Paula Kirby

Rostock #DDR, 1978 © Lars Henrik Pontoppidan via Facebook.
Run-down for sure, but those of us who still have fond memories of the time & the place will also see a softness, a tranquility, a lack of pretentiousness, a simplicity & a reminder of a time when appearances and money weren't everything

Black and white photo. Quiet town street (cobbled) with old buildings that have beauty and character despite their peeling paint and plaster. 2 elderly ladies, one pushing a bike that looks too big for her, both carrying bulging shopping bags, both striding out and looking very determined.

Life in the #DDR:
#Naumburg 1988, returning home with the shopping © Reimund Schwarz via mittelhessen.de
I love this one! That old lady with the bike's going to be me in a few years' time! 😉
#GDR #EastGermany

Today, Donald Trump must have woken up today to the news of the world supporting President Zelenskyy.
May trump’s fall be never-ending. #SlavaUkraini 🇺🇦

UK Prime Minister Starmer hugs Zelensky as he welcomes him to 10 Downing Street.

This is how you welcome the leader of the free world.

HEY EVERYONE REMEMBER WHEN TRUMP WAS IMPEACHED FOR DENYING AID TO UKRAINE BECAUSE HE WANTED ZELENSKY TO LIE AND SAY BAD THINGS ABOUT BIDEN AND ZELENKSY WOULDN’T DO IT?

Maybe literally one fucking American newspapers could mention this in their, “think pieces,” about what happened yesterday.

Calling all #Canadians!
#Petition calling on the Prime Minister of #Canada to revoke Elon Musk's citizenship:

www.ourcommons.ca/petitions/en...

Please share widely even if you're not Canadian yourself

He is. And SOME of those who voted for him will come to see that. The worst thing we can do is to dismiss them all as unreachable & so not bother trying, b/c that can only be a self-fulfilling prophecy. We need to play smart, tho: contempt & abuse will only push them further in the wrong direction.

But not everyone who voted for Trump is part of a cult. People had all sorts of reasons for voting for him/not voting against him, not all of them wholly unreasonable. It will be counterproductive to tar them all with the same disparaging brush.

So in the end, and rather unsurprisingly, the CDU did not win any voters from the far-right AfD by aligning their positions on migration and voting with them in parliament. Instead, they lost almost a million voters to the AfD

This was very reassuring, I must say. No more pretending everything is normal anymore as during the election campaign. Things have to move now, and fast.

Freedland is rather assuming that Putin's aims and Trump's aims are not one and the same thing.
I don't think that's a safe assumption.

White text on a multi-coloured background: “You are allowed to say, at any point, I can’t support this. Even if you did. Even if you were unsure. You can at any point say, “This has gone too far.” And while the best time to say that was earlier, second best time is now.”

Honestly: just imagine. And imagine the implication for Ukraine. For all our miserabilism and self-deprecation, British actions currently matter a great deal, especially now that America is in retreat.

Nation at a crossroads: a reading guide to the 2025 German election As the country goes to the polls, writers explore, in fiction and non-fiction, its identity and values — and where these suggest it is heading

Some excellent recommendations here

Deluded

"Be careful. When a democracy is sick, fascism comes to its bedside, but it is not to inquire about its health."
Attributed to Albert Camus

My money's on him *cough* falling out of a window at some point ...

Exactly. And the tragedy is: they're not wrong. It's just that the only radical change on offer is of the worst possible kind.

Here’s the problem. Our economic model has stopped offering sustained rises in living standards and improvements to the public realm. Two possible outcomes flow from this. Either voters are offered an alternative, which means challenging the concentration of wealth and power in the bank accounts of a few. Or voters may simply conclude that democracy no longer delivers, and be susceptible to messages that blame migrants and other stigmatised minorities for decline. The latter is now on the ascendant across the west, because the former is missing in action.

I tend to find Owen Jones a bit hit and miss as a commentator, but this paragraph (taken from www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...) is absolutely spot on in my view.

Here is something from a contract lawyer's perspective.

Trump is not "transactional", for he will never be bound.

Indeed, he is anti-transactional.

A transaction is an exchange, an agreement.

But for Trump the agreement is only there to be repudiated, so to gain leverage for his next demand.

These people are amazing. If you're concerned about what's happening in the US right now – and who in their right mind isn't? – I really recommend giving them a follow.

Unser ORF - unsere Demokratie Jetzt Petition unterzeichnen und Verhandler:innen kontaktieren!

Was schützt vor Desinformation?

Ein starker, unabhängiger öffentlich-rechtlicher Rundfunk trägt mit dazu bei, Menschen vor Fehl- und Desinformation zu schützen

Deshalb: Hier kann man die Petition „Unser ORF“ unterstützen, und sich gegen eine Zerstörung des ORF aussprechen

Empfehlung!

Angela Merkel kritisiert Friedrich Merz. Ein Schritt, den sie bisher nie gehen wollte. Damit macht sie noch einmal deutlich, was für eine Zäsur das gestern war. Egal wem Merz und Linnemann das in die Schuhe schieben wollen.
Sie haben sich nicht an ihre eigenen Standards und Versprechen gehalten.

Tracker: Legal Challenges to Trump Administration Actions A public resource tracking the legal challenges to the Trump administration's executive orders and actions.

NEW Public Resource

Tracker: Legal Challenges to Trump Administration Actions

A catalogue compiling all the legal challenges facing the #TrumpAdministration’s executive orders and actions.

Another miserably short-sighted move. Our adversaries, like Russia & China, are busily expanding as the BBC WS contracts. Key tools of UK soft power are being sacrificed - & thanks to cuts to BBC Monitoring, the UK won't even know what narratives it needs to counter.

"Was it just happiness and pride that made him shiver? Or did he feel something else, too – something that surprised him? It was almost disgust. ‘Now I've dirtied myself,’ Hendriks felt, dismayed. ‘Now I have a stain on my hand that I'll never get rid of... Now I've sold myself... Now I'm marked!’’

English wording of the Buddenbrookshaus post: “The pact with the devil, the alliance with evil, has a long tradition in Germany, explored in literature in the Faustus myth – including by Thomas and Klaus Mann. Today we present Klaus Mann: Mephisto. Story of a Career, 1936

Text: “Waren es Glück und Stolz allein, die ihn erschauern ließen? Oder spürte er auch noch etwas anderes – zur eigenen Überraschung? Es war beinahe Ekel. ‘Jetzt habe ich mich beschmutzt,’ war Hendriks bestürztes Gefühl. ‘Jetzt habe ich einen Flecken auf meiner Hand, den bekomme ich nie mehr weg … Jetzt habe ich mich verkauft … Jetzt bin ich gezeichnet!’” Klaus Mann, Mephisto, 1936

Still from the film Mephisto, showing the face of Hendrik Höfgen, a thinly disguised portrait of German actor Gustaf Gründgens, in stage make-up, with the words, “Der Pakt mit dem Teufel, das Bündnis mit dem Bösen, hat in Deutschland eine lange Tradition, literarisch verarbeitet im Faustus-Mythos – auch von Thomas und Klaus Mann. Heute stellen wir vor: Klaus Mann: Mephisto. Roman einer Karriere, 1936

Posted by the Buddenbrookshaus on FB today, for reasons my German-speaking followers who have been following the news from Germany (www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...) will immediately understand.
If you haven't yet read it, Klaus Mann's Mephisto is a Must Read for our times, whether in ENG or GER.

Number of Britons who think Brexit was right decision hits new low - YouGov poll On the five-year anniversary of Britain’s EU exit, new YouGov polling lays bare damning public sentiment on the decision

Just three in 10 Britons (30 per cent) say that it was right for the UK to vote to leave the EU, compared to 55 per cent who say it was wrong, a new YouGov poll has shown

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/poli...

The loudest megaphone: how Trump mastered our new attention age The old model of political debate is over, and spectacle beats argument every time. How did we get here?

Excellent article in this morning's Guardian that could be relevant here: www.theguardian.com/news/2025/ja...