Christoph Neidhart, Tokyo

Books: Russia's Carnival; Die Nudel; Museum des Lichts; Ein Fünfliber im Kuhfladen; Ostsee; and...

[Anthony Scaramucci @Scaramucci]

Let me walk you through what happened one hour before Trump announced the five day moratorium on Iran strikes.

$1.5 billion in notional S&P E-mini futures contracts. Four to six times normal activity.

One hour before the announcement.

Simultaneously, $192 million in crude oil futures purchased at the same time.

They made between $300 and $400 million dollars off those trades.

Trump claimed he spoke to an Iranian official to negotiate the moratorium.

The Iranians said that person doesn't exist and the conversation never happened.

This is not the first time.

It has happened multiple times. He says something. The trade goes on. He says another thing. The market moves.

But whatever you call it — they are laughing at you and they are laughing at me while they do it.

Hunter Biden sold a painting and Washington lost its mind.

These people are making hundreds upon hundreds of millions of dollars trading on information that only exists inside the most powerful office in the world.

I think we are dramatically underreporting how much money is actually being made here.

This isn't politics anymore.

This is a financial operation running out of the White House.

[Christoph Neidhart, Tokyo @neidtok]

Andrei Lankov - the weird explanation: last year, Russia charged him as an anti-North-Korea (and anti-Russia) "extremist," Latvia deported him now allegedly for being pro-NK and pro-Russia https://t.co/Ej4esGpWs5

[Christoph Neidhart, Tokyo @neidtok]

Andrei Lankov, after his detention on Tuesday during a lecture he gave in Riga, was expelled from Latvia on Wednesday morning without any explanation, according to news media.

[Christoph Neidhart, Tokyo @neidtok]

Andrei Lankov arrested in Latvia - what's going on?? https://t.co/bIowSPQHRP

[Christoph Neidhart, Tokyo @neidtok]

Andrei Lankov arrested in Latvia - what's going on?? https://t.co/bIowSPQHRP

[Christoph Neidhart, Tokyo @neidtok]

Happy Year of the Horse, let's hope in politics, it will become a year of well-meaning black swans

[Marko Kovic @marko_kovic]

Eric Gujer bringt in der NZZ den mit grossem Abstand irrationalsten Kommentar zur Katastrophe in Crans-Montana, den ich bisher gesehen habe. Die Opfer seien Teil der "kranken Spassgesellschaft", die Verantwortung für ihr Leben abschiebt. Weil sie gefilmt haben, als das Feuer ausbrach. "Es war wichtiger, die züngelnden Flammen mit dem Handy zu filmen, als sich in Sicherheit zu bringen."

Was wirklich passiert ist: Junge Menschen haben an Silvester gefeiert. Es ist psychologisch vollkommen normal, dass die Opfer in dieser Situation nicht sofort verstanden haben, was los ist. In den ersten Sekunden wirkte das Feuer vielleicht sogar wie ein Teil der Party. Als das Feuer ausbracht, lief die Musik ganz normal weiter - die Veranstalter / Betreiber reagierten überhaupt nicht.

Wir wissen, dass Menschen in Katastrophensituationen die Lage nicht von einem Moment auf den anderen einschätzen können. Das ist schlicht die psychologische Realität. Es ist besonders in Gruppen normal, dass Dutzende Sekunden bis Minuten vergehen, bevor die Situation einigermassen klar wird. In Crans-Montana breitete sich das Feuer derart rasant aus und der Fluchtweg war derart inadäquat, dass die Opfer schlicht keine Chance hatten.

Ich wollte das, was Gujer von sich gibt, als Victim Blaming beschreiben. Aber es ist mehr als das. Es ist menschenverachtender Rage Bait für Klicks.

Die NZZ hat sich endgültig von Journalismus verabschiedet und ist nunmehr ein reines Krawallportal.

[Christoph Neidhart, Tokyo @neidtok]

Ito Shiori's excellent documentary Black Box was Oscar-nominated and won the Peabody award. After having been shown in 60 countries, the film has finally been released in Japan. In ONE SINGLE THEATER. Although he was assassinated in 2022, Abe still exerts power over Japan.

[Christoph Neidhart, Tokyo @neidtok]

https://t.co/DiwaSSj1x8 In 2015 journalist Yamaguchi Noriyuki raped young reporter Ito Shiori. Minutes before the police could arrest him, it was stopped from 'very high up'. Yamaguchi was the biographer and close friend of PM Abe Shinzo. Ito made "Black Box" about her ordeal.

[Christoph Neidhart, Tokyo @neidtok]

Statelessness in Japan
A talk Wednesday, Nov, 19, in the OAG-Building, Aoyama-itchome
https://t.co/VEyHjh6TCG

[Christoph Neidhart, Tokyo @neidtok]

The joke was particularly popular during the late Brezhnev years. Currently, it could also be told about in a few other world capitals.

[Christoph Neidhart, Tokyo @neidtok]

Reports about Trump's health remind me of a Soviet joke:
Every day, a man buys Pravda at a newsstand, looks at the frontpage and hands the paper back.
One day, the lady asks: what are looking for?
An obituary.
Obituaries are on page 8.
The one I'm looking for will be on page 1.

[Christoph Neidhart, Tokyo @neidtok]

Takaichi like Koizumi's father: In 2001, the LDP was in disarray, J Koizumi, a right-wing outsider with popular appeal, got elected to save the party. He did it. With the LDP crumbling again, right-wing Takaichi, a female Abe-clone with no appeal, will fail. LDP your end is nigh.

[Christoph Neidhart, Tokyo @neidtok]

She wants to become Japan's Margret Thatcher, though it's more likely she becomes Japan's Liz Truss

Takaichi poised to become Japan's first female PM after winning LDP poll https://t.co/7XiLiScMOR

[Christoph Neidhart, Tokyo @neidtok]

Why would Trump only want the Nobel prize for Peace, that stable genius should also receive the Nobel for economy for discovering tariffs that do not affect the consumers, the Nobel for medicine for suggesting injecting bleach to cure Covid, and for literature for his Tweets

[Christoph Neidhart, Tokyo @neidtok]

@BulwarkOnline @ban239 The meeting served its purpose for both: for Trump, his Epstein connection is out of his headlines; Putin received a veneer of credibility. That's all that meeting was about.

[Christoph Neidhart, Tokyo @neidtok]

Lehrer and Kreisler, both claimed to have been first and blamed the other of plagiarism. However, we know where Lehrer got the idea from: in the 1950s, the city of Boston started to poison pigeons in its parks to reduce their number. In Europe, that was not done before the 1970s

[Christoph Neidhart, Tokyo @neidtok]

Who remembers Georg Kreisler's "Gehen wir Taubenvergiften im Park"? It was an adaptation, here is the original by Harvard-mathematician Tom Lehrer. He passed away last Saturday.
https://t.co/Q4z17Kv1hE

[Christoph Neidhart, Tokyo @neidtok]

for comparison:
https://t.co/JJiN4Lh09k

[Kurt Andersen @KBAndersen]

Stalin biographer and world historian Stephen Kotkin (Stanford, ex-Princeton) has an A+ take on the notion that Trump is “not who we are.” https://t.co/CiN6k9NtXK

[Christoph Neidhart, Tokyo @neidtok]

@TheKoreaHerald Yoon makes even the dim-witted Park Geun-hee look like a political genius