@EU_Dempsey

A critical journalist and migration activists targeted in the same #Paragon spyware attack. Who had the means & motive: the Italian government. No-one else has a motive, and spyware is expensive and not sold to normal citizens. Like in other EU countries spyware is being used for political purposes.

So Axel Springer has bought the UK’s Telegraph?

Makes sense.

A war with no winners: The costs of US-Israeli aggression on Iran – European Council on Foreign Relations US and Israeli strikes on Iran have plunged the Middle East into wider war. Retaliation, regional entanglements and disrupted trade make one outcome clear: no s

Our big @ecfr.eu 360° reaction piece to the Iran conflict, assessing regional & global positioning, risks and implications as the war plays out in devastating fashion across the Middle East - and beyond ecfr.eu/article/a-wa...

"American innovation" now refers to making a kind of atrocity cronut by combining insider trading with war crimes.

if people are using classified information to place bets, then theoretically others can analyze betting behavior to find signals that reveal classified information.

Utterly hopeless. EU’s complete lack of integrity and courage has hugely contributed to this. As a European, beyond ashamed. Pathetic.

But fundamentally, this shows why first past the post isn’t fit for purpose. If the government doesn’t introduce proportional voting, a far right party could win the next general election outright on a minority of the vote.

Gotta say the BBC radio 4 today description of Trump’s State of the Union as some sort of mild mannered, well orchestrated speech doesn’t tally at all with the clips I’ve watched

Listening to Sarah Smith talking so effusively about Trump’s speech can’t help thinking about *that* lawsuit….

Regulate platforms, not children – Commissioner urges caution over social media bans - Commissioner for Human Rights - www.coe.int Strasbourg 23 February 2026

Several European countries are considering social media bans for children. We must regulate platforms, not children.
I urge caution:
✅ Focus on "safety by design"
✅ Demand algorithmic transparency
✅ Enforce the #DSA & #HumanRights standards

Read my Shout Out👇
www.coe.int/en/web/commi...

This is exactly it @martinsandbu.ft.com "Aiming solely for resilience obscures any consideration of countervailing power that Europe itself possesses and could wield against others." giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...

Digitale Souveränität in Bayern: Noch mehr Geld für Microsoft - Golem.de Seit Monaten wird Bayerns Regierung wegen ihrer Microsoft-Verhandlungen kritisiert. Jetzt kommt raus: Microsoft-Verträge ohne Ausschreibung gibt es schon seit Jahren.

Albert Füracker needs to resign for his lies and utter incompetence. Great reporting. www.golem.de/news/digital...

EPP targeting S&D-led Spain is also not new, see derailed Ribera hearing. But turning RoL protection partisan by naming Spain and not e.g. EPP-led Greece, ranked 89th on RSF press freedom index (even HU ranks 68th) & 48th on WJP rule of law index, does RoL no service: www.eppgroup.eu/newsroom/rul...

In documents produced in US litigation, we've gotten a small window into how online platforms measure harms and their mitigations. Why aren't DSA risk assessments -- which are designed for just this purpose -- actually assessing risk?

While Amazon touts the surveillance state enabled by its Ring cameras, remember...

Amazon's U.S. tax bill dropped by 87% in 2025, mostly thanks to Trump's tax cuts.

Meanwhile, its profits jumped by 45% to nearly $90 billion — and it announced 30,000 job cuts.

Is this the world we want to live in?

Europe is chasing the wrong fix for its growth crisis The continent’s old growth model no longer works in today’s world. And EU leaders need a plan that matches the scale of this shift.

When EU leaders meet tomorrow to discuss the EU’s competitiveness agenda, they should stop chasing ghosts and confront the real problem Europe‘s economy is facing.

Our latest for @politico.eu with @nilsredeker.bsky.social and @sandertordoir.bsky.social 👇

just a reminder that the united states is essentially operating a network of torture camps holding individuals in arbitrary detention, without access to appeal and rarely to counsel.

Mark O'Connell: ‘We must delete the humans,’ the AI bot told his internet pals. But let’s not panic yet Moltbook is an internet forum modelled closely on Reddit - except it is only used by AI bots

“The issue, as so often, is not machine intelligence; it’s the foolishness and delusion of humans.”

www.irishtimes.com/opinion/2026...

Good essay "I proposed that this was similar to the appeal of “effective altruism”, the neo-utilitarian moral theory popular among students and tech bros, which reduces moral questions to basic calculations of effectiveness. “Exactly,” he said. giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...

Tech wreck signals a market reset Rising tide might no longer support all sector stocks, let alone speculative dross like crypto

Pause for thought. “So far this year, the software sector is down 16 per cent, she said, while the long-unloved Stoxx Europe 600 index, crammed with nice dull commodity producers, utilities, industrials and financials, is up 4 per cent.”

giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...

This is bleak: Jes Staley, currently CEO of Barclays, reassuring Epstein that popular revolt against financial elites is unlikely because capitalism and pop culture have defanged social movements, leaving people more invested in consumption than justice.

Who fucking cares???

I’ve been begging for some CEOs to show some backbone.
I bet a lot of customers would seek out ways to support such CEOs’ companies.

really excellent assessment of House GOP claims about EU fine of X, showing just how seriously hollow the claims of censorship are.

jordan & musk & friends overreach when they put out such patently tendentious reports, which could be boiled down to: don't you ever touch american platforms!

THIS is why so many of us have warned for years about why AdTech & Big Data -- those companies that gather your highly revealing online data & auction/sell it -- MUST be tightly regulated or better, forbidden. It's so damn revealing that ICE wants access to it. www.mediapost.com/publications...

Record number of people in UK live in ‘very deep poverty’, analysis shows Joseph Rowntree Foundation finds problem is ‘deeper and more damaging than at any point in the last 30 years’

Unfathomable why the #Starmer government has not prioritised this. Shameful. #stateofUK www.theguardian.com/society/2026...

An insane, perfect encapsulation of it all:

The same day Trump’s agents kill a Veterans Affairs ICU nurse in broad daylight, the CEOs of Apple and Amazon join Trump to watch a private screening of a film about his wife directed by an alleged sexual abuser who was seen shirtless in the Epstein Files

Letter: EU groupthink manifests itself as polite silence From Piotr Arak, Chief Economist, VeloBank, Warsaw, Poland; Non-resident Senior Fellow, Atlantic Council, Washington, DC, US

Description of current Commission “What it lacks is a culture that encourages early, uncomfortable truths. Until dissent is treated as an asset rather than a reputational risk, Europe will continue to react late, cautiously and find itself collectively surprised.” giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...

AOC: This is quite a bit of market concentration. Agreed?

CVS HEALTH CHAIR DAVID JOYNER: No. I'd suggest it's a model that works well for the consumer

AOC: It works well for CVS. Health insurance gets a cut, pharmacy benefit manager gets one, drug manufacturer gets one, & the patient gets screwed

Pensionsjätten har sålt av amerikanska statspapper | Placera.se Pensionsjätten Alecta har sålt merparten av sina amerikanska statsobligationer, skriver Dagens Industri som erfar att det handlar om försäljningar i storleksordningen 70-80 miljarder kronor.

Large Swedish pension fund Alecta exits U.S. treasuries. Total sale about $7bn.
www.placera.se/nyheter/-pen...

My final message before I'm on an FBI watchlist: Palantir, Epstein, & The New York Times ICE brings the hybrid warfare and terror we brought to Gaza back home. It's time to learn where it comes from, how it works, who enables it, and how to fight back.

@nytimes.com SICKENING. "...refused to report..when it was tipped-off ahead of time, providing cover for the administration’s illegal acts, potentially enabling war crimes while violating its own ethical code to stand for the truth no matter the circumstances." www.zig.art/p/my-final-m...