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🧵 Today’s Exchequer numbers reflect the fundamental strength of our economy and a labour market that has been running at full capacity for the last 4½ years, the longest stretch of ‘full employment’ in the history of the State. https://t.co/43QH9pB6QG #Exchequer #Economy #FullEmployment #IE

But public funding alone will never be enough. We need private capital alongside it. That’s why we are mobilising new tools, including the Scaleup Europe Fund. Our goal is clear: turn Europe’s AI strength into European scale and global leadership. 🇪🇺 (2/2) https://t.co/NEtxFdUEsG #ScaleupEurope #AIfund #EUleadership #EU #[nootherspecificcountrycodesmentioned]

On today’s upcoming discussions on the next long-term #EUBudget, in the #GAC meeting in #Dublin: Some Member States expect the #EU to deliver more on competitiveness, security and defence while calling for cuts to its resources. The #MFF must strengthen these priorities #EUBudget #GAC #MFF #IE #EU

The Leipzig attack is a clear continuation of Russia’s familiar playbook: intimidate, divide, and divert attention from Ukraine. As Russia’s international isolation deepens and Ukraine strengthens its strategic position, the Kremlin is increasingly resorting to desperate #LeipzigAttack #Russia #Ukraine #RU #UA

What's grimly amusing is that the government attempts to use public support for UNIFIL are completely undermined by Kaja Kallas saying the quiet bit out loud - this is not replacing UNIFIL, it's about strengthening the Lebanese Armed Forces internally in a brewing civil conflict. #UNIFIL #KajaKallas #LebanonConflict #LB

Farmers and consumers rightly expect imported products to meet the same high safety requirements as those produced in the EU. By sharing expertise across Member States, we can strengthen controls while protecting consumers, producers and our high food safety standards. #FoodSafety #EUstandards #ConsumerProtection #EU

Kaja Kalas is clear here that the mission is not designed "to replace UNIFIL". Instead, they want Irish troops to be involved in a civil conflict within Lebanon to "strengthen the Lebanese Armed Forces." https://t.co/Kg3Xv2zwar #Lebanon #IrishTroops #UNIFIL #LB #IE

Today I welcomed young peacebuilders from around the world to Mäntyniemi. To bring about change, we need new generations to promote peace, foster dialogue, and strengthen mutual understanding. https://t.co/ryiHk3dYAE #Peacebuilding #YouthLeadership #Dialogue #Nospecificcountrycodescanbeidentifiedfromthetweet.

🚨🔴⚪️ OFFICIAL: Gustavo Puerta joins #OlympiacosFC! The “Pitbull” is ready to strengthen the midfield after signing a four-year deal with the Greek giants. The total package will exceed €20m, making Puerta the most expensive signing in Olympiacos history. 💰🇬🇷 After saying https://t.co/SMyg2gnFc7 #GustavoPuerta #OlympiacosFC #TransferNews #GR

“Socialism Was Good in Theory” That sentence assumes the theory was never seriously challenged. It was. Long before the Soviet Union existed, before Lenin seized power, and before socialism had been tested on a national scale, major thinkers were already attacking its foundations—from very different directions. Five of them stand out. Tocqueville: Equality Can Become Servitude In 1848, Alexis de Tocqueville drew a sharp distinction between democracy and socialism. Both spoke about equality. But Tocqueville believed they pursued it in fundamentally different ways. Democracy, in his view, sought equality while preserving individual freedom. Socialism risked achieving equality by expanding the power of the state over the individual. His warning was essentially this: equality is not automatically liberty. A society can pursue equality so aggressively that it begins sacrificing the independence that makes political freedom meaningful. Bastiat: Follow Where Redistribution Leads Two years later, Frédéric Bastiat attacked socialism from a different direction. His question was deceptively simple: What happens when the state acquires the authority to take from some people and give to others in the name of justice? Bastiat called this “legal plunder.” His concern was not merely that redistribution might be expensive. It was that once government becomes the instrument through which competing groups obtain benefits from one another, politics can turn into a permanent struggle over who controls the machinery of redistribution. The problem, therefore, wasn’t simply how much the state redistributed. It was the principle that made redistribution legitimate in the first place. (bastiat.org⁠) Nietzsche: Equality Can Become Resentment Nietzsche approached socialism neither as an economist nor as a constitutional theorist. He attacked its psychology. He saw modern egalitarian movements as part of a much older moral impulse: resentment toward exceptional individuals and suspicion of strength, ambition and hierarchy. For Nietzsche, the danger was not simply that everyone might become economically equal. It was that a culture could begin treating excellence itself as something morally suspect. The goal would cease to be lifting people upward. It would become bringing the exceptional downward. Böhm-Bawerk: Challenge the Economics Then came Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk. In 1896, he turned his attention specifically toward Marx’s economic system. His criticism was not primarily moral or political. It was technical. Böhm-Bawerk argued that Marx’s theory of value did not adequately explain how the labor values developed in Capital could be reconciled with the actual prices Marx subsequently needed to explain. In other words, he attacked socialism where it claimed to possess a scientific economic foundation. The argument became one of the central criticisms of Marxian economics and helped launch a debate that would continue for generations. Mises: The Calculation Problem Then, in 1920, Ludwig von Mises attacked an even more fundamental question: Even if socialism is morally desirable, how would a socialist economy actually know what to produce? A functioning economy has millions of competing uses for scarce resources. Build a bridge or a hospital? Use steel here or there? Produce more machinery or more consumer goods? Under private ownership and markets, prices for capital goods provide information about relative scarcity and opportunity costs. Mises argued that abolishing private ownership of the means of production also removes the genuine market prices necessary for rational economic calculation. The problem wasn’t simply that socialist planners might make bad decisions. It was that the system deprived them of the very economic signals required to systematically compare those decisions. (Mises Institute⁠) And that was the sequence. Tocqueville challenged the political premise. Bastiat challenged the moral and legal mechanism of redistribution. Nietzsche challenged the psychology behind egalitarianism. Böhm-Bawerk challenged Marx’s economic theory. Mises challenged the possibility of rational central economic calculation. Five different thinkers. Five different objections. And all of them came before the Soviet Union had demonstrated what large-scale socialist government would actually look like. So “socialism was good in theory, but bad in practice” is not an argument. It is a historical claim that requires you to explain why these theoretical objections were wrong. The interesting question isn’t whether socialism had critics. It did. The interesting question is whether socialism ever adequately answered them” - ChatGPT

BREAKING! The US has just struck Bandar Abbas, Qeshm, Chabahar, Konarak, Jask, Sirik, and Minab (again?!). What the morons in Trump admin do not understand is that every time they do this, the hand of the IRGC gets strengthened while the more neutral ("negotiating") party get #Iran #USMilitary #TrumpAdministration #US #IR #QA #OM

A new chapter begins today as I take up my role as EU Ambassador to the UK. I look forward to working with partners across the UK to further strengthen the EU-UK partnership 🇪🇺🇬🇧 Happy to join the fantastic @EUdelegationUK team and eager to start this important work. https://t.co/Bpxtln3LEn #EUAmbassador #UKEUrelations #EUUKpartnership #EU #UK

Busy day at the G20. Good to meet with Canada’s Finance Minister Champagne & Singapore’s Minister Rajah. We discussed strengthening even further our economic links and opportunities for growth, trade and investment. In these uncertain times, it’s so important to work together https://t.co/yLoFn4ES2n #G20 #EconomicGrowth #TradeRelations #CA #SG

New in @Euractiv: Donald Trump and Viktor Orbán have shown that strong leaders can stop illegal migration. But border control cannot depend on the strength of the government of the day. A lasting solution requires rewriting the international legal order. https://t.co/QtlTOPmvUJ #IllegalMigration #BorderControl #InternationalLaw #US #HU

THE KENNEDY DISASTER — THE DARK SIDE OF CAMELOT John F. Kennedy had just 1,036 days in office — and still managed to leave behind a remarkable chain of foreign-policy disasters. Bay of Pigs: invasion approved, support restricted, Castro strengthened. Vienna Summit: Khrushchev https://t.co/lTWdcM2VIc #KennedyDisaster #ForeignPolicy #ColdWar #US #CU #RU

NATO MUST TAKE CHINA’S WAR PREPARATIONS SERIOUSLY. TAIWAN CANNOT BE LEFT ALONE. 🇹🇼 Beijing is strengthening the legal, industrial and military machinery needed to mobilize people, transport, production and civilian resources for a major conflict. That does not prove an attack https://t.co/fV9S2WASwl #NATO #Taiwan #China #TW #CN

Russia’s recruitment isn't going as planned. Independent Russian media Verstka says new soldiers are brought in from prisons or picked up off the streets. Half of them can't carry full kit, some units are at only 30–40% strength, and many desert at the first opportunity. Most #Russia #MilitaryRecruitment #Desertion #RU

Five Lessons on Aggression and Dominance “There is a point in the history of society when it becomes so pathologically soft and tender that… it sides even with those who harm it.” Friedrich Nietzsche wrote this nearly 140 years ago, yet it still sounds contemporary. In *Chimpanzee Politics*, Frans de Waal shows that dominance, aggression, hierarchy and confrontation—often dismissed in humans as “toxic masculinity”—also appear in our closest relatives. These behaviors may reflect deep-rooted drives, not merely social constructs. **1. The threat of violence can keep the peace** Most chimp confrontations are displays, not fights. Only about 0.4% of male confrontations become physical. Rank depends on strength, alliances, displays and recognition. Violence matters partly because it is rare: conflict must be allowed to resolve before it escalates. **2. When respect disappears, violence rises** Chimpanzees maintain hierarchy through formal greetings, including bowing. At Arnhem, 22 of 37 serious male fights occurred when males had stopped greeting one another—even though such periods made up less than a quarter of observation time. Violence was nearly five times more likely when recognition rituals broke down. **3. Power requires alliances** Before challenging the dominant male, a chimp often grooms females and plays with their young. Like Machiavelli’s political challengers, he builds support before attempting to seize power. **4. Influence can replace force** Female chimps sometimes recruit males to attack rivals, signaling distress and flattering the enforcer while avoiding the fight. Power can operate through alliances and influence, not just strength. **5. Concentrated resources create conflict** Chimpanzees normally forage for scattered food, limiting competition. When humans provide concentrated food, aggression rises. Larger groups are also harder to govern because familiarity declines and hierarchies become unstable. Stable societies may require hierarchy, respect, controlled confrontation and distributed power. Suppressing every expression of dominance may not eliminate conflict; it may remove mechanisms that keep conflict contained.

The Three Roads to Evil We live in an age of unlimited access to information. Most of it is a gift, but it also gives us an unbroken view into horror—images on screens, the Epstein files, and constant stories once confined to nightmares. Some shut it off; others stare until it stares back, leaving them cynical. But it has always been this way. Long before Epstein, there was Caligula—years of sadism and cruelty on Capri. In every era, there have been people whose evil makes rationality struggle to explain it. I see three roads to evil: worshipping the wrong things, succumbing to ideology, and becoming so bitter you resent life itself. First: worshipping wrong values. Some make wealth, lust, power, or status their highest good. They lie, cheat, and steal to obtain it, then declare morality and law for the weak. Everyone else becomes an instrument. Second: ideology. When someone abandons a religious worldview, they may fill the vacuum with an ideology that claims to explain everything and promise a perfect world. Communists reduce history to class struggle; Nazis to racial struggle. The ideologue believes society can be remade by controlling causes and effects—people become cogs, sacrificed for utopia. Third: resentment. Those who see themselves as helpless victims can come to hate life itself. They treat hardship as injustice and life as something done to them. Their values invert: strength becomes evil, weakness virtue; love is attacked while lust is celebrated; wealth is theft—and criminals become victims while their victims are the privileged. These roads always exist, and always will. You can’t stop others from walking them. But it’s your responsibility not to.