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glyko.bsky.social
glykosymoritis
@glyko.bsky.social
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A political diary: For a democratic secular masterless and borderless world; for individual and social autonomy*; for lifelong democratic civic education with democratic aim, the creation of participatory democratic citizenry. (Castoriadis*) #glykoreads
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glyko.bsky.social
The end of the double game: Why Europe is finally slamming the door on Erdogan’s Syrian ambitions
Analysis: In a 363–71 vote, the European Parliament condemns Turkey’s role in northern Syria, accusing Ankara of destabilizing the region and enabling ISIS jailbreaks… www.ynetnews.com/opinions-ana...
The geopolitical landscape of the Levant experienced a profound shudder this week, not from the familiar thud of artillery, but from the clinical, decisive halls of the European Parliament in Brussels. In a move that signals the end of a decade-long era of strategic patience, European lawmakers delivered a crushing blow to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's "neo-Ottoman" project in Syria. By a staggering majority of 363 to 71, the Parliament didn't just issue a condemnation; it effectively dismantled the narrative that Ankara has meticulously crafted to justify its presence in the war-torn north. For too long, the international community has watched with mounting anxiety as Erdogan utilized the Syrian vacuum to empower a patchwork of proxy militias whose ideological DNA is far closer to the radicalism of the past than the democracy of the future. Under the guise of creating a "Safe Zone," Turkey has overseen a region where hardline Sharia-based governance often replaced civil order, and where the primary objective was not the defeat of terror, but the displacement of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces. The European resolution finally calls this gamble for what it is: a dangerous destabilization that has directly facilitated the resurgence of the Islamic State. The most chilling revelation in the Brussels report is the direct link between Turkish-backed military operations and the escape of hundreds of ISIS prisoners. While Ankara frequently postures as a vanguard against terrorism, the European Parliament has highlighted the undeniable truth that Turkish incursions have consistently compromised the security of detention centers, allowing radicalized fighters to slip back into the shadows. This is not merely a regional concern; it is a direct threat to the national security of the entire Mediterranean basin. When a NATO ally's policies result in the jailbreak of the world's most dangerous extremists, the term "ally" begins to lose its meaning. Interestingly, the resolution takes the step of mentioning both Israel and Turkey as actors using Syria as a theater for indirect rivalries. However, a closer reading reveals a sharp distinction in the eyes of European policymakers. While Israel's involvement is fundamentally a defensive, pro-national security doctrine aimed at preventing the entrenchment of Iranian-backed terror on its immediate border, Turkey's involvement is seen as an attempt to fundamentally alter the demography and ideology of the region. The European pivot suggests a realization that while Israel acts to prevent a vacuum from being filled by Tehran, Erdogan's proxies are creating a vacuum being filled by the very radicalism Europe spent billions to contain. The resolution's surprising embrace of the integration agreement between the Syrian government and the SDF marks a watershed moment in Western pragmatism. It signifies a "Secular Front" policy —a recognition that the preservation of a national state structure, however imperfect, is a more reliable guarantor of security than a lawless frontier ruled by "Sharia-lite" fiefdoms. By welcoming this cooperation, Europe is effectively boxing Erdogan out, signaling that the future of Syria must be decided by those on the ground who are committed to the fight against ISIS, rather than those who use the group's presence as a convenient pretext for territorial expansion Europe is backing this new stance with more than just rhetoric. The announcement of a 620-million-euro financial support package for 2026 and 2027 is a strategic "soft power" salvo. By earmarking these funds for independent human rights organizations and local peace-building initiatives, the European Union is attempting to build a grassroots bulwark against the ideological export of the Turkish occupation.
February 18, 2026 at 7:23 AM
glyko.bsky.social
#China’s economy is in effect a $20 trillion paradox. Five years into a damaging real estate crisis, which is by no means over, it features over-production, deflation, weak consumption, stagnant productivity and a fiscal crunch for local and provincial governments. #economy #communism
No five-year plan will solve the paradox of China’s economy
Unsustainable exports and debt stimulus cannot cover up weak consumption and a property crisis for ever, but the reforms necessary are not on the agenda
www.thetimes.com
February 18, 2026 at 7:10 AM
glyko.bsky.social
A new report by the CST bare the terrifying extent of the planning undertaken by men imprisoned last week after being found guilty of preparing to carry out mass terror attacks against the Manchester Jewish community – as well as how the security services managed to neutralise the threat.
cst.org.uk
February 18, 2026 at 6:59 AM
glyko.bsky.social
#Ukraine has recaptured territory at its fastest pace in nearly three years: Ukraine gained 78 square miles in 5 days between Wednesday and Sunday, which was equal to Russia’s advances for the entire month of December, according to an AFP analysis of data from the ISW. archive.ph/XwhtI
It is thought to be the most land retaken by Kyiv in such a narrow window since its counter-offensive in June 2023, which saw fierce clashes in the Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia regions. (The gains followed disarray in Russian battlefield communications caused by units having their access to Starlink satellite internet terminals rescinded after a deal brokered by Ukraine's defence ministry and Elon Musk, the chief executive of Space. Nearly 90 per cent of Russian units were said to have lost connectivity after the network was restricted to verified, whitelisted terminals known to be in Ukrainian hands. Russian drones were using Starlink to circumvent electronic jamming systems and hit their targets with precision, as well as to coordinate movements. The ISW, a Washington-based think-tank, said: "These Ukrainian counterattacks are likely leveraging the recent block on Russian forces' access to Starlink, which Russian milbloggers have claimed is causing communications and command and control issues on the battlefield." Slow gains Russia's monthly gains in Ukraine 80,000. The advances are concentrated around 50 miles east of Zaporizhzhia in southeastern Ukraine, where Russian forces have pressed forward steadily since the summer of 2025. The communications blackout grounded drones and allowed troops to advance through the grey zone in armoured vehicles - a rarity as they are usually vulnerable to heavy strike drones and FPV loitering munitions - according to David Axe, a US military 9notrat
February 18, 2026 at 6:52 AM
glyko.bsky.social
The pornography of anti-semitism: Turning political arguments into sex-like violence
www.commentary.org/articles/alv... #antisemitism #Islamism
For some of its most ardent purveyors, anti-Semitism today has the appeal of the pornographic. Normally we think of pornography in sexual terms, but especially since the ravages of Hamas's sadistic onslaught in October 2023 and the aggressive passions directed against Jews and Israel that have followed, a distinct version of political pornography has emerged. Unlike its sexual counterpart, which seeks to arouse feelings of erotic pleasure, political porn aims to stimulate feelings of hostility, humiliation, exclusion, control, and domination. In advancing its case, facts don't matter. Feelings do, especially strongly adversarial ones. And one way to stir strong feelings is to focus on the formerly transgressive and overcome any lingering taboos about what is permitted and what is not. What works in one place will be emulated in others, so we can expect further iterations of the examples cited above. Today's anti-Semitism has what one critic accurately calls "the allure of the obscene." The formerly taboo is now out in the open, energetically so, and shows no signs of abating. On the contrary, we are witnessing the eruption of an anti-Semitic exhibitionism-loud, profane, and menacing. With the emergence of Palestinianism into almost cult-like status, accompanied by increasingly threatening forms of anti-Zionist derangement, the destructive aspects of the political imagination align with the appeals of the anti-Semitic imagination and pornographic imagination. Jew-hatred is enjoying a growth spurt. Unless it's effectively curtailed, we can expect to see an ongoing stream of the moral horror shows already underway.
February 18, 2026 at 6:43 AM
glyko.bsky.social
Oxfam’s former chief executive has accused the charity of being toxic and anti-Semitic during her tenure.
Halima Begum also accuses struggling company of racism and sexism ahead of employment tribunal to dispute her departure archive.ph/HB2Cf #Oxfam #antisemitism
Halima Begum resigned as chief executive of Oxfam GB in December amid allegations she was bullying staff. Now she has accused the charity of having a disproportionate focus on Gaza compared with other world crises, and said it was too quick to describe Israel's actions in Gaza as a genocide. Ms Begum, who is taking Oxfam to an employment tribunal over her departure, also accused the charity of racism and sexism from "board members" at "two board meetings". . In her tribunal claim she accuses the organisation of having a "toxic anti-Semitic culture"
February 18, 2026 at 6:35 AM
glyko.bsky.social
Iran has sentenced at least 14 protesters to death in group online trials, with additional indictments accusing detainees of acting against the country’s security on calls from the US president and Israel. www.iranintl.com/en/202602161... #Islamism #authoritarianism #dissent
Death sentences issued for at least 14 detained in Iran protests
www.iranintl.com
February 18, 2026 at 6:25 AM
glyko.bsky.social
Is anything morally obvious anymore?
The public reaction to the violence in Minneapolis suggests that we have held on to our sense of universal truths. www.theatlantic.com/books/2026/0... By @galbeckerman.bsky.social #RadicalUniversalism
First, Boehm dispenses with the identitarians-both the ideologues on the right, who fight "in terms of traditional values," and those on the left, who fight "in the name of gender and race." The MAGA versus critical race theory death match is an easy foil, two sides of the same group-centric approach that is ill-suited for pluralistic society, let alone all of humanity. But if this was his only target, a reader weary of the culture war might just easily nod along. Boehm goes further, and takes aim at the 400-year-old tradition of Western liberalism, or what he calls "false universalism." Because he is trying to invoke a politics built on essential, everlasting truths, Boehm considers the marketplace of ideas almost as much of a cul de sac as the tribal alleys of identitarians. One of the legacies of the Enlightenment, he argues, is that moral obviousness was replaced by a culture of "consensus, interest, and opinion." We reason our way to a point of view, and argue and haggle with others toward some moral compromise. In practice, we usually end up balancing delicately on the knife's edge of the thinnest majoritarianism. This might sound like a reasonable place to end up, and even the best we can hope for-except when it works to mask injustice.
February 17, 2026 at 7:17 AM
glyko.bsky.social
Albanese has come to represent something crucial to the UN ecosystem. She is the tireless mascot of the Global Intifada, the activist masquerading as an academic and a respected legal figure to confer a patina of legitimacy on the corrupt & corrupting NGO complex. www.commentary.org/seth-mandel/...
Austria and Germany have joined France's declaration of no confidence in Albanese. Longtime UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric distanced Secretary General Antonio Guterres from Albanese's comments and, in general, "much of what she says." Next week, at a UN meeting, France will publicly call for her resignation. Britain may even join the club. But what would the UN do without Albanese? What would it be? It would certainly be less honest, for starters. People should think of Albanese when they think of the UN. She is an indefatigable agent of misery, a publicist for totalitarian death squads, and a figure of unity in the vast interconnected movement of Jew-haters worldwide. We deserve a better UN. And until we get it, the UN and Francesca Albanese deserve each other.
February 17, 2026 at 6:56 AM
glyko.bsky.social
The BBC is letting itself be used as a propaganda outlet for Iran’s regime: One might have thought the Corporation would learn from its mistakes in Gaza. But Tehran’s clerics are playing it just like Hamas archive.ph/99ReZ #BBC #Islamism #IranMassacre
Last week I wrote about the failure of Westminster politicians to take the recent massacre of protestors in Iran as seriously as they have the Gaza war. Now it looks as if the BBC is falling into the same trap A recent report from Iran broadcast in prime-time by BBC News is simply staggering in this regard. Filed by the BBC's Chief International Correspondent Lyse Doucet, it was, on its face, a simple piece of foreign reporting: scenes of crowds, interviews with passers-by, the temperature of a capital city. But its central effect - its tone, its emphases, its glaring omissions - was not to illuminate Iran's reality. It was to distort it. The most telling line came early in the report and set the mood: "It's a public holiday today and in Tehran it feels like a family festival". There are times when that kind of phrase is harmless colour. Iran in 2026 is not one of those times. This is a state that has responded to protests with large-scale killing; a state that does not merely govern but punishes dissent in the most brutal way possible. Despite that backdrop, the BBC's report from the streets of Tehran did not make a single reference to the mass murder of thousands of protestors just weeks ago or the fact that thousands more have been arrested, their fates still uncertain. How can this meet even the most basic of journalistic standards we should expect from the BBC? What was absent from this BBC report mattered as much as what was present. There was no one critical of the government in the piece. Not one. No dissident voice. No bereaved family member. No former prisoner. No student who has watched friends disappear. Instead, we were given the kind of "vox pops" you get when a regime is comfortable with the answers. And that leads to the question that should have been asked on air, not muttered afterwards on social media. Were those interviews conducted under conditions of duress? If they were, why were viewers not plainly told that the regime was controlling what could be said, and who could say it? Why was the coercion not made explicit as the central fact shaping the entire report? And if they were not under duress, if there was genuine editorial freedom, real latitude to choose contributors and frame the story, then the question is even more significant: why on earth was the report so soft on a regime that has very recently been murdering its own citizens on the very same streets? Why did it not focus in detail on the recent crackdown that has cost thousands of innocent lives? This is why Iranian dissidents have used the acid phrase "Ayatollah BBC". It is not because they imagine a secret love affair between Broadcasting House and the clerics. It is because they recognise an outcome: the world's most trusted broadcaster producing something that a theocratic, propaganda-driven regime could happily file under "normal life continues" This all feels uncomfortably familiar. In the BBC's coverage of the Gaza war, it has been striking how rarely audiences hear voices plainly critical of Hamas, how often the governing force in Gaza is treated as a "normal" government, a reliable source of information rather than a genocidal terrorist group that triggered a war in which so many Palestinians have suffered. Different conflict, same weakness: a reluctance to confront the most culpable actors head-on and hold them responsible. The BBC will insist it is simply showing what it can, where it can. But there is a line between "limited access" and "useful output for the regime". This primetime report, shared across social media, crossed it. The BBC must explain why. In a country where dissent is met with bullets and hangings, "family festival" is not an observation. It is an erasure that comes dangerously close to propaganda.
February 17, 2026 at 6:36 AM
glyko.bsky.social
Russia’s economy has entered the death zone: This is not a cyclical downturn that monetary or fiscal policy can fix. A recession is like fatigue: rest and you recover.Russia’s condition is like altitude sickness: the longer you stay, the worse it gets, regardless of rest. archive.ph/wc8Bu
glyko.bsky.social glykosymoritis @glyko.bsky.social · 1d
As Russia’s war against Ukraine enters its 5 year, the economy that sustains it has been transformed in ways that will be difficult—perhaps impossible—to reverse without another crisis. Westerners keep waiting for the Russian economy to collapse. It won’t. But nor will it recover.
Over the past four years the Russian economy has bifurcated into two distinct metabolic systems. The first comprises military and military-adjacent industries: the vital organs that receive priority blood flow. These sectors are growing, hiring and investing. They get first access to labour, capital and imports. The second system contains everything else: private enterprise, small businesses, consumer industries. These are the extremities left in the cold. Russia's overall manufacturing sector has expanded by a hefty 18.3% over the past three years. But every bit of that growth-and more-has come from the military sector. Defence-connected manufacturing expanded enough on its own to give a 20% boost to the headline numbers, meaning civilian industry has shrunk in the same period. The most dangerous feature of this new structure is the fuel it burns. Russia's economy now runs on what might be called "military rent": budget transfers to defence enterprises that generate wages and economic activity. Functionally, this resembles the oil windfalls of the 2000s. But there is a critical difference. Oil rent came from outside the system; foreigners paid for a tradable asset, and the money circulated through the economy with real multiplier effects. Military rent is internal redistribution towards assets designed for destruction. The body is metabolising its own muscle tissue for energy. Meanwhile, the fiscal oxygen is thinning. The budget deficit has widened rapidly to 5.6trn roubles ($73bn), or 2.6% of GDP, for 2025—the largest since the pandemic. Interest payments on government debt this year will exceed spending on education and health care combined. Oil prices are increasing the pressure. With Urals crude, Russia's main grade, now trading at a discount of 25-30% to Brent, Russia's export revenues are heading towards their lowest level since 2020. Oil and gas budget receipts were down by half in January, year on year, to just under 400bn roubles. But the weakness in energy prices is not primarily a Russian story. It reflects China's deflationary slowdown, Europe's stagnation and America's trade wars. The thin air at altitude is a global condition. Russia suffers disproportionately, but so do other petro-states. This global context creates a perverse incentive structure. Standard economic theory suggests that deteriorating conditions should push the Kremlin towards negotiations on ending the war. A rational actor facing mounting costs seeks an exit. But Vladimir Putin is not only watching his own oxygen gauge. He is watching the other climbers. There is a deeper layer still. Across the Russian elites, not just the Kremlin, there is near-universal conviction that regardless of how this war ends, the West's ultimate goal is Russia's permanent strategic containment, and not merely as punishment for Ukraine, but to curtail Russia's development potential for ever. This belief has become difficult to debunk. Western policymakers openly discuss plans for containing Russia. Four years of confrontation have created path dependence on both sides. If both sides expect permanent confrontation, they act accordingly, and confrontation becomes the only stable outcome. Russia's revealed preference-continuing the war despite mounting costs-is rational under these expectations. It makes sense to keep fighting and hope something changes: that the Western coalition fractures, that Ukraine exhausts itself, that Donald Trump's priorities shift. Russia can probably continue waging war for the foreseeable future. But no climber can survive the death zone indefinitely-and not all climbers who attempt the descent survive it. For the Kremlin, avoiding economic degradation requires, at a minimum, ending the war. That alone does not guarantee recovery. But every additional year at this altitude raises systemic risk: of fiscal crisis, of institutional breakdown, of damage so severe that no post-war policy can repair it. The question Western policymakers must ask is what kind of Russia will emerge when the descent finally begins-and whether anyone has a plan for what comes next. •
February 17, 2026 at 6:26 AM
glyko.bsky.social
As Russia’s war against Ukraine enters its 5 year, the economy that sustains it has been transformed in ways that will be difficult—perhaps impossible—to reverse without another crisis. Westerners keep waiting for the Russian economy to collapse. It won’t. But nor will it recover.
Over the past four years the Russian economy has bifurcated into two distinct metabolic systems. The first comprises military and military-adjacent industries: the vital organs that receive priority blood flow. These sectors are growing, hiring and investing. They get first access to labour, capital and imports. The second system contains everything else: private enterprise, small businesses, consumer industries. These are the extremities left in the cold. Russia's overall manufacturing sector has expanded by a hefty 18.3% over the past three years. But every bit of that growth-and more-has come from the military sector. Defence-connected manufacturing expanded enough on its own to give a 20% boost to the headline numbers, meaning civilian industry has shrunk in the same period. The most dangerous feature of this new structure is the fuel it burns. Russia's economy now runs on what might be called "military rent": budget transfers to defence enterprises that generate wages and economic activity. Functionally, this resembles the oil windfalls of the 2000s. But there is a critical difference. Oil rent came from outside the system; foreigners paid for a tradable asset, and the money circulated through the economy with real multiplier effects. Military rent is internal redistribution towards assets designed for destruction. The body is metabolising its own muscle tissue for energy. Meanwhile, the fiscal oxygen is thinning. The budget deficit has widened rapidly to 5.6trn roubles ($73bn), or 2.6% of GDP, for 2025—the largest since the pandemic. Interest payments on government debt this year will exceed spending on education and health care combined. Oil prices are increasing the pressure. With Urals crude, Russia's main grade, now trading at a discount of 25-30% to Brent, Russia's export revenues are heading towards their lowest level since 2020. Oil and gas budget receipts were down by half in January, year on year, to just under 400bn roubles. But the weakness in energy prices is not primarily a Russian story. It reflects China's deflationary slowdown, Europe's stagnation and America's trade wars. The thin air at altitude is a global condition. Russia suffers disproportionately, but so do other petro-states. This global context creates a perverse incentive structure. Standard economic theory suggests that deteriorating conditions should push the Kremlin towards negotiations on ending the war. A rational actor facing mounting costs seeks an exit. But Vladimir Putin is not only watching his own oxygen gauge. He is watching the other climbers. There is a deeper layer still. Across the Russian elites, not just the Kremlin, there is near-universal conviction that regardless of how this war ends, the West's ultimate goal is Russia's permanent strategic containment, and not merely as punishment for Ukraine, but to curtail Russia's development potential for ever. This belief has become difficult to debunk. Western policymakers openly discuss plans for containing Russia. Four years of confrontation have created path dependence on both sides. If both sides expect permanent confrontation, they act accordingly, and confrontation becomes the only stable outcome. Russia's revealed preference-continuing the war despite mounting costs-is rational under these expectations. It makes sense to keep fighting and hope something changes: that the Western coalition fractures, that Ukraine exhausts itself, that Donald Trump's priorities shift. Russia can probably continue waging war for the foreseeable future. But no climber can survive the death zone indefinitely-and not all climbers who attempt the descent survive it. For the Kremlin, avoiding economic degradation requires, at a minimum, ending the war. That alone does not guarantee recovery. But every additional year at this altitude raises systemic risk: of fiscal crisis, of institutional breakdown, of damage so severe that no post-war policy can repair it. The question Western policymakers must ask is what kind of Russia will emerge when the descent finally begins-and whether anyone has a plan for what comes next. •
February 17, 2026 at 6:24 AM
glyko.bsky.social
Why does Brazil keep playing with the bad guys?
It's baffling Brazil has joined China, India and Turkey in ramping up imports from Russia robinjbrooks.substack.com/p/why-does-b... By @robin-j-brooks.bsky.social #RussiaUkraineWar #sanctions
I guess there's also a reasonable explanation for why India bought so much Russian oil off shadow fleet ships. India is a massive energy importer and the temptation of cheap Russian oil was just too good to pass up. The same goes for Turkey, which is another big energy importer. But why has Brazil joined this dubious group of countries?
February 16, 2026 at 6:58 AM
glyko.bsky.social
This is how a child dies of measles: When your family becomes a data point in an outbreak archive.ph/HhhKp
By Elizabeth Bruenig #vaccination #measles
A single dose of the MMR vaccine is 93 percent effective at preventing infection; two doses are 97 percent effective. Among the unvaccinated, one in five people infected with measles in the United States will require hospitalization, and roughly two out of every 1,000 infected children will die of complications, regardless of medical care.
February 16, 2026 at 6:37 AM
glyko.bsky.social
Russia’s #WagnerGroup pivots to European sabotage: Wagner recruiters who specialised in persuading young men from Russia’s hinterland to fight in Ukraine have been given a new task — recruiting economically vulnerable Europeans to carry out violence on NATO soil www.ft.com/content/dbd1...
Faced with a much depleted deployment of covert agents in Europe following rounds of diplomatic expulsions by EU capitals, however, Moscow's spy chiefs have increasingly turned to proxies to do their bidding. For the GRU, the Wagner network has proved a particularly effective — if crude - tool to do so, senior European intelligence officials have told the FT. Agents have been tasked by Wagner operatives with everything from arson attacks against politicians' cars and warehouses containing aid for Ukraine to posing as Nazi propagandists. Typically those recruited do so for money and are often marginalised individuals, sometimes lacking purpose or direction. Wagner had a ready-built network of propagandists and recruiters who "speak their language", , said one European official. Russia's intelligence agencies typically seek to put at least two "cut-out" layers between themselves and agents they want to do their bidding, the official said. "They want some degree of deniability always... And Wagner and the individuals that were part of it... have a long and close relationship working for the GRU in this way." The FSB has meanwhile tended to turn to criminal and diaspora networks it has cultivated ties to in Russia's near abroad, but these have been less effective in reprint masse there added
February 16, 2026 at 6:19 AM
glyko.bsky.social
A multibillion-dollar politicized grant-making entity has a stranglehold over humanities research and teaching, & is using that power to push them in a direction that blurs the boundaries between scholarship and activism, pedagogy & politics. www.theatlantic.com/magazine/202... #humanities
N 1964, AN influential report identified a disquieting trend in academia. "Increasingly during the past few years," it began, "concern has been expressed about the condition, in this country, of those fields of intellectual activity generally called the humanities." The 200-plus-page document was a publication of the National Commission on the Humanities, which had been established the previous year. Reading the commission's findings six decades later, one could reasonably conclude that what today gets called the "crisis of the humanities" is not so much a discrete 21st-century emergency as the latest expression of an educational catastrophe long in the making. The challenges outlined in 1964 are familiar: meager funding, insufficient support for graduate students, too few faculty jobs, an education system that glamorizes science and math, dense writing that alienates the public, and on and on. "The state of the humanities today creates a crisis," the report concluded. "There is genuine doubt today whether the universities and colleges can insure that the purposes for which they were established and sometimes endowed will be fulfilled." This doubt has not much dimigished in the intervening decades, nor have the problems the report identified., Yet what is most notable in the report is not these similarities, but the commission's prescient fear that the solutions to what ailed the humanities-namely, more cash and large-scale institutional support—also carried risks. "For the very reason that the humanities are concerned with quality, with values, with emotions, and with the goals of living, they must remain free," the report proclaimed. "To control them is to dictate opinion and to subject all men to the tyranny of a controlling authority in the most intimate and sacred concerns of our existence as human beings." The commission's boldest recommendation was that a new, publicly funded national foundation be established to dispense money to the humanities. But it also … The commission's boldest recommendation was that a new, publicly funded national foundation be established to dispense money to the humanities. But it also cautioned that this path was fraught. The report argued that, although building a taxpayer-financed agency to support American arts and letters was necessary, no federal body should have a monopoly on this grant-making, lest the humanities become unduly influenced by politics. "We must unquestionably increase the prestige of the humanities and the flow of funds to them," the commission wrote. "At the same time, however grave the need, we must safeguard the independence, the originality, and the freedom of expression of all who are concerned with liberal learning." The report recommended that federal funding for the humanities be supplemented by ideologically diverse, nongovernmental donors. "The day must never come when scholars and artists can look only to the federal government for the help they need," it said. "The notion of any one 'chosen instrument' of government in this area must be abhorrent to anyone who cherishes the humanities and realizes that if they are not free they perish." For a while, things seemed to go more or less according to the commission's plan. President Lyndon B. Johnson established the National Endowment for the Humanities in 1965 in direct response to the report. A few years later, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation was created to finance American arts and letters. It would become part of a broader network that included the Ford Foundation, which began funding the humanities in the 1950s, and the John Templeton Foundation, which began funding research in religion and philosophy in the 1980s. The benefaction of these private nonprofits eventually came to exceed, by a substantial margin, the money dispensed by the government, which has declined over time. In recent decades, though, the priorities of many of these nonprofits have shifted. The Atlantic Philanthropies, a onetime stalwart, red… In recent decades, though, the priorities of many of these nonprofits have shifted. The Atlantic Philanthropies, a onetime stalwart, reduced its funding for the humanities in the 1990s. The Rockefeller Foundation began moving away from humanities funding in the 2000s. In 2022, the Ford Foundation announced plans to drastically reduce its higher-education funding in order to focus on racial-justice-movement building. With the broader ecosystem of humanities-focused philanthropies all but dried up, only one major private grant-maker is left standing. Today, no single entity, including the federal government, has a more profound influence on the fiscal health and cultural output of the humanities than the Mellon Foundation. The National Endowment for the Humanities' grant budget was $78 million in 2024 (its overall budget was less than half of what it was in 1980, when adjusted for inflation). Mellon awarded $540 million in grants that same year; its endowment sits at roughly $8 billion. Mellon's largesse is badly needed, especially as the Trump administration has threatened further cuts to the NEH. But the foundation's virtual monopoly on humanities funding means that it has the power to remake entire fields according to its desires. And in recent years, under the leadership of Elizabeth Alexander, who became the organization's president in 2018, Mellon has embraced an understanding of the humanities that is much more utilitarian, and far more political, than the one put forward by the 1964 commission. In June 2020, Mellon announced that it would be "prioritizing social justice in all of its grantmaking"'—"a major strategic evolution" for the organization. This new paradigm seems to find value in arts and letters only insofar as they advance approved, left-leaning causes. Over the past decade or so, conservative critics of higher education have tended to offer a rather simple explanation for the humanities' decline. Their argument amounts to a version of "go woke, go … Over the past decade or so, conservative critics of higher education have tended to offer a rather simple explanation for the humanities decline. Their argument amounts to a version of "go woke, go broke." According to this theory, ultraprogressive faculty coalesced around an unpopular liberal orthodoxy, turning off undergraduates (and the public) and accelerating the humanities collapse. In short, Shakespeare was replaced by jargon-laden prattle about "settler colonialism," and students took their tuition dollars to more sane, less shrill corners of universities. But this tale places too much of the blame on humanities professors, overestimating their actual power within institutions. More important, the went-woke-went-broke hypothesis does not account for the ways that economic transformations within higher education have accelerated the trends that conservatives lament. Specifically, the right-wing theory of the case gets the causal arrow wrong. The humanities aren't broke because they went woke. The humanities went woke in large part because they were broke. As other donors, the government, and universities themselves all but abandoned these fields, Mellon became a lifeline. But the foundation has proved to beas Jacques Derrida might have said—a kind of pharmakon: a Greek word that the philosopher noted could be translated as either "remedy" or "poison," depending on your perspective The 1964 report failed to anticipate that, in the 21st century, one of the most substantial challenges to the intellectual and political autonomy of the humanities would come not from a government agency, but from a private organization. American humanists now find themselves in a position that the report's authors would have considered a nightmare: A multibillion-dollar politicized grant-making entity has a stranglehold over humanities research and teaching, and is using that power to push them in a direction that blurs the boundaries between scholarship and activism, pedagogy and …
February 15, 2026 at 8:27 AM
glyko.bsky.social
Putin’s frog poison hit on Navalny reveals his secret chemical weapons: Porton Down scientists say jailed Russian dissident killed by toxin that could only have been made in state-sponsored lab archive.ph/otAk0#select... #putinism #totalitarianism #dissent
Alexei Navalny was killed with a toxin developed from an Ecuadorian frog on the orders of Vladimir Putin, proving that Russia possesses illegal chemical weapons, the Government has revealed. An investigation, understood to have been led by Porton Down scientists, concluded that the Russian opposition leader was assassinated with a poison 200 times stronger than morphine. The 47-year-old was murdered while incarcerated in a Siberian prison following years of outspoken criticism of the Russian president. Shortly after his death, biological samples - including human tissue - were smuggled from his cell and sent for analysis to two specialist laboratories, including the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory in Wiltshire. After nearly two years of analysis, scientists have established that traces of epibatidine were found in the specimens The poison, described as one of the deadliest on Earth, was first discovered in Ecuadorian dart frogs. However, the lethal chemical cannot be produced if the creatures are in captivity away from tropical and humid forests. Scientists involved in the "painstaking" research have concluded that it was made synthetically in a highly sophisticated laboratory that would have needed state sponsorship for such advanced chemistry.
February 15, 2026 at 7:58 AM
glyko.bsky.social
Future wars are going to be defined by unmanned weapons. The combination of unblockable satellite communications, cheap spectrum networks and accurate GPS targeting means the only way to fight will be through drone vs drone combat... archive.ph/8cEpx #RussiaUkraineWar
The Russians are also adapting to a new era of warfare. Tactics pioneered by the country's elite Rubicon drone unit are filtering down to the front, particularly the use of fibre-optic drones immune to jamming that can strike soldiers in trenches or tunnels even through forests and rough weather. Russia has begun development of jet-powered Shahed drones that are much faster and harder to intercept, and it intends to increase its use of Shaheds to upwards of 1,000 a day in 2026 to pummel Ukraine into submission. To counter this, Ukraine is building the necessary systems to stay at the cutting edge, through intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) drones, an expansive radar network and Al-enabled systems to collect, integrate and analyse data about battlefield events and incoming threats. I have been a longtime investor in defence technology companies, including in Ukraine. This infrastructure means Ukraine is ready for the next stage of warfare, with swarms of drones operated remotely and increasingly automated with AI targeting. No man's land has expanded as each side pulls its most valuable personnel back from the front while new generations of drones achieve longer ranges and increased lethality through better batteries, sensors and aerodynamics. Automating operations so personnel can operate safely behind the lines has become an urgent Ukrainian priority, with plans to move drone pilots even farther from the front in 2026.
February 15, 2026 at 7:52 AM
glyko.bsky.social
Why fallacies don’t exist
(except in textbooks) maartenboudry.substack.com/p/why-fallac... By @maartenboudry.bsky.social
February 14, 2026 at 9:50 AM
glyko.bsky.social
Have you ever wondered why people believe the moon landing was faked, vaccines secretly poison us, and Mercury in retrograde can ruin your love life? Why does irrationality seem so pervasive? A popular answer, beloved by academics and educators alike, points to fallacies…
(A) You define your fallacy using a neat deductive argument scheme. In a valid deductive argument, the conclusion must follow inexorably from the premises. If the premises are true yet the conclusion could still be false, the argument is invalid-case closed. The trouble is that, in real life, you almost never encounter such clean, airtight blunders. You can invent textbook examples, sure, but flesh-and-blood cases are surprisingly rare. (B) So you loosen things up and abandon the strict realm of deductive logic. You add some context and nuance. Now you can capture plenty of real-life arguments. Great. Except there's a catch: once you relax the standard, your "fallacy" stops being fallacious. It turns into a perfectly ordinary move in everyday reasoning-sometimes weak, sometimes strong, but not obviously irrational. So what do real-life post hoc arguments actually look like? More like this: "If B follows shortly after A, and there's some plausible causal mechanism linking A and B, then A is probably the cause of B." Many such arguments are entirely plausible—or at least not obviously wrong. Context is everything. Imagine you eat some mushrooms you picked in the forest. Half an hour later, you feel nauseated, so you put two and two together: "Ugh. That must have been the mushrooms." Are you committing a fallacy? Yes, says your logic textbook. No, says common sense—at least if your inference is meant to be probabilistic. Here, the inference is actually reasonable, assuming a few tacit things: 1. Some mushrooms are toxic. 2. It's easy for a layperson to mistake a poisonous mushroom for a harmless one. 3. Nausea is a common symptom of food poisoning. 4. You don't normally feel nauseated. If you want, you can even spell this out in probabilistic terms. Consider the last premise—the base rate. If you usually have a healthy stomach, the mushroom is the most likely culprit. If, on the other hand, you frequently suffer from gastrointestinal problems, the post hoc inference becomes much weaker.
February 14, 2026 at 9:49 AM
glyko.bsky.social
The thrust of Hazony’s argument is that combatting #antisemitism is as alienating or more alienating to voters than anti-Semitism itself. This reasoning is both morally and tactically wrong. Polls continue show that a large majority of conservatives support Israel and oppose anti-Semitism.
The rise in anti-Semitism on the right is attributable to a handful of individuals whom Hazony is too cowardly and embarrassed to condemn. Like a vengeful alcoholic at an intervention, he is lashing out and blaming everyone but himself for the wreckage he helped create —the mirror-image of the left-wing Jew who makes excuses for his anti-Semitic comrades. Imagining himself a world-class intellectual, he is, for lack of a better term, a moron. How else could he have thought that forging alliances with European-style blood-and-soil nationalists would be good for the Jews, or America? Hazony sees himself as a scholar-statesman on the level of a Jabotinsky or Ben-Gurion when he's really an arriviste. In a reprehensible attempt to protect his access to power, Hazony is willing to gainsay his American co-religionists, who know better than him the threats they face. Watching Hazony's Jerusalem speech reminded me of no one so much as Rabbi Lionel Bengelsdorf from Philip Roth's novel The Plot Against America, in which Charles Lindbergh defeats Franklin Roosevelt in the 1940 presidential election and keeps the country out of World War II. The oleaginous Bengelsdorf, who supported Lindbergh, becomes the new president's court Jew. "I have encountered considerable hostility from members of the Jewish community for allying myself in the 1940 election with the Lindbergh campaign," Bengelsdorf tells a Jewish family, one of whose sons lost a leg fighting with the Canadian army against the Nazis. "I am pleased to tell you that it took no more than two or three sessions alone with the president to get him to relinquish his misconceptions and to appreciate the manifold nature of Jewish life in America."
February 14, 2026 at 9:03 AM
glyko.bsky.social
Iran’s government most likely tracked the protesters through location data emitting from their phones, researchers later concluded. The move was part of a new phase by the authorities to combat opposition by tapping a vast digital surveillance infrastructure to track down dissenters who participated in the recent antigovernment demonstrations, according to human rights groups, researchers and documents.
February 14, 2026 at 8:52 AM
glyko.bsky.social
#Iran turns to digital surveillance tools to track down protesters:
As Iranian authorities restore some online services after crushing antigovernment demonstrations, they are using a technological dragnet to target attendees of the protests. archive.ph/8BHsU #Islamism #authoritarianism #tech
Iran, like China, has some of the world's most expansive known surveillance abilities. Technology to monitor mobile devices, apps and web traffic has been integrated throughout communications and internet networks, along with facial recognition and other tracking methods, according to groups that have studied Iran's capabilities. These digital surveillance abilities have received less attention than the internet blackouts that the government imposed during the violent crackdown to end the protests last month. But as authorities slowly restore some online access, they have detained people who were believed to have attended protests and subjected them to hours of interrogation based on facial recognition and phone data, according to accounts from Iranians and a government security official in the country. Some people who posted on social media about the protests and other political topics have had their phone SIM cards suspended - effectively shutting off access to mobile networks - while others received warning phone calls and faced banking service interruptions, according to a report that was released this week by Holistic Resilience, a digital rights group focused on Iran. The authorities' hope was to hunt down the "leaders of the riots" and arrest them, according to the government security official, who declined to be identified.
February 14, 2026 at 8:51 AM
glyko.bsky.social
No one should be surprised by this: Israel tried to give the Palestinians their own state multiple times, and each time the Palestinians responded with outrage and violence. The world cannot make the Palestinian leadership want a state. But outside of whether the Palestinians want this state, the world should also ask itself whether it wants this Palestinian state—not some theoretical state that European leaders imagine, but this state that is on offer.
February 14, 2026 at 8:10 AM
glyko.bsky.social
#Palestine ’s anti-constitution: The Palestinians are “asking” for a genocidal state, one that is committed to the erasure of all Jews within its borders and also all the Jews in the one Jewish nation beyond its borders. www.commentary.org/seth-mandel/... #antisemitism
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's constitution-writing committee has produced a draft of what would theoretically be the basic-law document of the State of Palestine. The document is a major blow to anyone's hopes of a two-state solution, dwindling as those hopes already were. The "Palestine" "Constitution," as currently envisioned, seems to be Abbas's way of burning everything down behind him. In Princeton Professor Zaid Al-Ali's English translation of the document, there is no mention of Jews or Israel. Reporting confirms the same is true of the Arabic original. It's not that other religions are excluded-there are specific mentions of the rights of Christians, for example. But the State of Palestine declares itself judenrein. Are there other problems with the text? Sure, plenty. For example, it endorses the "right of return" for descendants of Arabs displaced in 1948, by which it means their return to Israel. That is, it is the principle of the State of Palestine that Palestinians go elsewhere. The obvious reason for this is that a state that grants citizenship to descendants of the displaced would thereby end the "refugee crisis." Solving problems is not in the interest of the State of Palestine, so there will be no State of Palestine. There's plenty more, but there's no reason to go into it. To get caught up in other details is a mistake because the discussion should go no further beyond its status as judenrein. The Palestinians are "asking" for a genocidal state, one that is committed to the erasure of all Jews within its borders and also all the Jews in the one Jewish nation beyond its borders. The original Hamas charter, it's worth noting, was straightforward in its "struggle against the Jews." The Palestinian Authority's own proposed constitution doesn't mention Jews at all. This is the problem when dealing with each of the Palestinian national movement's leaders in its century-old existence: Jews are either excluded entirely or they are mentioned only as the object of a genocidal raison d'etre. To these Palestinian nationalists, Jews either don't exist or else they must be made to not exist. This should take some of the pressure off of Israel. After all, if the Palestinians don't want self-determination then it shouldn't be forced on them. This document is an anti-constitution-it is intended to prevent the need for a Palestinian constitution in perpetuity.
February 14, 2026 at 8:09 AM