Ex-LabourLad

[Christoph Johanssen @chjohanssen]

AfD in Saxony now polls at 42 percent, twice as much as the Christian Democrats. All other parties with single digits.

The establishment really did everything it could to raise this party.

[Professor R Shaldjian Morrison,διδάσκαλος,夏炉冬扇, 散人 @Swarthyface]

Paul's "those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death" is a great turn of phrase; applies to many today, not least the live-forever silicon-valley transhumanist types. a truly slavish lot.

[Angelica 🌐⚛️🇹🇼🇨🇳🇺🇸 @AngelicaOung]

She’s making too much sense!

[Professor R Shaldjian Morrison,διδάσκαλος,夏炉冬扇, 散人 @Swarthyface]

This is not the first time. Was I the only one around in late 2017 when he was twitter-threatening to genocide N Korea? Back then, we naively reacted in earnest to POTUS theater; now we ignore it. POTI do not decide, or even influence decisions.

[Professor R Shaldjian Morrison,διδάσκαλος,夏炉冬扇, 散人 @Swarthyface]

Hokusai's final masterpiece: Dragon Flying Over Mt Fuji ❨via a group I belong to❩

[Ex-LabourLad @LadLabour]

@Swarthyface *Liking" that but shan't like it.
(You're welcome to like this if you like.)

[Dirk Ehnts @DEhnts]

I'd argue that the ECB should move interest rates down and not up, based on today's news (also: German manufacturing orders down).

[Brian Berletic @BrianJBerletic]

🇺🇸/Iran: Iran Mission Creep and the US-Imposed "Distant Blockade" on China

US is bringing in another carrier and additional warplanes as existing hardware approaches maintenance walls indicating intentions to continue the war for at least another month.

With the long desired distant blockade now implemented on China and the clock ticking on China's 100 day reserves, the US is likely to continue surging forces into the region to keep the war going and energy exports stopped.

The US does not care about its Arab proxies. It does not care about Europe. It does not care about Israel or Ukraine or Japan or South Korea.

It doesn't even care about the American public.

The window is closing on containing China, China fully aware of all of this and already speeding toward permanent escape velocity.

The US is making its move now.

The US knows it will be causing immense global damage and damage to itself but believes it has the best chance of weathering it and emerging the strongest on the other end - or at least the best chance it will ever have.

[David Jamieson @David_Jamieson7]

When people ask me what my alternative is to NATO or European re-armament, it’s this:

[Professor R Shaldjian Morrison,διδάσκαλος,夏炉冬扇, 散人 @Swarthyface]

"Do you want to rule the world and control it? I don't think it can ever be done. The world is sacred vessel ❨神器❩ and it cannot be controlled."
Laozi, DDJ 29

[Ex-LabourLad @LadLabour]

@Grossmanite Beg to differ.
Inflation is beaten, deflation ahead.
USD bottoming out.
Major recession coming.
Yes, US empire imploding but a long way to go yet:
"Dead man still walking".
Thx to Henrik Zeberg for analysis.

[Professor R Shaldjian Morrison,διδάσκαλος,夏炉冬扇, 散人 @Swarthyface]

hard agree 💯 ; great piece by @DamianFlanagan

[Professor R Shaldjian Morrison,διδάσκαλος,夏炉冬扇, 散人 @Swarthyface]

The Epstein Affair (エプスタイン事件) is the final expression of the inner telos or entelechy of the boomer sex-revolution.

[THE ISLANDER @IslanderWORLD]

Germany is quietly building a new model of governance — one that doesn’t need to cancel elections, ban parties, or openly censor speech, because it has learned how to administer the art of "legitimacy" upstream.

In a striking interview with Neue Zurcher Zeitung, researcher Andrew Lowenthal describes an industrial-scale opinion-management architecture inside Germany. His research maps roughly 330 interconnected actors spanning federal agencies, state ministries, publicly funded NGOs, universities, fact-checking organizations, think tanks, and foundations. They do not operate in opposition to the state. Increasingly, they operate as part of it.

This is not blunt censorship. It is far more refined and eloquent in an Orwellian sense. What Lowenthal outlines is an epistemic management system: a closed feedback loop in which political judgment is processed into technical expertise and then returned to the public as neutral truth. The most unsettling detail is not coordination — it is belief. Many participants no longer recognize their work as political at all. They see themselves as custodians of reality, even as they define the boundaries of acceptable thought.

The inversion is decisive. NGOs were once adversarial watchdogs. In Germany, they now function as extensions of state capacity, openly coordinating with ministries and regulators. Cooperation with government is no longer viewed as a conflict of interest; it is the baseline. Civil society has been absorbed into administrative infrastructure, while retaining the moral authority of independence.

The funding makes the architecture visible. Programs such as Demokratie leben! distribute roughly €200 million annually, sustaining a sprawling ecosystem tasked with combating “hate,” “extremism,” and “disinformation.” These categories are intentionally elastic. Dissent is not banned; it is reclassified. Speech is not silenced; it is managed, filtered through grants, compliance regimes, and platform partnerships, and relabeled democratic resilience.

Layered on top is the EU regulatory spine — particularly the Digital Services Act, which pressures platforms into continuous risk assessments, moderation alignment, and privileged “research access.” Transparency is the branding. Narrative leverage is the function. When the same institutional family defines risk, enforces standards, and evaluates outcomes, neutrality becomes circular logic.

What makes this moment especially revealing is that Germany is not in a federal election cycle. There is no campaign emergency, no imminent vote, no populist surge forcing extraordinary measures. This system is being expanded mid-cycle, quietly, as routine governance. That matters. It tells us this is not a temporary response to instability. It is the permanent operating environment.

Mature systems of control do not wait for crisis. They pre-condition legitimacy long before citizens are asked to participate. Voters are not told what to think; they are trained over time which thoughts are reasonable, which questions are responsible, and which positions fall outside the perimeter of seriousness.

Hovering over this architecture is Friedrich Merz — a figure whose authority rests less on popular enthusiasm than on institutional insulation. Legitimacy becomes procedural rather than participatory. Elections persist, but their risk to power is steadily reduced. That is the signature of a system confident not because it is trusted, but because it is buffered.

This is not a German aberration. It is a systems test — a warning etched in procedure, a calibration point where democracy is preserved in name while being redesigned in practice, measuring how much trust can be withdrawn from citizens before the result stops resembling freedom.

Part 2/2 👇

[Paul O’Connell @pmpoc]

Epstein's victims deserve justice - beyond punishing the individual scum, Marx noted in 1850 that capitalism invariably generates the 'unbridled assertion of unhealthy and vicious appetites ... particularly in the upper reaches of society' - it's the system that we must break

[Ex-LabourLad @LadLabour]

@JamesHeartfield @jasonhickel The protesters want a better life, which has been ruined by ruthless US sanctions designed to wreck the economy & a repressive response by the clerics.
The US playbook is the same as ever.
At what point do the protesters become US puppets - when the Shah's son returns?

[Lee Jones @DrLeeJones]

That Suharto has been named by Indonesia's govt as a "national hero" only underscores how his legacy of authoritarianism, corruption and oligarchic rule has persisted despite ostensible "democratic transition". https://t.co/4X7053lQgo 1/7