Mareike Ohlberg

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.

It feels almost quaint to appeal to joint EU action at this point, but that's honestly our only chance.

Still Muddling Through

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

(S+) Meinung: Meinung: Friedrich Merz in Peking – so wird es nichts mit dem Weg aus der China-Illusion 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 Wor...

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...

Yep, the 4-5 different searches thing is exactly what I'm doing now, so if that could be combined in one (mostly reliable) search, that would be great.

I'd never use it to replace my own parsing of the text, and it requires rigorous double-checking, but it has occasionally surfaced some relevant stuff I had missed/didn't fully appreciate while skimming documents myself.

I've found that AI occasionally surfaces other stuff than Google (which can be useful sometimes, but overall, it's not that compelling). I've also used AI as a second, faster pair of eyes to parse long (several hundred pp) Chinese language documents for key points that I may have missed.

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:

From Moscow to MAGA AfD’s Markus Frohnmaier and the Transnational Far-Right Convergence

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

In Hungary, Rubio says Trump is committed to PM Orban's success President Donald Trump is committed to the success of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban because his leadership and rapport with Trump are crucial to U.S. interests, U.S. Secretary of State Marco R...

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.

China's DeepSeek: Implications of its Growing Reach in Autocracies and Democracies Plus new research on spoofed media domains, cultural propaganda, and united front networks in Mexico

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...

BREAKING: Jimmy Lai sentencing set for 10am Monday - media tycoon faces up to life in prison | Hong Kong Free Press HKFP Hong Kong pro-democracy tycoon Jimmy Lai will be sentenced at 10am next Monday following his conviction on collusion and sedition charges, according to the judiciary’s court diary. Lai, 78, was found...

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.