Hey if anyone was looking for a way to communicate to the median voter why they should care about keeping Taiwan free and the SCS open for navigation, the Hormuz Strait is providing an excellent example for what happens when you lose the open seas

Worth these cases from overseas are almost certainly not outliers, it's just info from within China is better controlled

Germany's far-right AfD leader calls for withdrawal of all US troops (h/t @abenewman.bsky.social ). Several factors at work: 🧵

I'm fairly left leaning, but I need somebody with more solid leftist credentials to explain to @progintl.bsky.social that the "whole-process people's democracy" propaganda line in this piece is, politely speaking, complete bs. Publishing this is not progressive, it just shows you have no clue.

Man a lot of people are unable to conceive what the end of Pax Americana actually entails.

GMF’s Zsuzsanna Végh joined FT's Gideon Rachman on The Rachman Review to discuss Hungary’s pivotal parliamentary elections this April. Listen to the full podcast: https://bit.ly/47mlpfp

Jeez - these numbers for Europe are absolutely bonkers China's trade data for the first 2 months of the year. Exports to the EU up 27.8% Exports to Germany up 31.3% Exports to Netherlands up 17.9% Exports to France up 31.9% Exports to Italy up 36.4%

I read this book a few years ago and highly recommend it!

If anyone is friends with any Georgian air traffic controllers, buy them a nice bottle of wine. As guardians of pretty much the only narrow gap still available between Europe and Asia that avoids both Iran, the Gulf, Ukraine and Russia, they are under some substantial pressure.

I wrote a thing on Merz's China visit www.gmfus.org/news/still-m...

Please understand that China is an actual place with its own structures and problems and not some pendulum that swings only in reaction to US actions.

Begging folks to recognize when they are being called the adversary

Die drittgrößte Volkswirtschaft der Welt macht sich klein: In Peking schrumpft der Kanzler den Krieg mitten in Europa zur »Ukraine-Frage«. Auch sonst wählte Friedrich Merz bei Xi Jinping zu weiche Worte. Kommentar @spiegel.de (10-mal frei) www.spiegel.de/ausland/mein...

While Merz talks about a “comprehensive strategic partnership” with China, the Greens in Berlin & Brussels are talking about the second China shock

Please read this article to the end. Even before ICE got involved, this started because this *blind man who speaks no English and uses a curtain rod as a walking stick* got lost on a walk and some Karen called the police on him and they tasered and beat him bc he didn’t drop the rod. WTF

I was honestly prepared to write a cautiously positive/optimistic piece on Friedrich Merz’s China visit, but now I have a draft with a tongue-in-cheek working title “2015 called, it wants its China policy back.” Which is probably a tad unfair, but the Groundhog Day feeling is real.

“2026 is the year of the horse” The horse:

MAGA is launching a transnational far-right project “Alliance of Sovereign Nations”. Hosted by US Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna, the launch will feature US Speaker Mike Johnson, Markus Frohnmaier (AfD 🇩🇪 ), & António Tânger Corrêa (Chega 🇵🇹 ). Read more on Frohnmaier here:

Diese "faire, zuverlässige Partnerschaft" hat Xi nicht im Angebot. Und die "großen Chancen" werden ein Wunschtraum bleiben. Bleibt also, den "konstruktiven Dialog" zur selbstbewußten Artikulation deutscher & europäischer Interessen zu nutzen.

This statement is an embarrassment

you think China is into the idea of "civilizational state" because of some pre-existing tradition? everyone learnt from Huntington. Zhao Tingyang the guy who invented tianxia theory said in interview himself that he was originally a Kantian guy. Then he read Huntington and he thought oh no

Two months before an election in Hungary in which Viktor Orban faces a stiff challenge, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio travels to Budapest and tells Orban that Trump is “deeply committed to your success”. This is the definition of election meddling www.reuters.com/world/europe...

to my great delight Robert Lawrence Kuhn, one of the more respectable CCP shills, was all over the Epstein files sucking up for money.

Just updated my post on DeepSeek - #Estonia gov't published a new report, which concluded from its own checks - "When discussing issues related to Estonia's security, DeepSeek conceals key information and inserts Chinese propaganda into its answers". underreportedchina.substack.com/p/chinas-dee...

Euronews "has recently explored opportunities in China, including sponsorship deals with the state-owned channel CGTN", Euractiv reports www.euractiv.com/new...

Hong Kong pro-democracy tycoon Jimmy Lai will be sentenced at 10am on Monday following his conviction on collusion and sedition charges, according to the judiciary's court diary. In full: buff.ly/8vwfgyc

I often agree with Thorsten, but I disagree here. This reinforces efforts already underway from Russia & others, but, more importantly, it's accompanied by an assault on European legislation like the DSA, which we should take seriously. So, yes, this *may* backfire, but I wouldn't count on that.

The Chinese equivalent of "it doesn't matter what order the letters are in, as long as the first and last of each word are in the right position, you can read it just fine"

I realized how much current U.S. politics have lowered my expectations because for a second there, I was actually surprised the guy stepped down. Not something we're used to anymore in this brave new world.

Nothing too surprising here. FBI agents involved say at this point both Thiel and Musk were targets of what was perhaps the largest and most elaborate recruitment operation that Russian intelligence was running, and the most successful.

The story is not that there are two conflicting versions of what happened. The story is that the federal government is lying about what happened. There is plenty of evidence. Your job, our job, is to sift that evidence and describe what actually happened ffs.

Nice amended graph by @stoa1984 at X

This must be weird news to see if you’re one of the literally hundreds or even thousands of university administrators who preemptively censored faculty, scrubbed websites, changed the names of centers, etc.

This will almost certainly go unnoticed given the state of the world today, but tonight - last thing on EP agenda - lawmakers will debate a motion condemning Jimmy Lai's conviction Most newsy bit is the call for "Commission to initiate the suspension of HK status under the WTO"

📊Those 🇩🇪numbers are even more dramatic when looking at responses according to party preference, laying bare how much of an outlier AfD is. Excluding AfD voters, we get: 🇫🇷 93.5% trust in France 🇬🇧 89.75% trust in UK 🇺🇦 62.5% trust in Ukraine 🇺🇸 8.5% trust in USA ‼️ 🇷🇺 3% trust in Russia. Short 🧵

There will be a lot of big stories in 2026 regarding US democracy, but the biggest IMO will be the effort to reshape the electoral system

🔴Trump and Musk Welcome Russian Propaganda After Sanctioning European Disinformation Experts If there’s any question that the US is now more aligned with Russia rather than Europe, recent State Department decisions have removed all doubt bylinetimes.com/2026/01/07/t...

man what the fuck www.whitehouse.gov/j6/

Die AfD bereitet die deutsche Bevölkerung schon mal darauf vor, dass Deutschland zum russischen Großraum gehört.

I agree with this. The damage to the international order is less immediately relevant to Taiwan than some have argued. At the same time, the damage done (by this specific attack and the Trump presidency more generally) is much bigger and goes beyond giving China a convenient excuse to annex Taiwan.

Required reading for those European capitals that are still in denial. As a recent Rhodium note cited by the FT stresses, a weak renminbi, persistent deflation and excess capacity in China will erode the bite of conventional trade defence tools. New thinking is needed www.ft.com/content/079f...

X soft censored the video of Elon Musk agreeing with Thierry Breton on the DSA by declaring it "age-restricted adult content" 🙄🙄🙄

Before I sign off to enjoy a few days in peace and away from the news, a word on the recent U.S. sanctions: The "global censorship-industrial complex" is a far right fantasy. Most of the DSA is about transparency and forcing platforms to provide info about how they moderate and boost content 1/

Aus aktuellem Anlass.

My wish for 2026 is for Americans to realize they're not that special. Many other countries have gone through these types of authoritarian crackdowns before, and their experiences hold valuable lessons, but obsession with their own exceptionalism is preventing Americans from making use of them.

“Chinese analysts have interpreted the new strategy as evidence of American retreat.” www.nytimes.com/2025/12/18/b...

I read Black Pill by @ellereeve.bsky.social this year, and this quote by White Nationalist Chris Cantwell really stuck with me: "The goal was to become the system... We want to wield the tremendous power of the United States government."