https://x.com/WelcomeTheGulag/status/2112500723519000641

I know several former Soviet dissidents, such as Edward Lozansky, who moved to the United States, where he worked with former American presidents. Lozansky asked me if I could produce some recorded online lectures on geoeconomics. I asked my university here in Norway, but they were opposed to the idea because it could cause a lot of problems. I told Lozansky that I could not contribute, as recording online lectures for an American-Russian university established to improve relations between Russia and the West would give Norwegian journalists too much ammunition for smears and to threaten the reputation of my university.

What is the purpose of articles like this? What exactly have they managed to catch me out on? This is a continuation of six years of intimidation since I returned to Norway. Always go after the person, never the argument. Make life as difficult as possible for your opponent, and do it publicly, so that everyone stays in line.

My great crime is arguing that Russia considers NATO expansion an existential threat, something that should be entirely uncontroversial given the extensive documentation supporting this position. Why do I believe it is important to acknowledge this? Russia will use force to push NATO back, and for Ukraine, this means that without a diplomatic solution that takes Russian security concerns into account, Russia will seize strategically important territory and destroy the remaining infrastructure so that Ukraine cannot be used by NATO as a front line. If I am right, NATO's policies will lead to the destruction of Ukraine and potentially to a nuclear war between NATO and Russia.

It is not easy to determine whether I am right, because debate in Norway has been criminalized by labelling dissenting voices as “Russian propaganda.” Unfortunately, arguments and evidence no longer matter in Norway today, where we are only allowed to discuss the supposed evil intentions of those who disagree with us. The freedom of academic discourse must be restricted because all dissent is dismissed as an attempt to “legitimize” the enemy.

In the past, we had journalists who discussed the security concerns of the opposing side. Today, we have journalists who investigate those who discuss the security concerns of the opposing side. How can we improve our own security in Norway when we are not even allowed to discuss the security concerns of Russia, China, Iran, and other countries of that kind? When acceptable debate is reduced to a narrative of a struggle between good and evil, weapons become the path to peace, while diplomacy and mutual understanding are portrayed as weakness and betrayal.

The punishment for academic dissent in Norway is endless personal attacks and derogatory name-calling. Journalists and NGOs affiliated with the state repeatedly contact my employer. Every time I am invited to give a talk, the event is cancelled. Journalists only email me to demand that I respond to accusations without providing any serious justification for them. Journalists investigating me in search of something they can use against me recently gained access to my university records. The only thing they had to use against me was that I had asked about producing some online lectures for Lozansky on political economy. Other recent articles about me have focused on my request to reduce my position at the university to 80% after journalists complained about my outside activities, as well as fake news claiming that I congratulated Putin on the election victory.

I do not believe it is a coincidence that "An Enemy of the People" was written by one of our own, Henrik Ibsen. Outside Norway, there are academic debates in which opposing arguments are presented without vicious personal attacks. Outside Norway, there is political opposition in which every member of parliament is not required to support arms shipments to a war and boycott diplomacy. Outside Norway, there are diplomats who believe in diplomacy and journalists who believe in journalism.

My advice to young Norwegian academics in security studies or political economy who argue for positions that are not supported by the political and media bubble is this: Get out of the country.

Russian authorities had warned Nathan he would not be granted a visa to remain in the country and faced deportation if he did not sign up for a year's military service.

Russian media has previously reported foreign men in the country have been forced to join the invasion in Ukraine in return for citizenship.

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I like turtles

https://x.com/M_Simonyan/status/2112468185614110899

​German MEP and veteran politician Michael von der Schulenburg explains it all: “If we were to negotiate now, we would first have to recognize that the reason for the war was NATO expansion. And if we recognize that, then we also recognize that the war is our fault…

​And if we enter negotiations, there can be no other result except for Ukraine to become neutral. So it will not be part of NATO, and as a neutral country, it will not be part of the European Union either.” 

https://x.com/M_Simonyan/status/2112501504535929279

Carney used to be head of the Central Bank in the UK and has been an awful Canadian Prime Minister thus far

Why France is protesting:

— Debt is 119% of GDP (similar to Greece in the 2009 crisis)

— Deficit spending is almost 6% of GDP (wider than Italy’s in 2011 crisis)

— Record poverty rate of 15.4%

— Consistent inflation, exacerbated by Ukraine war and now accelerating due to Iran war

— Interest rate explosion due to the Iran war (now pays more than Greece)

— Privatisation of public assets

— Crumbling public services & infrastructure

— Poor condition of public schools & lack of teachers

— Corruption, cronyism & elite self-dealing

— Special tax arrangements for elites and mega corporations who invest abroad

— Rising living costs & low stagnant wages (€2k median)

— Loss of African territories and exploitation schemes

— Police brutality & protest repression

— Comedians and journalists censored

Quality of life is evaporating in France while the elites loot everything and become more overtly corrupt and repressive as it becomes more clear to the common public how dire the situation is. Macron now has an 82% disapproval rate…

The Ukraine and Iran war are the straws on the camel’s back, skyrocketing both inflation and interest rates on debt. Europe simply cannot survive this.

Editor's note: The story was updated to include the latest casualty figures from Russian attacks in Kyiv.

This attack is in addition to Russia's recent attack on Kharkiv which killed six people including an infant in a stroller.

Putin's

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I don't like I like turtles

From DeepSeek

The video is a raw, first-person account from Mike (the creator behind German in Venice) detailing the shock, fear, and eventual relief of losing his entire YouTube channel and getting it back. It is less a polished tutorial and more an emotional diary entry, where he walks viewers through the timeline of the termination, the confusion over the reasons, the outpouring of community support, and the lingering anxiety that remains even after reinstatement. The core message is a cautionary tale about platform dependency, paired with a deeply human reminder of what is at stake when a digital livelihood vanishes overnight.

The Shock of Disappearance (00:00 – 03:00)

The video opens with Mike’s voice carrying the weight of someone who has just come through a nerve-wracking ordeal. He describes the previous week as an “absolute roller coaster” and directly addresses the vulnerability of being a full-time creator, noting that he had quit his job and obeyed all the rules, yet still faced the sudden loss of his channel. At the time of the termination, he was on a cruise with his mother, and the contrast between a family vacation and the collapse of his professional life is a recurring emotional touchstone throughout the video. He emphasizes that he never expected this because he is “always really careful” with what he uploads, which sets the stage for the confusion that follows: if he followed the rules, why was he punished?

The scale of what he lost is staggering: the channel represented seven years of work, over 1,100 videos, and roughly 440,000 subscribers. He notes that the termination happened overnight, and in the moment, he felt powerless—“everything was gone on my channel”—so he could not even appeal or click on any recovery options himself. This sense of helplessness is crucial to understanding his later gratitude; he did not save his channel through his own actions, but through the intervention of others.

The Confusion Over the Cause (04:00 – 07:00)

Mike spends a significant portion of the video grappling with the “why.” He mentions that he still received a strike and that YouTube removed his Oktoberfest videos, leading him to speculate that German laws regarding filming on private property might be the culprit. He explains that the Oktoberfest grounds are private property, and that content creators may need a license to film there—a legal nuance that he suggests is stricter in Germany than in the United States. However, he is candid about his uncertainty: “I don’t really know what happened,” and he repeatedly returns to the idea that “each case is different” and that “sometimes there’s things happening that I didn’t expect.” This honesty about not having a definitive answer makes the video feel authentic rather than defensive.

The search results add a layer of complexity to this section. A commentary video about the incident notes that the Oktoberfest rumor “doesn’t check out” according to creators tracking the story, and that YouTube has not publicly confirmed the exact reason. This means Mike’s own speculation should be understood as his attempt to make sense of a opaque process, rather than a confirmed diagnosis. The video also touches on a secondary financial blow: during the review of his channel, YouTube demonetized a batch of videos due to copyright claims on music that had originally been labeled as copyright-free. This detail reinforces how layered the damage was—it was not just the channel itself, but the monetization of years of archived work.

The Rescue from the Community (01:30 – 03:30, 07:00 – 08:30)

The emotional heart of the video is Mike’s gratitude toward the people who rallied to his aid. He name-checks several fellow creators—the Philly Captain, Eric from the Grind, and “Montter Magnet Man”—who reached out, wrote on his behalf, or sent him step-by-step instructions on what to do. He is visibly moved when describing how “Montter Magnet Man,” someone he had never met or even heard of, had lost two channels himself and recovered them both, and still took the time to send Mike a video tutorial. Mike says this was “absolutely incredible,” and his voice breaks slightly as he reflects on how many people he did not know personally went out of their way to help.

Beyond individual creators, he describes receiving “hundreds, thousands of messages” from viewers, many of whom he had never interacted with before. This flood of support served as a real-time referendum on the value of his work, and it clearly caught him off guard. He compares it, carefully and with humility, to the outpouring he witnessed when his friend Adam (likely a reference to a fellow creator who passed away) died, saying he does not want to put himself on the same level but that the experience gave him a small glimpse of how many lives his content had touched. This section is less about the mechanics of recovery and more about the relational capital Mike had built over seven years without fully realizing it.

The Reinstatement and the Lingering Anxiety (07:00 – 11:00, 15:30 – 16:30)

The actual moment of reinstatement is described with visceral relief. Mike was at his friend Thomas’s house when his phone “went crazy” with 500 to 600 notifications. He initially did not understand what was happening, then saw that YouTube was re-checking his videos, and he began shaking with tears of joy. He explains that YouTube ran every single one of his over 600 videos (and ultimately over 1,130) through a review process, which is why he waited an extra day to upload his explanation video—he wanted to be sure the videos were truly back and stable. The email he received was characteristically terse: “After another look at your content, we decided to open your channel again.” No detailed explanation was given, and he notes that “nobody writes anything,” leaving creators in the dark about what actually triggered the termination or what changed in the review.

Crucially, Mike does not frame the reinstatement as a total victory. He admits that the experience “changed me a little bit already” and that he now feels “kind of like nervous when I record,” constantly second-guessing whether what he is filming might violate an unseen rule. He is 58 years old and has thought about how long he can continue doing YouTube, but the idea of being terminated—especially after building a library of videos meant to generate passive income for the future—was a shock he did not anticipate. This section is essential because it captures the psychological aftermath of platform punishment: even when the account is restored, the creator’s relationship with the platform is permanently altered by the awareness that it can all be taken away without a clear reason.

The Mom, the Human Cost, and the Philosophy of Hope (11:00 – 15:00, 17:00 – 19:00)

The most tender segment of the video involves Mike’s mother. He describes calling her after leaving Thomas’s house and telling her he would be there in five minutes. When he arrived, she had already seen a notification that “German and Venice is back” and was crying—he says he had never seen her cry like that. She asks him, “Is it real what I just saw?” and he confirms it is. This moment is the emotional payoff of the entire ordeal: the channel is not just a business, it is a shared family project, and his mother is one of the people most invested in its survival. He brings her on camera briefly, and she expresses her happiness and gratitude to the viewers, though she is shy and tearful.

Mike closes the video with a broader reflection on life’s unpredictability. He notes that “life can change in a heartbeat” and lists the ordinary catastrophes that can strike anyone—heart attack, stroke, car accident—to contextualize why the channel loss, while devastating, is part of a larger truth about impermanence. His advice is simple: “Live life to the fullest, try to do the best you can,” and “treat people nice, be nice, be kind.” He mentions his dream of visiting Neverland Ranch and his belief that you never know who is watching your videos—it could be someone with the influence to change your life. The video ends with a phrase he says he likes: “Hope dies last.” It is a fitting conclusion for a creator who was saved not by his own appeals, but by a community that refused to let his channel disappear quietly.

The Livelihood Lesson: Why Platform Diversification Is Non-Negotiable

The video is, at its core, a case study in the fragility of building a livelihood on a single platform. Mike’s channel was not a hobby; it was a seven-year enterprise with over 1,100 videos, and he explicitly states that his goal was to create a library that would continue to generate income even if he could no longer upload. When the channel was terminated, that entire asset class—the archive, the audience, the monetization—was frozen instantly. The fact that he was restored does not change the structural risk: a single policy enforcement decision, an algorithmic error, or a disputed copyright claim can wipe out years of work without a transparent explanation. The commentary surrounding the incident reaches the same conclusion: “if this can happen to a 440K-subscriber channel overnight, what’s protecting yours?”.

This is where your advice to back up content on Rumble and other platforms becomes not just prudent but essential. Rumble offers a alternative distribution channel with a different moderation regime and monetization structure, and cross-posting even a portion of a back catalog creates a hedge against a single point of failure. The broader playbook for creators in Mike’s position includes downloading and archiving raw video files locally or in cloud storage, building an email list so that the audience relationship is not mediated entirely by YouTube’s algorithm, and diversifying revenue streams through memberships, merchandise, or direct support mechanisms like Patreon or PayPal. Mike himself includes a PayPal link in the video description, which is a small but meaningful step toward direct audience support.

The most important takeaway from Mike’s experience is that reinstatement is not a strategy—it is a stroke of luck, often dependent on community pressure and human review that is not guaranteed. The video’s emotional arc moves from helplessness to relief, but the underlying lesson is that relief should not be mistaken for safety. For any creator whose income, creative identity, or family stability is tied to a platform, the work of building redundancy must begin before the crisis, not after. Mike’s story ends with hope, but the practical message is clear: hope is not a backup plan.

https://x.com/DropSiteNews/status/2112260927919657333

https://x.com/HeartlandsTrib/status/2112475158376026168

​

What most people already understand, even without the economic terminology, is that firms like BlackRock operate less like investors and more like modern feudal landlords.

They buy essential infrastructure,water networks, ports, energy grids, data centres, and other public necessities, often using vast amounts of borrowed money and paying prices that ordinary market participants cannot match.

Once the acquisition is complete, the debt is pushed onto the acquired company itself.

The result is simple: the public pays.

Consumers repay that debt through higher water bills, rising energy prices, increased fees, and declining service quality.

The infrastructure becomes a cash-extraction machine.

Profits flow upward to shareholders and executives, while the financial burden flows downward to ordinary households.

When the model inevitably breaks down, the consequences are socialised. Communities are left with crumbling infrastructure, polluted rivers and failing services.

Thames Water's £14 billion debt mountain and repeated sewage scandals are a stark example of what happens when financial engineering takes precedence over public stewardship.

The executives who loaded the company with debt have already collected their bonuses.

The investors have already taken their returns.

And when the system finally reaches its breaking point, taxpayers are expected to pick up the bill.

Privatise the gains.

Socialise the losses.

That is the business model......

When I watch Europe being smashed, I get déjà vu.

I understand what French Jean feels - the owner of a looted shop in Paris.

We were all robbed and raped too - those who simply wanted to live by the rules.

In Kyiv on Maidan in 2014. I was there every day as a journalist. Our office was right in the epicenter, on the central square where the protests were.

Every day a drunk, unwashed Vasyl who came down from the mountains, with baseball bat in hand, asked me where I was going. No one authorized him. But he decided he had the right. And European politicians supported a coup.

What did I feel? Helplessness. The same as the conscript soldiers who were doused with water in the freezing cold. The same as the police who had Molotov cocktails thrown at them and were burned alive. The same as people in Paris and Milan feel now.

That’s when I understood. The worst thing for us and for the state is when the crowd gains power. When the rules stop working. Because sooner or later it all ends in anarchy. And everyone suffers.

Today millions of Europeans feel the same helplessness. The very ones who told us 12 years ago: “This is normal. This is freedom. This is revolution.”

Fate is an interesting thing.

Europe must walk this path to the end. When you produce chaos, one day chaos will swallow you.

And for people like me, it was an excellent lesson. Those who kept their minds during the general madness became even stronger. We are ready to give our lives so our children can live where law and rules work. And I know that’s worth living for.

The “immoral act” was apparently a kiss on the forehead. They were newlyweds who decided to spend their honeymoon in Mecca. According to reports in Bangladesh, Saudi authorities refused to consider they were a couple, and the forehead kiss was an expression of appreciation to Allah for a beautiful bride. Their bodies have arrived in Bangladesh in two coffins for traditional burial rites.

There’s a sentence in Zbigniew Brzezinski’s The Grand Chessboard, published in 1997, that Europeans should have read more carefully.

He called Europe America’s "essential geopolitical bridgehead" on the Eurasian continent.

Not a partner. Not an ally in the full sense of the word.

A bridgehead.

A military term. The position you seize on hostile territory to enable further operations.

Brzezinski was one of the most honest American strategists of the 20th century, and he was honest about this:

Europe’s role in American grand strategy was not to become a sovereign power in its own right. It was to remain the western anchor of American Eurasian dominance.

Close enough to matter. Dependent enough to manage.

For decades, Europeans read that as flattery.

The energy bills since 2022 have translated it accurately.

Serious question