Nobody at Villa Park will pretend this rebuild was the plan back in May. But in football you cannot always decide what happens and a rebuild, at a pace that was not expected, eventually became the plan. Everyone knows of the financial pressure, with UEFA’s oversight hanging over #AVFC #FootballRebuild #UEFA #Thetweetdoesnotmentionanyspecificcountries.Therefore #nocountrycodescanbeprovided.
Where the Money Goes When the Problem Grows The worst evil is identifying a problem—addiction, illness, hatred—then building an industry to “solve” it. Organizations grow, the problem worsens. Many call this wasted money. Some argue for more funding or stricter oversight. After decades of the same results, a reasonable person should ask whether it’s failure—or the system working as designed. Call it the Caretaker’s Incentive. Three conditions keep problems managed forever: status (praise for “tending” the afflicted), money (budgets rise with the problem and shrink when it improves), and conscience (moral framing shields caretakers from questioning their role). Economist Bruce Yandle described a parallel in “Bootleggers and Baptists.” In Prohibition, moral reformers and profitable bootleggers backed the same policy for different reasons, with virtue providing cover. Today, reformers and funded interests may be the same institution, making corruption harder to spot. When the mission is caring for the elderly, it’s easy to hide fraud behind compassion. Costs spread across millions, benefits concentrate among insiders. No one loses enough to unite against it; insiders gain enough to defend it. The people being paid are awake. The people paying are asleep. C.S. Lewis warned in 1948 that torment for “our own good” can continue endlessly because conscience approves. Corruption is dressed as virtue—and those who object are shamed.
🇺🇸 RFK Jr. revealed the Biden administration gutted anti-fraud oversight at his agency. There used to be 80 people watching over $2.2 trillion in annual payments across 50 states. Xavier Becerra transferred 76 of them out. When RFK Jr. took over, only six were left. He said it was an open invitation for fraudsters. Fake hospices billed for thousands of phantom patients. Durable medical equipment and autism services scams ran into the tens of billions, especially in LA. The old policy was literally “pay and chase.” Send the money first, then try to get it back later. https://x.com/MarioNawfal/status/2087356394299420918
A Crown Instead of the Barracks: An Idea From Outside the Box Could Egypt’s exiled opposition use constitutional monarchy to dismantle the legitimacy of the 1952 coup? By Adham Hasanin Egyptian journalist and political writer, based in the Netherlands To understand what follows, a reader unfamiliar with Egypt needs one basic fact: since 1952, Egypt has never been governed by anyone who did not first wear a military uniform. Gamal Abdel Nasser, Anwar Sadat, Hosni Mubarak, and today Abdel Fattah el-Sisi four men, four eras, one common origin. All rose through the armed forces. All inherited a state built by a coup that year, when a group of officers calling themselves the "Free Officers" overthrew King Farouk I and, within a year, abolished the monarchy altogether and declared a republic. For seventy-three years, the underlying equation has not changed: the army rules, power passes from one officer to the next, and legitimacy is drawn from the barrel of a gun rather than the ballot box. Every conceivable form of opposition has been tried legal parties and banned ones, Islamist movements, liberal and leftist coalitions, the 2011 popular uprising, and the 2013 elections whose result was overturned by force within a year. All of them hit the same wall: a military institution that reproduces itself under different names, while the core of the system remains untouched. So what if the problem, all along, has not simply been who rules, but the constitutional framework that makes military rule possible in the first place? And what if the answer lies not in swapping one president for another, but in dismantling the underlying equation itself, through a framework Egyptian opposition movements have never seriously tried: a purely ceremonial constitutional monarchy, on the model of Belgium, the Netherlands, or Spain where the head of state becomes a symbol above the political fray, while the army is permanently expelled from politics and returned to its barracks. This is not a call to revive a particular family, nor nostalgia for a golden age that never quite existed. It is a proposal for a political and strategic tool that has not yet been used in the intellectual arsenal of Egypt’s opposition in exile a tool that deserves serious discussion, regardless of whether it is ever literally realised or simply serves to expand the boundaries of what is politically thinkable. I. Why 1952, Not 2013 or 2011, Is the Root The strategic error made by most Egyptian opposition movements from the Muslim Brotherhood to the April 6 Youth Movement to the various civil opposition parties has been treating each political crisis as an isolated case: Mubarak was corrupt and had to be toppled; Sisi staged a coup that must be condemned; the interim military council was a transitional phase to be endured. This piecemeal approach treats the symptoms while leaving the original illness untouched. That original illness is the very structure of legitimacy established by the coup of 23 July 1952. The Egyptian republican system, from Nasser to today, has never built its legitimacy on a genuine democratic social contract. Instead, it has rested on a fixed trinity: the rhetoric of "revolution against feudalism and colonialism," charismatic individual leadership, and military protection of the regime framed as the guarantor of stability. This trinity has repeated itself from Nasser to Sadat to Mubarak to Sisi, with only cosmetic variations. Each new president was never a break from the system he was its continuation. When the opposition says "let us return to the constitutional framework that preceded the coup," it is not criticising a particular policy. It is declaring that the legal foundation of everything that came after 1952 was illegitimate from the start. Here lies the rhetorical power of "returning to the pre-1952 order": it does not merely demand swapping one ruler for another. It withdraws historical legitimacy from the entire republican military system including today’s regime, which draws its own declared legitimacy from that same "1952 legacy." II. Why a "Ceremonial Crown," Not "the Return of a Ruling Family" Here is the most important distinction anyone advocating this idea seriously must grasp: the project does not rest on restoring any particular individual from the Muhammad Ali dynasty, nor on nostalgia for King Farouk or his ancestors. The real power of the idea lies in the constitutional form, not in the person who happens to sit on the throne. Three successful European democracies illustrate the model clearly. Belgium, where King Philippe is a purely constitutional symbol with no real executive power, while the state is run through an elected parliament and a complex coalition government reflecting the country’s linguistic and political diversity. The Netherlands, where King Willem-Alexander formally opens the parliamentary year and signs laws, but where actual decision-making rests with the prime minister and the elected parliament. And Spain, where the king represents symbolic continuity of the state above party politics, while the military and security services answer entirely to civilian authority a transition achieved after the death of the dictator Francisco Franco in 1975, when King Juan Carlos I voluntarily relinquished the extensive executive powers he had inherited and backed free elections, most dramatically in February 1981, when he personally ordered the armed forces to remain loyal to the constitution during an attempted military coup, causing it to collapse within hours. The common thread across these three models is not "the presence of an ancient royal family." It is the principle of separating symbol from power. The monarch in these countries does not rule; he represents. He issues no political decisions; he provides the continuity and symbolic stability that allows party political competition to revolve beneath him, without every transfer of power becoming an existential crisis of legitimacy. This is precisely what Egypt’s military republican system lacks: a neutral mechanism for guaranteeing state continuity that does not depend on the person of the ruler or his security apparatus. When Egypt’s military-republican president is absent, it is always the army that fills the vacuum, because it is the only institution built to be the "guarantor of stability." Under a ceremonial monarchical model, by contrast, it is the king not the army who represents that symbolic guarantee, genuinely opening the door to removing the military institution from the political equation altogether. III. Egypt’s Standing Under the Monarchy: An Honest Reckoning, Not Blind Nostalgia For a Western reader with little prior knowledge of Egypt’s monarchical period (1922–1952), it helps to know this: Egypt was nominally independent under its own king from 1922, but Britain retained enormous informal control over the country’s foreign policy, military bases, and the Suez Canal throughout the period a reality that shaped everything that follows. Any honest invocation of "Egypt’s standing under the monarchy" must avoid the trap of mythologised nostalgia that many advocates of this idea fall into. Egypt in that era was no lost paradise, and any honest article must say so plainly. The Egyptian pound, for instance, often invoked as a symbol of "national currency strength" in that period, was not strong because of independent Egyptian monetary policy. It was pegged to the British pound sterling as part of Egypt’s complete colonial financial dependency until 1947, with Egypt exercising no independent oversight of its own currency whatsoever. The pound’s strength, in other words, was not a sovereign Egyptian achievement it was a reflection of British imperial power ruling Egypt from behind the throne. But this does not mean Egypt lacked a genuine regional standing worth studying. Cairo, in the 1930s and 1940s, was the undisputed cultural capital of the entire Arab world: the Egyptian film industry produced more than half of all Arabic-language cinema; its theatre scene, led by figures like Youssef Wahbi and Naguib al-Rihani, and its music, with Umm Kulthum and Mohammed Abdel Wahab, set the standard across the region; Cairo University was the first modern university in the Arab world; and the Egyptian press was the reference point for Arab public opinion from the Atlantic to the Gulf. Cairo was, quite simply, to the Arab world what Paris was to Francophone Europe: an unrivalled centre of cultural and intellectual gravity. This standing was not necessarily a product of monarchy itself, so much as a product of a relative space of political and press pluralism that allowed Egyptian civil society to flourish, despite all the flaws of the political system and the interference of both palace and occupier. The lesson here is not "bring back the king and the standing will return." It is: when even a limited margin of civic freedom exists, Egypt flourishes culturally and intellectually almost by its own nature. And that margin is precisely what has been entirely absent across the past seven decades of unchallenged military rule. IV. What Reform Would Actually Require Not Repeating the Old Mistakes Any serious advocacy of this model must include, even briefly, a clear vision for avoiding the flaws of the old monarchical system itself otherwise the proposal collapses into simply replacing one form of authoritarianism with another wearing a different crown. First, the armed forces would need to be placed fully under a civilian ministry of defence, with its budget subject to transparent parliamentary oversight the exact opposite of its current status as a state-within-a-state, and equally opposed to its role under the monarchy, when it often served as an instrument of British influence. Second, a judiciary fully independent of both palace and government alike, unlike the old model, which saw direct royal interference in political life as when King Fuad I dismissed the elected government of Prime Minister Saad Zaghloul’s successor, Mustafa al-Nahhas, in 1928, in one of the clearest "constitutional coups" in modern Egyptian history. Third, a parliament that genuinely represents the people rather than landowners and the aristocracy, as was the case before 1952, when membership in the Senate was effectively conditional on the ability to pay land taxes meaning political representation was, by law, restricted to the wealthy. Fourth, genuine economic sovereignty, with a truly independent national currency rather than one pegged to a foreign power’s currency, unlike the historical dependency of the Egyptian pound on sterling. These four principles are enough to clarify that the project on offer is not a literal "return to the past," but a borrowing of the constitutional form (symbolic monarchy) combined with an explicit rejection of its old substance (colonial dependency, palace interference, parliamentary feudalism). V. The Role of Egyptian Movements in Exile: Between Goal and Instrument This raises the most practical question of all: how might Egypt’s opposition abroad actually adopt this idea, and in what capacity? The honest answer is that the power of this proposal does not necessarily lie in its literal fulfilment, but in its dual strategic function. On one hand, it can be advanced as a genuine political goal adopted by broad coalitions of Egyptian movements coalitions that might include Islamists, liberals, leftists, and traditional monarchists, united around a single shared premise: rejecting the legitimacy of the 1952 order and everything that followed from it, even if they later disagree over the precise final shape of the state. On the other hand and this matters more in practice the idea can be deployed as a rhetorical instrument of pressure to widen a Egyptian political debate currently trapped between two false choices: "continued military rule" or "no alternative, chaos awaits." When the opposition puts forward a clearly defined third model a European-style constitutional monarchy it breaks this false binary and opens new intellectual space in Egyptian public discourse, even if the project is never realised in its literal form. This kind of "leverage idea" is common in the history of political movements worldwide: it is not necessarily proposed to be fulfilled immediately in full, but to redraw the boundaries of the politically possible, and to force the existing regime to defend its legitimacy rather than simply assume it. Conclusion: An Invitation to Debate, Not a Ready-Made Prescription This article does not claim that restoring a monarchical form would magically resolve Egypt’s chronic crisis of legitimacy, nor does it ignore the immense difficulties facing any transformative project under a military institution as economically and securitywise entrenched as Egypt’s is today. But it raises a question that deserves serious debate among Egypt’s opposition in exile, rather than automatic dismissal simply for being unfamiliar: Has the Egyptian opposition exhausted every available tool for dismantling the legitimacy of 1952, or has it remained trapped in the same old binary swapping one ruler for another while the framework that makes military rule possible remains untouched? The idea is on the table now, not as a finished solution, but as an overdue invitation to think outside the box.
Three in five Americans favor stronger oversight of social media companies, Reuters/Ipsos poll finds https://t.co/QGAzyUMHKb #SocialMedia #Oversight #PollResults #US
When the same companies building frontier systems also define the safety rules, rules that are confidential, the result is not meaningful oversight, but corporate capture of regulation #CorporateCapture #Regulation #SafetyRules #Nospecificcountrycodesarementionedinthetweet.
Laborunfall als Ursprung von COVID-19 bestätigt – Kongressbericht und Regierungsposition im Überblick (https://t.co/3kgPYYX0zx leitet auf eine Internetseite des Weißen Hauses um) Dort lässt sicher folgender Bericht aus Dezember 2024 herunterladen: https://t.co/x4GGJuuCAm Der 520-seitige Abschlussbericht des Untersuchungsausschusses des US-Repräsentantenhauses zur Coronavirus-Pandemie vom 4. Dezember 2024 kommt zu dem Ergebnis, dass SARS-CoV-2 durch einen Labor- oder forschungsbezogenen Unfall entstanden ist. Die US-Exekutive hat diese Einschätzung im Verlauf des Jahres 2025 zur offiziellen Position erhoben und daraus rechtliche Konsequenzen gezogen. Ich habe den Bericht erst jetzt gelesen und mir war nicht klar, wie deutlich sich die US Position bereits aufgrund des Berichts des Untersuchungsausschusses geändert hat. Eine Enquete - Kommission in Deutschland als parlamentarischer Selbstbeweihräucherungsakt zeigt auf, wie verkommen bereits das Regierungssystem ist, dass nicht der Aufklärung und Wahrheit dient, sondern den Tätern und ihrer Vertuschung. Das hält bis heute an. Nun zum Abschlussbericht - des Untersuchungsausschusses: Das Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic des Committee on Oversight and Accountability im US-Repräsentantenhaus legte am 4. Dezember 2024 unter dem Titel „After Action Review of the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Lessons Learned and a Path Forward" seinen Abschlussbericht vor. Grundlage sind über 100 Untersuchungsschreiben, 38 protokollierte Vernehmungen und Depositionen, 25 Anhörungen sowie mehr als eine Million gesichtete Dokumentseiten aus dem Untersuchungszeitraum Februar 2023 bis Dezember 2024. Der Ausschussvorsitzende Brad R. Wenstrup, D.P.M., bezeichnet die Untersuchung im Vorwort als die bislang gründlichste Aufarbeitung der Pandemie. Die zentralen Feststellungen Ursprung des Virus. Der Ausschuss stellt fest, dass die Beweislage für die Laborthese spreche. Er stützt sich auf das Factsheet des US-Außenministeriums vom Januar 2021, die Bewertung des Office of the Director of National Intelligence vom Juni 2023 sowie auf die 2023 veröffentlichten Einschätzungen von FBI (mittlere Konfidenz) und Energieministerium (geringe Konfidenz). Forschungsfinanzierung. Die US-amerikanischen National Institutes of Health haben Gain-of-Function-Forschung am Wuhan Institute of Virology finanziert (Der Organisation EcoHealth Alliance, Inc. wirft der Bericht verspätete Berichterstattung, die unterlassene Meldung eines gefährlichen Experiments und Falschangaben gegenüber dem NIH vor. Vertuschung. Chinesische Regierungsstellen, Behörden innerhalb der US-Regierung und Teile der internationalen Wissenschaftsgemeinschaft haben versucht, Tatsachen zum Pandemieursprung zu verdecken. (Anmerkung von mir: ist bis heute in Deutschland der Fall. Alles wird hier dazu in Deutschland immer noch zensiert und von den ÖR - Medien totgeschwiegen) Mittelmissbrauch. Der Bericht beziffert die Betrugsschäden beim Paycheck Protection Program auf mindestens 64 Milliarden US-Dollar und bei den pandemiebedingten Arbeitslosenleistungen auf mehr als 191 Milliarden US-Dollar. Grundrechte. Der Ausschuss hält fest, dass die Verfassung in Krisenzeiten nicht suspendiert werden könne und dass Freiheitsbeschränkungen Misstrauen gegenüber dem Gesundheitswesen säten. Er bewertet die Sechs-Fuß-Abstandsregel als nicht quantitativ wissenschaftlich belegt, Maskenpflichten als wirkungsarm bis wirkungslos und langanhaltende Lockdowns als in der Gesamtbilanz schädlich. Impfstoffe. Operation Warp Speed wird ausdrücklich als Erfolg in dem Bericht gewürdigt, der Millionen Leben gerettet habe. (Anmerkung: dürfte nach dem aktuellen Stand der Wissenschaft nicht mehr zu halten sein). Kritisiert werden hingegen Impfpflichten, die Behandlung natürlicher Immunität und die Transparenz der Impfstoffsicherheitssysteme. Strafrechtliche Bezüge. Der Bericht enthält Feststellungen zu mutmaßlichen Falschaussagen gegenüber dem Kongress nach 18 U.S.C. § 1001 und § 1621 sowie zur mutmaßlichen Vernichtung von Bundesakten nach 18 U.S.C. § 2071. Andrew M. Cuomo 18 U.S.C. § 1001 – Falschaussage gegenüber dem Kongress Gegenstand: Verneinung jeder Beteiligung an und Erinnerung an den „July 6 Report" Vernehmung vom 11.6.2024 Förmliche Verweisung an das DOJ am 30.10.2024 Zusätzlich, ohne Strafnorm: Verhalten „vereinbar mit" Zeugenbeeinflussung und Behinderung Dr. Peter Daszak (EcoHealth Alliance) 18 U.S.C. § 1001 – Falschaussage gegenüber dem Kongress 18 U.S.C. § 1621 – Meineid (öffentliche Anhörung vom 1.5.2024, unter Eid) Gegenstand: Widerspruch zwischen Aussagen und vorliegenden Dokumenten; konkrete Einzelaussagen im Bericht nicht benannt Umfeld: Verfälschung veröffentlichter E-Mails, unwahre Angabe zur FBI-Korrespondenz, bewusst reduzierte Dokumentenproduktion Keine DOJ-Verweisung im Bericht dokumentiert Dr. David M. Morens (NIAID) 18 U.S.C. § 1001 – Falschaussage gegenüber dem Kongress Vier Aussagen aus der Vernehmung vom 18.1.2024: FOIA-Umgehung, Löschung amtlicher Aufzeichnungen, Mitwirkung an Daszaks NIH-Schriftverkehr, weitere private E-Mail-Konten – jeweils verneint 18 U.S.C. § 2071 – Vernichtung von Bundesakten (eigenständige Feststellung, S. 474) § 1621 nur im Inhaltsverzeichnis, nicht in der Feststellung – Vernehmung erfolgte nicht unter Eid Keine DOJ-Verweisung im Bericht dokumentiert Dr. Anthony Fauci (ehem. Direktor NIAID) Gain-of-Function-Definition (S. 139): Aussage vor Senator Rand Paul, das NIH habe keine GoF-Forschung am WIV finanziert – gestützt auf eine „operative" Definition, die nicht der damals vom NIH verwendeten entsprach. Bewertung: habe die Öffentlichkeit in die Irre geführt („misled the public"), ausdrücklich keine Straftat. Lab-Leak als Verschwörungstheorie (S. 290): Podcast „Newt's World" vom 9.2.2020 – die Laborthese sei eine Verschwörungstheorie „without any scientific basis for it". Übertragbarkeit nach Impfung (S. 297): CBS „Face the Nation" vom 16.5.2021 – Geimpfte würden zur „Sackgasse" für das Virus; eine Übertragung nach Impfdurchbruch sei sehr unwahrscheinlich. Zusätzlich, ohne Aussagebezug: die Feststellung, er habe die Entstehung des „Proximal Origin"-Papiers veranlasst, um die Laborthese zu widerlegen (S. 5 ff.). EX-Präsident Joe Biden CNN Town Hall vom 21.7.2021 (S. 296): Wer geimpft sei, komme nicht ins Krankenhaus, nicht auf die Intensivstation und sterbe nicht. Der Bericht stützt sich auf einen Faktencheck von Associated Press vom 22.7.2021, wonach zu diesem Zeitpunkt bereits rund 5.500 geimpfte Personen hospitalisiert oder verstorben waren. Ankündigung der Impfpflicht vom 9.9.2021 (S. 297): Man werde geimpfte Beschäftigte vor ungeimpften Kollegen schützen – nach Bewertung des Ausschusses eine implizite Behauptung, Impfung verhindere Weitergabe. Einordnung im Bericht: „false statements", die zur Verwirrung beigetragen und das Impfvertrauen gesenkt hätten. Dr. Rochelle Walensky (ehem. Direktorin CDC) Rachel Maddow Show vom 29.3.2021 (S. 297): CDC-Daten zeigten, dass Geimpfte das Virus nicht trügen, nicht erkrankten, und zwar nicht nur in Studien, sondern auch in realen Daten. Widerlegt durch die CDC-Pressestelle selbst am 1.4.2021 gegenüber der New York Times. Ihre Einlassung vor dem Ausschuss am 13.6.2023: sie habe „in Verallgemeinerungen" gesprochen. Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus / WHO Antwortschreiben vom 15.6.2020 an das Oversight Committee (S. 179): mindestens eine falsche Angabe – die Wuhan Municipal Health Commission habe der WHO am 31.12.2019 eine Häufung von Lungenentzündungsfällen gemeldet. Dieselbe Darstellung auf der WHO-Website bis 29.6.2020 und in der Pressekonferenz vom 20.4.2020 („Der erste Bericht kam aus Wuhan, aus China selbst"). Am 30.6.2020 still korrigiert: tatsächlich habe das WHO-Länderbüro einen Medienbericht aufgegriffen. Bewertung: die WHO habe die KPCh vor Rechenschaft abgeschirmt. Chinesische Regierung / KPCh Systematische Untererfassung von Infektions- und Todeszahlen. Unterlassene Meldung des Ausbruchs an die WHO – vom Ausschuss als Verstoß gegen Art. 6 und 7 der Internationalen Gesundheitsvorschriften gewertet. Druck auf Ärzte, Erklärungen zu unterzeichnen, sie hätten „Falschaussagen" gemacht und „die öffentliche Ordnung erheblich gestört". Die Position der US-Regierung Die Feststellungen des Ausschusses sind im Jahr 2025 von der Exekutive aufgegriffen worden: April 2025 – Die Domain https://t.co/gvCltG1p2o leitet auf eine Seite des Weißen Hauses um, die einen laborbezogenen Vorfall im Zusammenhang mit Gain-of-Function-Forschung als wahrscheinlichsten Ursprung von COVID-19 bezeichnet. 5. Mai 2025 – Die Executive Order „Improving the Safety and Security of Biological Research" beendet die Bundesfinanzierung gefährlicher Gain-of-Function-Forschung in Staaten ohne hinreichende Aufsicht. 18. Juli 2025 – Das Gesundheitsministerium und das Außenministerium erklären förmlich die Zurückweisung der 2024 beschlossenen Änderungen der Internationalen Gesundheitsvorschriften der WHO. Parallel läuft im Vollzug der Austritt der Vereinigten Staaten aus der Weltgesundheitsorganisation. Einordnung Der Abschlussbericht ist ein Dokument der Legislative, nicht der Regierung. Er wurde von der republikanischen Ausschussmehrheit des 118. Kongresses verantwortet; ein Minderheitsvotum ist nicht Bestandteil der veröffentlichten Fassung. Ausschussberichte sind rechtlich unverbindlich und entfalten keine Bindungswirkung für Gerichte oder Behörden. Die verbindliche Position der Vereinigten Staaten ergibt sich aus den genannten Rechtsakten der Exekutive, nicht aus dem Bericht selbst. Die Übernahme als Regierungsposition verleiht dem Bericht aber dennoch außerordentliche internationale Bedeutung. Ein Untersuchungsausschuss zu den Impfstoffen selbst, deren Entwicklung und Absegnung fehlt bis heute. Quellen Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, Committee on Oversight and Accountability, U.S. House of Representatives: After Action Review of the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Lessons Learned and a Path Forward, Final Report, 4. Dezember 2024, 520 Seiten The White House: Lab Leak: The True Origins of COVID-19, https://t.co/i7BD3VPegK, April 2025 Executive Order Improving the Safety and Security of Biological Research, 5. Mai 2025 U.S. Department of Health and Human Services / U.S. Department of State, Joint Statement zur Zurückweisung der IHR-Änderungen, 18. Juli 2025 #COVID19 #LabLeak #PandemicResponse
AI is reshaping finance. To contain financial stability risks, stronger oversight, better data, and deeper coordination are needed to safeguard faster and more interconnected markets. Read our blog: https://t.co/J9p4sUnLCV https://t.co/ijv0Fx5dV6 #Finance #AI #FinancialStability #Nospecificcountrycodescanbeidentifiedinthetweet.
My Name Is on a File On a case I was never summoned to, and a price I do not pay alone By Adham Hasanin Egyptian journalist and political writer, based in the Netherlands | July 2026 In 2024, I learned that my name had been entered into a case. Case number 1282. Listed as a "defendant." I was never summoned, and no one called to tell me the exact charge. I found out the way anyone in my position finds out — from a colleague, from a quick search of my own name, from another journalist who called to ask: "Did you know your name is on file?" I do not want to overdramatise the story. No cinematic manhunt, no car tailing me down a European street. What happened is simpler and crueller than that: a state thousands of kilometres away opened a file bearing my name, without my knowledge, without any way for me to defend myself within it, without even anyone standing before me to answer. The charge is not based on any act I committed. The charge is that I wrote. An article, an opinion, a tweet — it makes no difference. What matters is that the words were read, and someone decided they were dangerous enough to become a case number. I. How Do You Know You Are Accused? This question seems like a technicality, but it is in fact the heart of the whole matter. I received no official letter. No lawyer knocked on my door carrying documents. No one from an embassy or consulate called to inform me. The knowledge itself arrived by accident — a passing search, or a message from a friend asking: "Where did you see your name?" This small detail reveals something far larger than a mere administrative oversight. When you are not formally notified that you are accused, you do not even have a clear starting point from which to act. You do not know exactly when the file was opened. You do not know who decided to include your name. You do not know whether a hearing was held, a decision was made, or even whether an investigation took place at all. You simply discover, one day, that you have become "accused" within a legal system that never gave you the chance to know its rules. This ambiguity is not a flaw in the procedure; it is the procedure itself. A case opened without a clear announcement, with no trial date set, performs its full function even while suspended indefinitely. It does not need a conviction to frighten; it is enough that it simply exists. II. The Charge That Needs No Crime In conventional legal systems, a case begins with an act: theft, assault, fraud — something material that can be proven or disproven. But my case, like many others, began with a word. I stole nothing. I assaulted no one. I incited no violence, called for no chaos. I wrote an opinion. I analysed a policy. I criticised a decision. That is the entirety of it. And yet this simple act — writing — became the basis for a legal file bearing a number and classified under a security heading. The paradox is that this kind of charge requires no fixed standard. What counts as "dangerous" today may not be tomorrow, and vice versa. There is no published list of forbidden words, no clear criterion distinguishing incitement from opinion. This deliberate ambiguity — or perhaps unintentional, but effective regardless — leaves every writer living in a state of permanent unease: will this sentence be the one that opens a file bearing my name? III. The Real Danger Is Not to Me Many ask me: "Can they reach you in the Netherlands?" The honest answer: no, not directly. I am here, in a country governed by the rule of law, physically protected by Dutch police, and no one can arrest me on the basis of a case in another country absent a valid extradition treaty and supporting facts. This is not my first concern. My real concern is that this case does not target me alone. It targets those around me. My family in Egypt. People walking down the street, opening their front door, with no connection to politics whatsoever — and suddenly someone is asking about them because I wrote a word from here. This is not a threat spoken aloud. No one calls to say: "If you continue, we will do such-and-such." The message arrives without anyone saying it — through the kind of questions asked of my family, through their timing, through the silence that meets me when I try to learn the details. Sometimes it is a "routine" phone call from some office, asking about my place of residence, my activities, or people I am in contact with. None of it is an explicit threat, but the timing alone is enough to deliver the message. This is precisely the mechanism by which this kind of pursuit operates: it does not need to touch me physically to affect me. It is enough to make me know that the people I love are exposed to harm because of what I write. IV. I Am Not an Exception It would be easy for an article like this to turn into a personal complaint, and I am careful that it should not. Case 1282 is not an isolated incident, and if I stay silent about it I become complicit — unintentionally — in concealing a pattern that genuinely exists. There are others like me — far more than me — whose names sit in similar files, some of whom have no platform to speak from as I do. Journalists, activists, even ordinary people who never practised journalism but shared a post or left a comment. Case 1282 is not an exception; it is a method of operation. Someone writes from abroad, someone else decides they are "dangerous," and the matter shifts from opinion to legal file, without a real trial, without even a clear official announcement that a charge exists at all. More dangerously, this pattern is not confined to Egyptians alone, nor to any single country. It is a recurring tactic used by several regimes seeking to pursue voices beyond their borders without bearing the burden of actual proof or a transparent legal process. The open, unannounced file serves the same purpose everywhere: it frightens without convicting, and keeps the writer in a permanent state of tension without ever offering him the chance to defend himself. V. What Has Actually Changed in Me I will not say this made me stronger. The phrase is worn out, usually deployed to prettify a painful experience, and I refuse to do that. What actually happened is simpler and more honest: I began writing more slowly. Not less candidly — I still say what I believe, still criticise what deserves criticism. But I have become more aware that every sentence I write from here may carry a price I am not the only one paying. This awareness slows the writing, not because I am censoring myself out of fear for my own safety, but because I am thinking about who might pay the price on my behalf. And this is precisely the point of such a case, whether intended or a by-product of a broader mechanism. Actual arrest is not required for censorship to function. No summons is required, no trial, not even a clear charge. It is enough to know your name is written on a piece of paper somewhere, to make you think twice before writing the next time. VI. Why I Continue Regardless A reader might ask: if the price is this clear, why keep writing? Would silence not be safer, for you and for your family? The answer is not as heroic as it might sound, but it is honest: because silence does not solve the problem, it postpones and expands it. If I stopped, and others like me stopped, the mechanism that produced Case 1282 would keep operating with no voice to expose it. Files would keep opening, names would keep being entered, families would keep being questioned, with no one outside the circle of direct victims ever knowing this was happening at all. Writing about this experience, for all its risks, is the only way I have to make this pattern visible. When an article like this is published, the file no longer remains a secret between a government body and an isolated writer; it becomes part of a public record that other journalists, human rights organisations, and even international institutions can follow and document. Conclusion: A Price Not Paid Once I am still writing. More slowly than before, but still writing. And Case 1282 remains open, suspended, with no set date for a hearing or a verdict, exactly as it began. This very ambiguity is the message. An authority that opens a file and never closes it, never tries its subject, never even clearly states what the charge is — is not pursuing justice. It is pursuing something else entirely: that everyone who thinks of writing knows the price is possible, even if not certain. And that everyone who has already written carries that price with them wherever they go, however far they travel from the source of the case. This is the true price of a single word: not one arrest at one moment, but a continuous state of uncertainty that lives with you every time you open a blank page to write. Adham Hasanin is an Egyptian journalist and political writer based in the Netherlands.
Organizacja Oversight Project opublikowała nagrania rozmów z lat 2016-2017 między Joe Bidenem a jego biografem Markiem Lewisem Zwonitzerem, w których Biden omawia tajne notatki z czasów swojej kadencji jako wiceprezydent USA i wyraża sceptycyzm wobec decyzji swojego ówczesnego szefa, Baracka Obamy, o wysyłaniu żołnierzy do Afganistanu. #JoeBiden #nagrania #DepartamentSprawiedliwości
Peer review is only as good as the peers. Since peer review determines who gets to join the peers, review communities tend to decline in the absence of additional oversight. Wikipedia and some social sciences come to mind #PeerReview #Science #Oversight #Nocountrycodespresent.
Nicolas Stockhammer, expert in terrorism, warns that the recent attack during the Berlin CSD could signify the start of a new series of Islamist terror acts in Western Europe, highlighting potential failures in security oversight and calling for stricter measures against known extremists. #Terrorismus #CSD #Islamismus
A leaked EU-US draft raises concerns about broader access to biometric data under the Visa Waiver Program. Before any agreement moves forward, we need answers on privacy, GDPR compliance, and democratic oversight. 🇱🇺📋 #DataPrivacy #GDPR #VisaWaiver #CivilLiberties #EBSP #DataPrivacy #GDPR #VisaWaiver #LU
Be sure that the “small errors” that were “corrected” will be scrutinised by >60 organisations #Oversight #Accountability #Transparency #Nospecificcountriesarementionedinthetweet.
I am here at the Global Dialogue on AI Governance – and my message is clear: the future of AI must be shaped by human oversight and effective governance. Together, let’s ensure that AI is developed safely, fairly, and benefitting of all humanity. https://t.co/7T0rP76CSC #AIGovernance #EthicalAI #HumanOversight #Thetweetdoesnotmentionanyspecificcountries.Therefore #therearenocountrycodestoreturn.
No child should be a guinea pig for unregulated AI. That's why I am calling for an AI Child Safety Pledge built on three rules: safety testing & oversight, zero tolerance for abuse & crisis support systems. When a child is harmed, the answer must never be “the algorithm did https://t.co/zGiAuQGkx3 #AICare #ChildSafety #EthicalAI #Therearenospecificcountryreferencesinthetweetprovided.Therefore #therearenocountrycodestoreturn.
US government is scrapping more than 36 firearms regulations: no more crackdown on illegal sales, gun rights to people with mental illness, loosening oversight of private weapons transactions. US also targets gun regulations at state and local levels https://t.co/qTFzqRAxnl #GunRights #FirearmsRegulations #SecondAmendment #US
🚨 HOLY SMOKES. Trump officials Dr. Mehmet Oz and Jim O’Neill just dropped a MINNESOTA BOMBSHELL. A former linen factory converted into 400 Medicaid businesses — all billing out of ONE building. Nearly $400 MILLION siphoned from taxpayers. Four hundred shell operations. An industrial complex no parent would bring a child to. No oversight. No alarms. Just pure fraud. They didn’t miss it. They didn’t want to see it. This is theft. This is corruption. And Minnesotans were robbed of real care so scammers could cash checks. Follow the money. Prosecute everyone involved. https://x.com/TheRealDrWard/status/2072293181861834997
