to go on here than he has with Plato. But I should be only too happy to have a critic like Gordis take me through the Guide explaining in detail how and where Strauss has got it wrong.
Meanwhile, readers who have found much of this polemic distasteful can recover their good humor by reading a short story by Oscar Wilde entitled “The Sphinx Without a Secret.”
Editor: As impressive as Mr. Stephens academic record appears, he is by his own admission not just a Zionist Loyalist, but former editor of the Jerusalem Post! Yet the reader arrives at Stephens expression of teped doubt framed as: But is it enough? I have my doubts. A wan pathtic riff on Martin Luther? Its hard to be patient with Stephens as diagnotician of the problems at Yale, that blossoms into Sebastian Venable’s Garden!
Editor: The final paragraphs of Stephens diatribe: The as if here is that Stephens, a newspaper columnist and perenial scold, somehow posses in great quantity the wisdom of the ages, that has eluded the Educators of the political present? Stephens possesses what these Educators do not, hubris!
Either those programs must change or universities should look more broadly for intellectual talent. The road to wisdom cannot lie in the indentured servitude of graduate-school education, capped by an unread (and frequently unreadable) dissertation.
Finally, universities will struggle to reform and improve themselves if they can’t recover a sense of what a university is for. That’s not just a credentialing agency — their de facto current role — or even a knowledge factory, which is the Yale committee’s aspiration. It’s something altogether deeper: a place where the universe of knowledge connects; where sustained engagement across multiple disciplines, enlivened by a genuine contest of ideas, nurtures the capacity for mature independent thought; where the rigor of a difficult education, enforced by a realistic prospect of failure, puts sharp young minds on a path to originality and self-understanding.
I doubt that the Yale committee would have been convened, much less produced its excellent report, if the decline in public trust hadn’t been matched by the Supreme Court ruling effectively ending affirmative action in college admissions, and by the Trump administration’s blunderbuss assault on universities. The first helped dismantle a bureaucratic infrastructure that, in practice, undermined academic achievement in admissions and hiring; the second put the fear of God in university leaders who had been afraid to rattle a campus consensus.
It shouldn’t take blunt political pressure to get universities to reform and redeem themselves. Here’s hoping they can act before they are acted upon.
Musk being escorted by political histeric Ben Shapiro, visited the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in January 22, 2024! Is not quite enough to asuage the French prosecutors of Musks…
Elon Musk posts frenetically on X. In recent days, he’s shared his opinion on universal basic income, South African politics, a local election in Nevada and progressivism. But will he be in Paris on Monday, April 20? He has not said, but it seems unlikely.
He has been summoned by the head of France’s cybercrime unit for a voluntary interview as part of a preliminary investigation launched in January 2025 into the social platform he leads. Around 10 executives from the American company, including former CEO Linda Yaccarino, were also summoned.
The probe, which began after reports from a French MP and a senior figure at a public cybersecurity body, initially focused on two possible violations: the alleged deliberate manipulation of the algorithm to influence French public debate, and the potential unlawful use of sensitive users’ personal data for targeted advertising.
‘Deliberate’ maneuver
After the investigation was handed over to the national cyber unit at the start of the summer, it escalated in November. Prosecutors uncovered numerous antisemitic and Holocaust-denying messages generated by Grok, X’s artificial intelligence, and expanded their investigation to include the crime of contesting crimes against humanity.
Investigators also noted both a change in the tool X uses to detect child sexual abuse material and an 80% drop in reports by the platform about such content in France. Suspecting a deliberate move, prosecutors added complicity in possessing and disseminating child sexual abuse images to their investigation.
In January 2026, after the scandal over Grok generating thousands of sexualized images of women and minors, the investigation broadened to include possible offenses relating to the representation of persons, with prosecutors arguing that the platform had deliberately delayed taking measures to limit the appearance and spread of these images. Finally, due to the “recurrence of X being used in the commission of various offenses,” prosecutors expanded their investigation to include “operating an illicit platform.”
Over the course of 15 months, judges and investigators received assistance from several AI experts as well as “material provided by various public institutions,” according to the prosecutors’ office. The cybercrime unit also asked X to provide its algorithm so it could understand what might constitute a deliberate intervention to promote certain problematic content. The platform refused.
‘Pressure’ tactics
Investigators worked in a tense atmosphere. X, which always denied any wrongdoing, condemned the probe as “politically-motivated criminal investigation.” On February 3, when investigators searched the company’s French offices, X denounced what it called a “staged raid [that] reinforces our conviction that this investigation distorts French law.”
At the end of March, after prosecutors filed a report concerning Musk over possible manipulation of his company’s valuation, the billionaire even called the judges investigating his platform “mentally retarded.”
Even though relations between Musk and the White House have cooled considerably, the possibility of retaliatory sanctions by the US government against the French judges looms over the investigation. Thierry Breton, one of the architects of Europe’s digital rules during his tenure as European commissioner for the internal market, was sanctioned by the US administration at the end of December 2025, and his case is very much on everyone’s mind.
Five months earlier, a US State Department official had described investigating judge Johannah Brousse as an “activist French prosecutor,” amid Washington’s all-out attacks on European digital law. Meanwhile, one of the two original whistleblowers behind the investigation, MP Eric Bothorel, was removed from the list of participants in a parliamentary visit to the White House in February 2026.
Moreover, prosecutors said they were investigating several users who used X and Grok to spread Holocaust-denying or antisemitic content, but that X refused to provide information that would have made it possible to identify them – information that “had until now been provided in the vast majority of cases.”
Forcing a compromise
By going after Musk, prosecutors are taking a twofold gamble. In February, they presented their search of X’s premises as a “constructive approach, with the aim of ensuring, ultimately, that the X platform complies with French law” and the voluntary interviews as a way “to present (…) the compliance measures under consideration.”
The idea is to force Musk into compromise, much like the showdown with Pavel Durov, the head of Telegram. Detained for questioning, held in police custody and charged, notably for ignoring court orders, the Russian-born French national subsequently began responding to investigators’ requests. But since Musk hasn’t adopted any “compliance measures” since the investigation began, the outcome of the standoff with the American billionaire is less clear.
From a legal standpoint, prosecutors are also treading new ground. They suspect, among other things, that Musk has manipulated his social network’s algorithm and is therefore prosecuting him for “falsifying the operation” of an information system.
These three words from the French penal code have never been used since their introduction in 1988. It’s an “untapped resource” and yet a promising one, according to a February 2025 analysis by law professor Michel Séjean, which was read carefully on the 26th floor of the Palace of Justice. This application of the law is a subject of debate among legal experts, but seems to be supported by two recent rulings of Cour de Cassation, the highest appeals court in criminal cases.
If Musk fails to appear for his summons, prosecutors will have several options, including initiating a legal investigation and seeking an international arrest warrant.
Editor: Since Musk is now an American Citizen, and considering that the European Union is now political captive of the Anti-Semitism Hystetia, nurthered by Mass Murder Benjamin Netanyahu, and President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen is under political attack, as that political myth nurtured by the long dead Jean Monnet, as presented by Francois Duchene has exhausted that Mythology! How can it escape the reader’s attention of Musk being escorted by political histeric Ben Shapiro visited the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in January 22, 2024?
Editor: Not to forget: ‘The Rotten Heart of Europe’ of Bernard Connolly as proof that the EU is a toxic political delusion!
Arno Tausch (1998) The Rotten Heart of Europe? A technical note on EMU and the rise of world-wide narco-capitalism Foreword to the reprint of a book chapter from the work: Globalization and European Integration. There were many critics of European Monetary Union in the 1990s. The quantitative world systems scholar Arno Tausch, from Innsbruck University, in an electronic book, published in 1998 by the World Systems Archive of the University of California, Riverside predicted with many others that the Eurozone will disintegrate. As the analyst Christopher M. Quigley recently reminded his audience (http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article19081.html) recent and unfolding events in Greece were foretold by the former European Union economist Bernard Connolly in his classic book “The Rotten Heart of Europe.” [Bernard Connolly: The Rotten Heart of Europe’: The Dirty War for Europe’s Money’. Faber & Faber. London.1996. ISB) 057117521X] Tausch in his politometric essay refers precisely to this title. Connolly had to quit his job at the Commission for publishing a very critical book about the ERM (Exchange Rate Mechanism), the forerunner of the Euro. Let us quote just two passages from the Connolly book.
“As we shall see, in France the long arm of the authoritarian state has pressurized dissident economists and bankers, deployed financial information programmes on international TV channels, threatened securities houses with loss of business if they questioned the official economic line, and shamelessly used state-owned and even private-sector banks, in complete contradiction with their shareholder’s interests and Community law, to support official policy. ………. The economic profession in Europe organized literally hundreds of conferences, seminars and colloquia to which only conformist speakers were invited; and the Commission’s “research” programmes financed large numbers of economic studies to provide the right results from known believers.” Connolly also said at the time: “My central thesis is that the ERM and the EMU (European Monetary Union, the mechanism with ultimately brought the Euro into technical existence) are not only inefficient but also undemocratic: a danger not only to our wealth but to our freedom and ultimately, our peace.”
Christopher M. Quigley is right in insisting that under the current Euro regime we have stable exchange rates between the Euro countries but there is no harmony between the disparate economies that make up Euroland. The Euro is not a “currency” as such but in actual fact is an exchange rate mechanism only. The Euro is allowing cheap German goods flood Europe and explains why it has 200-300 billion Euros of trade surpluses with its economic partners. “In a survey last week over 80% of Greeks said they wanted to exit the Euro but this voice is not being reported in much the same fashion that Connolly’s concerns were silenced by elite bankers and politicos. However, in 1995 when the Euro mechanism was being set up the world was less connected. Today we have international hedge funds connected through Cray computers ready to “play” the markets. As soon as traders realize the Euro is a one way bet they will opt to profitably destroy the exchange mechanism because of its exposed failings. The Emperor has been seen to have no cloths. As sure as night follows day they are going to reap their reward. They will seek to emulate George Soros when he reaped his one billion sterling paycheck on the 16th. September 1992 (“Black Friday”). It was that day the bank of England lost 3.4 billion sterling in one single 24 hour period, defending a flawed exchange link to Euroland. It is my suspicion that Germany sees this as a very real scenario and does not desire to waste its hard won foreign reserves on a “)orman Lamont” (The “Black Friday” chancellor of the British exchequer) type endgame.” [Christopher M. Quigley, http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article19081.html%5D
Quigley proposes that the “PIIGS”: Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain, should form a league for the purpose of national economic restructure. This league should negotiate an exit from the Euro and allowing their currencies to “float” once more. This will immediately allow their economies to become competitive again without widespread deflation. Most importantly all Euro loans must be devalued based on a new negotiated exchange conversion, as per the Argentinean model. Bernard Connolly lost his job at the Commission; the European Court of Justice states in his final judgement (JUDGMENT OF THE COURT, 6 March 2001):
4 By letter of 18 August 1995, Mr Connolly applied to be reinstated in the Commission service at the end of his leave on personal grounds. The Commission, by decision of 27 September 1995, granted that request and reinstated him in his post with effect from 4 October 1995.
5 Whilst on leave on personal grounds, Mr Connolly published a book entitled The Rotten Heart of Europe – The Dirty War for Europe’s Money without requesting prior permission under the second paragraph of Article 17 of the Staff Regulations.
6 Early in September, and more specifically between 4 and 10 September 1995, a series of articles concerning the book was published in the European and, in particular, the British press.
7 By letter of 6 September 1995, the Director-General for Personnel and Administration, in his capacity as appointing authority … informed the applicant of his decision to initiate disciplinary proceedings against him for infringement of Articles 11, 12 and 17 of the Staff Regulations and, in accordance with Article 87 of those regulations, invited him to a preliminary hearing.
8 The first hearing was held on 12 September 1995. The applicant then submitted a written statement indicating that he would not answer any questions unless he was informed in advance of the specific breaches he was alleged to have committed.
9 By letter of 13 September, the appointing authority again invited the applicant to attend a hearing, in accordance with Article 87 of the Staff Regulations, and informed him that the allegations of misconduct followed publication of his book, serialisation of extracts from it in The Times newspaper, as well as the statements he made in an interview published by that newspaper, without having obtained prior permission.
Leaving the question of intellectual freedom aside, Tausch shows in his e-book, 1998 by quantitative means that the dire predictions voiced by Connolly, Freedman, Rothschild and so many others are true. He states sarcastically: “The above mentioned positive redistribution effect on a European scale between the )orth and the South (and later on, between the West and the East) could be endangered by the long-term effects of EMU. The proponents of EMU maintained all along, that it will be engine of political and economic unification on the continent. We fear that the long-term effect of the project will be an increasing nationalism and a cultural conflict along the old cultural frontier, the Limes, between the Latin and the Germanic Europe, between the wine and the beer culture, between the olive oil consumers and the sausage eaters. An increasing number of scholars propose an alternative course of action that stresses the political and social cohesion in Europe as the main pillars of a true European Monetary Union (Rothschild, 1997). There is the danger, that Euromonetarism will accelerate the tendency of the world system on its path towards financial speculation, narco-capitalism, and the shifting of resources away from the Atlantic region towards the Pacific. On the other hand, it is evident that Europe’s long-term ascent from the Long 16th Century onwards from the state of a former periphery of the world system to a center (Arrighi, 1995; Amin, 1975), which was based on agrarian reform and mass demand, is now threatening to be reversed by the application of monetary orthodoxy.”
Headline : How the tech lobby made secrecy part of EU law on data centers
Sub-headline” Microsoft and the tech industry lobby secured a provision from the EU to keep environmental data about the massive data centers they operate in Europe confidential, according to an investigation by the Investigate Europe consortium, in collaboration with Le Monde.
Microsoft and DigitalEurope, a Brussels-based lobbying group for the information technology industry whose members include tech giants including Amazon, Google and Meta, have obtained the introduction of a confidentiality clause in European regulations on data centers. The clause blocks public access to specific information regarding their environmental impact.
The European Union sought to regulate the sector by adopting a revision of its Energy Efficiency Directive in 2023. The reform required operators of sites whose electrical connection exceeds 500 kilowatts to submit a certain number of indicators: energy consumption, water usage, energy efficiency, and technical performance data.
The European Commission was then tasked with taking what were described as technical measures to establish “a common Union scheme for rating the sustainability of data centers located in its territory.” In a draft regulation made public in December 2023 and submitted for consultation, it initially proposed that the information provided by operators be published “in aggregated form.”
At the start of 2024, Microsoft and DigitalEurope submitted comments requesting, in identical terms, that individual data for each site be classified as confidential, citing commercial interest. When the final version of the regulation was published in March 2024, the European Commission adopted this wording almost verbatim, so the detailed, site-by-site data became secret.
Article 5, as finally adopted, states that “the Commission and Member States concerned keep confidential all information and key performance indicators for individual data centers.” In practice, only national aggregate statistics are made public.
Member states were also encouraged to reject requests from the media or the public for access to this information. In an email sent at the beginning of 2025 and not previously made public, a senior Commission figure stressed to national authorities that they were “obliged to keep confidential all information and key performance indicators for individual data centers.”
A questionable legal basis
According to several law experts, this provision could violate European transparency rules as well as the EU’s obligations under the Aarhus Convention, which guarantees public access to environmental information.
“In two decades, I cannot recall a comparable case,” said Jerzy Jendrośka, a former member of the convention’s oversight body. According to Jendrośka, “This clearly seems not to be in line with the convention.” Luc Lavrysen, honorary president of the Belgian Constitutional Court and an environmental law expert, believes it “is clearly in violation” of European transparency rules. Kristina Irion, associate professor in information law at the University of Amsterdam, offered a similar analysis, condemning a “sweeping presumption of confidentiality” in favor of private interests. In her view, the protection of trade secrets should be assessed on a case-by-case basis.
When approached for comment, the European Commission said that the principle of confidentiality had already been included in its initial proposals. A European official, who wished to remain anonymous, said they had received “many comments” during the consultation process: “We analyzed the feedback and adopted a text reflecting it, as per usual practice.”
Reached for comment, Microsoft said, “We support greater transparency around datacenters (…) while protecting confidential business information.”
DigitalEurope did not respond to our requests for comment. According to a source close to the matter, Brussels fears that publishing data center information site by site could prompt some operators to stop submitting their data, despite their legal obligations. Yet, according to the EU’s own figures, only 36% of eligible data centers – around 770 facilities – submitted their information for 2024. And only 80% of the data received was considered accurate and reliable.
Lobbying groups push for speeping up procedures
The issue is made even more sensitive by the sector’s extremely rapid growth. In Europe, €176 billion in investments are expected between 2026 and 2031, according to the European Data Centre Association (EUDCA). This expansion has fueled concerns about the electricity consumption of these facilities, their heavy use of water for cooling and their impact on local residents and ecosystems.
And that clause is far from being the only recent sign of the sector’s influence on European and French legislation concerning data centers. In December, the European Commission unveiled a bill aiming to speed up environmental impact assessments for major construction projects, including many of the biggest data center projects. This piece of legislation is part of a broader push to reduce the administrative burden on businesses.
A document obtained by a freedom of information request shows Microsoft met with an EU official in late October to discuss the topic, with the company calling for capping deadlines.
In France, the simplification law, which Parliament finally passed on April 15 after a long legislative process, also introduced this principle into French law. Certain large-scale data centers can now be designated as projects of major national interest (PINM), a favorable status created by the 2023 green industry law. This will speed up procedures such as the authorization timelines needed to open a new site, the compatibility of urban planning documents or connecting to the power grid. That demand has been pushed by the sector since 2024, as shown by lobbying disclosures published on the website of the High Authority for Transparency in Public Life (HATVP) by Google France and France Data Center. The French lobby, which includes Amazon and Microsoft among its members, said it “welcomes this outcome,” which, in their words, “will help attract as much international and domestic investment to France as possible.”
In early March 2026, a working group focused on digital issues as part of the national electrification plan, co-chaired by Michael Reffay, director general of France Data Center and former adviser on digital regulation and sovereignty to the French minister for digital affairs under Amélie de Montchalin, called for making it easier to connect data centers to the electricity grid. In January, Anne Le Hénanff, the French junior minister for artificial intelligence and digital affairs, brought together, one year after the AI Action Summit in Paris, the key players in the data center sector. Over the course of a morning, 80 participants, including Google France, Microsoft and Amazon, met at the Finance Ministry to discuss topics such as environmental challenges and electrical connections, according to the list of attendees.
Richardson’s goal is to be the most trusted economist in the country. He says trust in economics, politicians and the media is under pressure and making the job of economic reform harder.
“Everybody needs a sense of purpose, and mine is to explain what the hell is going on and help the national conversation,” he says.“You journalists are searching for understanding, and it’s a privilege to be asked to help.”
Richardson’s mother was a teacher and his father was an economist at Westpac, so I ask whether he is following in the footsteps of both.
“I’ve never thought of it like that, but that would make a lot of sense,” he says.
“I’ve always really admired teachers. They often get to see the moment where they make a difference, which is when the person they’re explaining something to finally gets it. That’s a moment of pure joy.”
He says a common phrase in the Richardson household is “to be fair”, one he got from his parents and passed on to his kids, and which is foundational to his economic thinking.
“You need to actively try to see the other side of an argument.”
Richardson flips a switch and becomes Mr Richardson (the teacher mode journalists are familiar with), explaining what he thinks are the two basic goals of any economy: prosperity and fairness.
“The underlying assumption is that the two are in competition, but they work hand in hand,” he says.
“If you can get the prosperity right, it’s easier to get the fairness right. In fact, a lot of the angst and the fights around the distribution of the pie come back to our failures on prosperity.
“The most prosperous countries are the fairest countries.”
We’re a short drive from where Richardson went to school at St Augustine’s College in Brookvale, where his love of economics and numbers began.
He went on to the University of Sydney, where he won the University Medal in economics in 1982, which he gave to his high school mathematics teacher, Mrs Binstead, as thanks.
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