The current edition reflects the desire to filter information in a crystal clear way: I just share with you a few long reads from last week that are worth reading.
Hamas-issues: According to the latest leaked intelligence information, the military wing organized the October 7 attack on its very own. So, even their political wing in Gaza or their allies in the West Bank or Lebanon might not necessarily have known about the attack. That is because the military organisation is actually a terrorist cell, with its own logic: it needs blood to survive. The terrorist organisations do not get funding without maintaining the "necessary" level of violence, even if in this case, it costs the lifes of its "own" citizens, those living in Gaza. However, Hamas-leaders are absolutely open about this "sacrifice" and required martyrdom.
Even Alexander the Great had a hard time with the Gaza tunnels. Sometimes the locals know what's in their garden, sometimes they remain unaware.. a little 2014 retrospection here.
Trump 2.0. To rile up his own camp – as Trump would hunt in vain among the moderates, he’s bringing in voters from the far right –, he talks increasingly openly about his authoritarian and unlawful intentions. His campaign manager spoke on the migration issue, describing mass deportation waves and giant camps to journalists. They are preparing for rapid action – a blitz, in his own words – so that human rights lawyers and activists will be flooded by government action. He would also abolish American citizenship as a birthright.
Absolutely must-read: the new PRRI survey on American values is more than revealing. More than a third of American voters are okay with autocracy and political violence. What else to say?
Source:
33% of Republicans would be willing to accept violence to "save the country." This is 13% for Democrats.
While the culture war is ongoing, the biggest challenge in both camps is consistently the issue of housing and everyday expenses. For Democrats, second place is healthcare, while for the GOP, it's crime.
🇨🇳 Meanwhile in China. The geopolitical competition around the electric car industry is slowly becoming as spectacular as telecomm and semiconductor issues.
🏃 Gallup is the latest company to leave communist China, as authorities are becoming less tolerant about independent (from them) actors asking the Chinese comrades about their opinions. They’re already investigating companies such as Bain & Company, Mintz Group, and Capvision.
🖥️ Among the Chinese AI companies, iFlytek took a hit on the stock market when its chatbot described Mao as "narrow-minded" and intolerant. Take that, market trends.
🇵🇭 The Chinese saber-rattling is not without consequences: more and more people are throwing unfriendly glances at Beijing. The Philippines is also withdrawing from the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) as, under the previous president Duterte (who declared a war on drugs), practically nothing materialized from the promised $24 billion investment, and tensions in the South China Sea are escalating.
🇪🇪 Estonia is the next Baltic state willing to allow Taiwanese representation on its territory (not just a Taipei office), and they promptly received a Chinese threat for it.
Central Europe. Arecent Vsquare material: the investigative portal found that Hungarian intelligence has been strongly present in Slovakia - another NATO ally! - for years, a fact known to the Slovak partners, but they haven't addressed it yet.
The question is whether Hungarian spies work on the Slovaks or if they have other correspondence tasks. A certain point in any case, according to Vsquare, is that the Hungarian ambassador in Bratislava, breaking the isolation of the Russian ambassador since February 2022, personally met with him. What could they have been talking about?
In connection with the so-called sovereignty defence package to be introduced by the Hungarian government to “prevent foreign influence” and money entering the country, Zsolt Sarkadi, journalist of Telex suggested that the rapid legislative operation might be intended to hinder the implementation of EU media freedom act, soon to be accepted. Certainly, it might derail negotiations around EU grants to Hungary, again.
A propos political violence. Spanish right-wing politician Alejandro Vidal-Quadras was shot in the face in Madrid. His condition is stable, but it's quite astonishing that we've come to this. The politician, who has long supported the Iranian opposition and was involved in founding the radical Spanish party Vox, was recently put on Tehran's sanctions list. There is suspicion that it was an Iranian revenge. Vidal-Quadras used to be Vice President of the European Parliament.
By the way, in Spain, there is huge outrage that in exchange for forming a government, Pedro Sánchez is willing to readmit Catalan separatists and grant amnesty, especially with the moderates having won the last Catalan election. Rule of law proceedings requested against the left-wing Spanish government by the right-wing of the European Parliament, the EPP!
COP28 prepping. The climate talks will begin in ten days. Plenty of good materials out there, let’s just get some warm-up: The Panama Canal is very low on water! The lake supplying the canal has a record low water level, and two LNG tanker ships have had to turn back.
Richest 1% account for more carbon emissions than poorest 66%, report says.
Global fossil fuel consumption is heading towards hitting the double of the Paris climate goals.
One piece of good news at the end: the EU will restore 20% of its natural habitats by 2030, as they have managed to reach a compromise on the much-debated Nature Restoration Act.
Next week I will check in with Milei's successful presidential bid as well as some readings about the life in the war-torn Russia.
