uladzislay

Asking the eternal Polish question: nWhy is #Poland building #Castles again? The #RoyalCastleInWarsaw #LastCastle #PolishCastleNess @ruolz @KubaSnopek @StateOfPoland bit.ly/4n9Ekk2

Our fiftieth issue is here! nyra.nyc

The more interesting part of Von Der Leyen's quote isn't so much Türkiye's new inclusion on the ever-growing list of what the EU considers "malign influence" but it's the "completing the European continent" bit. Concretely what she meant by this, and we know it from the fact her spokesperson literally said that's what she meant (turkiyetoday.com/region/eu-says…), is a reference to the absorption of the Western Balkans (Serbia, Bosnia, Albania, etc.) into the EU. But note the causality link that she's making between getting these countries in the EU and "freedom from influence". This implies that, basically, she has a zombie-movie logic to the EU: either you are in the interior, or outside it being contaminated - and, eventually, becoming a contaminant yourself. Türkiye, in this framing, is now a zombie: not only contaminated but a contaminant, which makes it all the more urgent, in her logic, to hurry the still-uncontaminated inside before they turn as well. To call this a toxic view of the world would be the understatement of the century. I wrote an article back in January (open.substack.com/pub/arnaudbert…) saying that one of the biggest "grey rhinos" (i.e. a problem that everyone can see is coming but that no-one does anything about) out there is Europe's search for a new ideology, given that liberal hegemonism is dead and Europe now has very little sense of purpose. The point I made was that this isn't something you should take lightly: Europe has amply demonstrated in its history that it has an unparalleled capacity for ideological extremism. Steered in the right direction this gave us beautiful cathedrals and the Enlightenment, but steered in the wrong one it gave us BOTH world wars and multiple genocides. Which means you need to be extremely wary of which way the replacement ideology goes: either constructive (oriented toward building and flourishing) or mobilizational (oriented against an Other). The fact we now have the EU's top official articulating a worldview built around ideological purity and absorption of peripheral states to prevent contamination isn't a reassuring sign...

The UK will ban anyone 17 and under from ever buying cigarettes after the Tobacco and Vapes Bill cleared Parliament. Anyone born after January 1, 2009 will never be able to legally purchase tobacco, aiming to create a smoke-free generation. (bbc.com/news/articles/…)