Christian Hermann

(Temporarily) Back with a vengeance.

[Carsten Brennecke @RABrennecke]

https://t.co/hvxwqYVZU7

[Maxime PREVOT @prevotmaxime]

🇺🇸 Mr. Ambassador @BillWhiteUSA,
I urge you to exercise greater restraint and to view your role in its proper context. It is inappropriate to publicly criticize a country and tarnish its image simply because you disagree with judicial proceedings. I have already told you this. Would you consider it acceptable for our Ambassador in Washington to do the same?

In Belgium, the judiciary is independent and makes its decisions—whether one agrees with them or not—free from any political influence.

I recall that the proceedings in question were initiated by representatives of the Jewish community themselves. To portray those as a country’s desire to undermine the religious freedom of Jews is defamatory. This freedom has never been called into question and never will be in our country. Our Constitution protects it.

And it is not for an ambassador to dictate the government’s agenda.

@BelgiumMFA @StateSEAS @SecRubio @DeputySecState

[Gandalv @Microinteracti1]

There is a video circulating on the internet that is difficult to watch. A woman sits on a pavement in Louisville, Kentucky. She is wearing a hospital gown. It is 36 degrees outside. Her belongings, everything she apparently owns, are in a plastic bag on the concrete beside her. Behind her, through the glass doors she has just been escorted through, the hospital hums along as normal. The security guards who brought her here have already gone back inside.

She couldn’t afford her bill.

This is not a scene from a developing nation or a history book. This is the United States of America.
The country in which it happens has spent decades telling the rest of the world that it has the highest GDP on earth. Which is a bit like a restaurant proudly displaying its bill on the wall. Enormous number. Terrible meal. The lobster was frozen, the wine came from a box.

Europe, by comparison, has spent the better part of a century building something rather different. The food, for a start, is extraordinary. Not in a showy way, but in the way that a simple lunch in Lyon or a glass of wine on a terrace in Lisbon reminds you that eating is one of the genuinely good things about being alive. The wine is the wine that the rest of the world has spent generations attempting to replicate, mostly without success.

Roughly 35 percent of Europeans live with a chronic illness. In America, that number is 76 percent. The difference is not genetic. It is architectural. It is the slow accumulation of decent food, walkable cities, actual holidays, and a healthcare system that does not require you to crowdfund your own appendix.

Europeans work fewer hours. They have more purchasing power on a smaller salary once you subtract the cost of health insurance, medical debt, and the private school their child needs because the local public one has a metal detector at the entrance. They live, on average, about ten years longer. Not ten years of decline and doctor visits, but ten years of being a person in the world.

In the first quarter of 2025, the number of Americans leaving the United States doubled compared to the previous quarter.  Europe was their top destination. Not for a sabbatical or a gap year. Permanently. These are not people who failed. These are people who did the maths.

There is a man somewhere in America right now who has worked fifty-hour weeks for forty years, taken one week off when his employer permitted it, and will, statistically, be dead before he sees seventy. And there is another man, not very far away on a map but an entire civilisation removed in practice, sitting on a terrace in the afternoon sun with a glass of something cold and no particular place to be. He has had six weeks off every summer since 1987. He knows his neighbours by name.

The first man’s country has the higher GDP.

The first man’s country tops the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) index. The second man tops the Quality of Life Index (QLI). The better health. The longer life. The afternoon.

MAGA America calls that losing.

Ask anyone.
Gandalv / @Microinteracti1

[Carolina ❤️‍🔥 @realCarola2Hope]

Pope Leo XIV is not ‘woke’, nor a Marxist, nor a progressive, nor a leftist.

The Pope is simply a Christian.

When he defends the poor and the innocent, he is following the Gospel.

When he denounces injustice, he is imitating Christ.

When he speaks for the poor, he is repeating word for word the Sermon on the Mount.

Those who are angry at him are not fighting with Pope Leo XIV.

They are fighting with Christ.

Because it was Jesus who said: ‘Whatever you did for the least of my brothers, you did for me.’

Rejecting the Pope for being merciful is not something a Christian does.

The problem is not that Leo XIV has strayed from Christ.

The problem is that some have strayed so far from the Gospel that they no longer recognize it when they see it.

[Ruprecht Polenz🇪🇺 @polenz_r]

@joerglau Albert Speer hätte es gefallen

[Gandalv @Microinteracti1]

The Most Expensive Mistake Since Someone Invaded Russia in Winter

For years, Trump told Europe it was freeloading. Not paying its share. Weak, comfortable, ungrateful. He said it so often it became received wisdom, carved into the MAGA catechism as though Moses himself had brought it down from the mountain.

The numbers do not cooperate.
European NATO members spent $454 billion on defence in 2024. Russia, the actual threat, spent $149 billion. Europe outspends the aggressor three to one. But that $454 billion is the floor, not the ceiling. Trump uses the narrowest possible accounting definition and presents it as the complete picture.

European support to Ukraine’s armed forces alone exceeds €63 billion. None of that appears in the number he waves around at rallies.
Meanwhile, America pays roughly 16 percent of NATO’s common budget. Germany pays a similar share. The rest of the American defence budget funds 750 bases across 80 countries and the considerable overhead of running a global empire nobody formally asked Washington to build.

At The Hague in 2025, Trump got his great concession. Europeans committed to 5 percent of GDP on defence by 2035. He called it a historic achievement. He was right, in the same way that a man who kicks over a hornets nest is right to call it a significant event.

Because 80 percent of European defence spending already flows to domestic suppliers. The EU now formally targets 60 percent of all procurement from European manufacturers by 2035. Germany directs 92 percent of new defence purchases to European suppliers. American systems receive 8 percent. Berlin was once one of Washington’s most reliable arms customers. It has quietly stopped being one, and European capitals are not embarrassed about why. European weapons arrive without usage restrictions, without congressional conditions, without the risk that a change in Washington renders your equipment politically unusable. Ukraine taught Europe that lesson at considerable cost.

The American defence research machine runs partly on allied procurement. When Europeans buy American hardware, they co-fund the next generation of American military technology. When they stop, that bill lands on the American taxpayer.
Trump demanded Europe pay more. Europe is paying more, to itself, building the industrial base that makes American partnership optional rather than necessary.

He wanted customers. He created competitors.
The arithmetic was never complicated. It just required someone to actually do it.

Stay connected,
Follow Gandalv @Microinteracti1

[Ruprecht Polenz🇪🇺 @polenz_r]

@jreichelt Es ist antisemitisch, die Juden mit dem Staat Israel gleichzusetzen

[Pope Leo XIV @Pontifex]

Absurd and inhuman violence is spreading ferociously through the sacred places of the Christian East, profaned by the blasphemy of war and the brutality of business, with no regard for people’s lives, which are considered at most collateral damage of self-interest. But no gain can be worth the life of the weakest, children, or families. No cause can justify the shedding of innocent blood.

[Governor Newsom Press Office (parody) @AwesomeNewsom]

NATO IS NEVER THERE WHEN WE NEED THEM. TRUMP WANTED TO STEAL GREENLAND, DID NATO HELP? NO! TRUMP WANTED TO WIPE OUT AN ENTIRE CIVILIZATION, DID NATO HELP? NO! TRUMP DECLARED WAR ON BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN, DID NATO HELP? NO!

IF NATO DOESN'T PAY ITS SHARE FOR THE BALLROOM, IT'S OVER.

[Christopher Hale @ChristopherHale]

BREAKING: Pope Leo XIV declares the Iran War is “unjust” and “is not solving anything.”

After suggesting Trump is committing war crimes by targeting civilian infrastructure, he called on Americans to contact Congress to help end the war.

[Rep. Jim McGovern @RepMcGovern]

The President of the United States is a madman.

[United Nations @UN]

Even wars have rules.

The Geneva Conventions protect civilians in conflict and help ensure assistance reaches those in need, without discrimination.

https://t.co/Jh9e5nxBVl

[Stew Peters @realstewpeters]

TRUMP: “The Iranians are animals. That’s why blowing up their bridges and power stations isn’t a war crime.”

I’m at loss for words.

[Piers Morgan @piersmorgan]

This is a brazen pre-admission of genocide against the Iranian people, which would obviously be a war crime. Madness.

[Anne Applebaum @anneapplebaum]

@marcthiessen https://t.co/Q4AFO2Dxi8

[Michael Weiss @michaeldweiss]

New: We obtained phone calls between Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó showing them conspiring to lift EU sanctions on Russia -- from oligarchs to banks to the shadow fleet. Full story with consortium partners at @InsiderEng: https://t.co/uour6hcjbr

[Konstantin v. Notz @KonstantinNotz]

Disgusting

[Financial Times @FT]

FT investigation finds 13 associates of Hungary’s premier won large share of state works after he took power. Read more here: https://t.co/DPHlU6kDDY

[Jorge Liboreiro @JorgeLiboreiro]

An article impersonating Euronews and using my own name in the byline spread widely online as part of a Russian disinformation operation. The article was full of fake news about the Hungarian elections.

Big thanks to @tamsinpatn for the fact check.
https://t.co/CrZDL38xRg

[Donald Tusk @donaldtusk]

Orban’s Foreign Minister has confirmed that he systematically informed Moscow what EU leaders talked about behind closed doors. What a disgrace.