Richard Ballerand retweeted
Former Head of MI6 Sir John Sawers, "Russia was very keen that the Leave campaign should succeed and that Britain should leave the European Union" "Because that would marginalise Britain as a global player and weaken Europe in general" "That's the strategic opportunity the Russians spotted, and the leaders of the Leave campaign fell into it" My view: Former MI6 chief Sir John Sawers says Russia saw Brexit as a way to weaken Britain and divide Europe, and that the Leave campaign’s leaders walked straight into the opportunity. So let’s remember who sold it: VOTE LEAVE • Boris Johnson — political figurehead • Michael Gove and Gisela Stuart — campaign committee co-convenors • Matthew Elliott — chief executive • Dominic Cummings — campaign director • Daniel Hannan — leading Brexit advocate • Priti Patel, Iain Duncan Smith, Chris Grayling, John Whittingdale and Theresa Villiers — senior Conservative campaigners • David Davis, Liam Fox, Dominic Raab, Steve Baker and Douglas Carswell — prominent Leave campaigners LEAVE. EU • Nigel Farage — leading political figure • Arron Banks — co-chairman and major funder • Andy Wigmore — communications director GRASSROOTS OUT / LABOUR LEAVE • Peter Bone and Tom Pursglove — Grassroots Out co-founders • Kate Hoey — Grassroots Out co-founder and Labour Leave campaigner • Graham Stringer, Kelvin Hopkins and Roger Godsiff — Labour Leave campaigners • Sammy Wilson — prominent DUP Leave campaigner They promised Brexit would make Britain stronger. Sawers says Russia saw the opposite opportunity: a Britain marginalised and a Europe weakened.
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Meloni: I do not miss the Russian tanks in Prague and Budapest. I do not miss the Berlin Wall. If Ukraine stopped defending itself tomorrow, Russia would occupy a European nation and Soviet-style imperialism would return. Surrender is not peace. It is conquest. 1/
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The immune system as the explanation for why the Shingles vaccine has shown protection vs dementia in 4 natural experiments pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.26…
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*BRILLIANT* The French made a short film about what could happen after all immigrants would follow the ‘_white, angry old man’s_’ advice to go back where they came from.*
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Richard Ballerand retweeted
A Russia-linked operation used ChatGPT to build a credible-looking research institute, complete with papers, an index, and real experts—including ones at CFR—who never agreed to be listed. Its posts earned little reach, but the infrastructure it created, using AI, shows the advancement of tech-powered influence operations, argues expert Jessica Brandt. "Broadly, the episode highlights the value of regular threat intelligence reporting from AI labs, which have unique insight into consequential activity that social media platforms and governments may not," she writes.
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🇫🇷 19 août 1944, prise de la Préfecture de Police par la Résistance parisienne, la Libération de Paris débute. Vidéo exceptionnelle réalisée clandestinement par une équipe de cinéastes de la Résistance sur l'insurrection parisienne : la prise de la Préfecture de police et de l'Hôtel de Ville, l'occupation des mairies d'arrondissement, les combats de rue entre le 16 et le 26 août 1944.
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Comment last evening from a retired French député. "First it was that stupid Brexit and now they force out the best Prime Minister the UK has had since Tony Blair. It's a very strange country. almost suicidal" bbc.com/news/articles/c33y3r…
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Richard Ballerand retweeted
On this day in 1942, 3,700 Free French soldiers were holding a fort made of sand against the Italian Ariete Division and the German Afrika Korps. They had been told to hold for five days. They held for sixteen. The fortress was Bir Hacheim, a crossroads in the Libyan desert with one old Ottoman cistern, no natural defenses, and no way out. The commander was a 43 year old general named Marie-Pierre Koenig, who in June 1940 had refused to lay down his arms when France surrendered and had escaped to England to join Charles de Gaulle. Half his men were French Foreign Legionnaires. The rest were Pacific islanders from Tahiti and New Caledonia, Senegalese tirailleurs, Syrians, Lebanese, Spanish Republicans who had lost one war and were ready to fight another, and Jewish refugees from across Nazi Europe who had walked, sailed and smuggled themselves out to fight again. Among them was one woman. Susan Travers, an English ambulance driver, the only female ever officially enrolled in the French Foreign Legion. She was also the general's lover. For sixteen days they were dive-bombed by Stukas, shelled by 88s, attacked by tanks, choked by sandstorms, and slowly starved of water. The Italians tried first and were thrown back with 32 tanks destroyed in a single morning. Then the Germans came. Rommel himself eventually drove out to the perimeter under a white flag to demand surrender in person. Koenig refused. When Hitler heard that Free French troops were holding out at Bir Hacheim, he personally signed an order that any captured were to be shot as terrorists, not treated as prisoners of war. The order was passed down the German chain of command to Rommel. Rommel read it. Then quietly threw it away. The Free French were soldiers and would be treated as soldiers. On the night of June 10, Koenig and 2,400 of his men broke out through the German lines in a single column. Susan Travers drove the lead vehicle straight through enemy machine gun fire with the general in the passenger seat. Her car was found the next day with 11 bullet holes in it. She was unharmed. When the news reached London, de Gaulle wept openly. The next day he stood in front of a microphone and told the world: "When at Bir Hacheim a ray of her reborn glory came to caress the bloody brow of her soldiers, the world recognized France."
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«Donald Trump et l’élite qui l’entoure ne survivront pas à une alternance politique. S’ils perdent le pouvoir, ils finiront en prison voire pire. À défaut de pouvoir revenir en arrière, ils vont plus loin», analyse @GillesGressani, directeur de la revue du @Grand_Continent.
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Richard Ballerand retweeted
Amazing moment on French TV. A French judge explains how Trump sent people from the US Embassy basically trying to intimidate her during Le Pen's trial for embezzlement - something they've done to other judges around the world My English sub-titles 👇
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BREAKING: Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney delivers an astonishing eulogy for the end of American dominance thanks to Donald Trump: "This bargain no longer works." It's rare that a world leader speaks so candidly about how the world really functions. This speech will be studied in the history books... "We knew the story of the international rules-based world order was partially false, that the strongest would exempt themselves when convenient, that trade rules were enforced asymmetrically," Carney said during an address at the Davos World Economic Forum. "And we knew that international law applied with varying rigor depending on the identity of the accused or the victim." "This fiction was useful and American hegemony in particular helped provide public goods, open sea lanes, a stable financial system, collective security, and support for frameworks for resolving disputes," he continued. "So we placed the sign in the window. We participated in the rituals and we largely avoided calling out the gaps between rhetoric and reality. This bargain no longer works." "Let me be direct, we are in the midst of a rupture not a transition," said Carney. "Over the past two decades a series of crises in finance, health, energy, and geopolitics have laid the bare risks of extreme global integration." "But more recently, great powers have begun using economic integration as weapons," he said, clearly referring to Trump. "Tariffs as leverage. Financial infrastructures as coercion. Supply chains as vulnerabilities to be exploited. You cannot live within the lie of mutual benefit through integration when integration becomes the source of your subordination." Carney's analysis offers a refreshingly honest perspective on the post-World War II order. Western nations, led by the United States, created a sophisticated network of global institutions and rules that privileged their interests, often at the expense of developing nations. It was a flawed system that nonetheless brought peace, stability, and prosperity to the nations that it was created to benefit. "The multilateral institutions on which the middle powers have relied, the WTO, the U.N., the COP, the very architecture of collective problem solving are under threat," Carney said. "And as a result many countries are drawing the same conclusions, that they must develop greater strategic autonomy in energy, food, critical minerals, in finance and supply chains," he continued. "And this impulse is understandable, a country that can't feed itself, fuel itself, or defend itself has few options. When the rules no longer protect you, you must protect yourself." Carney was driving at a hard truth that MAGA refuses to acknowledge. Despite what Trump thinks, European nations haven't been content to accept a kind of vassal state status simply because they're scared of the United States. They've gone along with the world that America designed because it directly benefited them in concrete ways. Now that Trump is stripping away those benefits, they're going to begin decoupling economically and strategically from the United States. Canada's massive recent trade deal with China proves that. The problem is that Donald Trump and his MAGA supporters are too ignorant and paranoid to understand that the system they're destroying helps them. They take for granted the American dollar's status as the global reserve currency. Once these hidden pillars that hold up the world start crumbling, quality of life in the U.S. will plummet. "But let's be clear-eyed about where this leads. A world of fortresses will be poorer, more fragile, and less sustainable and there's another truth..." Carney continued. "If great powers abandon even the pretense of rules and values for the unhindered pursuit of their power and interests, the gains from transactionalism will become harder to replicate." "Hegemons cannot continually monetize their relationships. Allies will diversify to hedge against uncertainty. They'll buy insurance, increase options in order to rebuild sovereignty, sovereignty that was once grounded in rules but will increasingly be anchored in the ability to withstand pressure." There is no putting this genie back in the bottle. Thanks to the stupidity, pettiness, and egomania of Donald Trump, America has been hurled into a dangerous new status quo. The rest of the world will never trust us in the same way again, but if we can remove him from power and vote in Democrats, we can at least set about undoing some of the damage. The future is uncertain, but what is certain is that our country will only survive if Democrats are the ones at the wheel. Please ❤️ and share if you think that Trump is destroying America.
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BREAKING: In a stunning report, CNN just analyzed all the ways Donald Trump and his family have profited from his Presidency. This is insane.
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Richard Ballerand retweeted
In a letter drawn from a posthumous collection of correspondence, published in 2019, the neurologist Oliver Sacks argued that society had no immunity to the seductions of digital life. “What we are seeing—and bringing on ourselves—resembles a neurological catastrophe on a gigantic scale,” he wrote. Revisit his prescient piece: newyorkermag.visitlink.me/0Y…
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Richard Ballerand retweeted
Warning—never dry your hands with air dryers in public bathrooms. Fecal aerosols are real. Don’t dry with airborne poop. Public toilets honestly need UV and HEPA filters.
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From pandemics to climate change, urgent global challenges collide with rising opposition to science. On Sept. 9, join @MichaelEMann and @PeterHotez for a timely discussion on countering disinformation, restoring trust, and ensuring science informs critical decisions. 🔗 Register today: bit.ly/4fp0Y46 #ScienceUnderSiege #Policy #Science #PublicHealth
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Richard Ballerand retweeted
Wild—Bernie Sanders asks: “On one side we have the American Medical Association, American Academy of Pediatrics, and American Public Health Association experts saying vaccines safe and effective, who is on your side? RFK Jr: um um… [names a few whackos]
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🚀 @NetZeroAICT Dashboard is live! A major step in sustainable #CTImaging🌿 Explore real-time data flow, GDPR-compliant repository & AI model support across 9 clinical partners. 👉 [netzeroaict.eu/netzeroaict-d…] Co-funded by @EU_Commission & @UKRI_News Led by @CMRadiology #GreenAI
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Richard Ballerand retweeted
🪖 Pierre Schill, @CEMAT_FR, mène depuis trois ans une "européanisation" des forces armées afin qu'elles soient "redoutées des adversaires" et "crédibles vis-à-vis des alliés". Son entretien est à écouter dans le dernier épisode de L'Etat-Major. ➡️ l.lexpress.fr/OE4
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Spotlight of BNG member Richard Ballerand - Patient Advocacy - Brainstorming Business & Industry bngbrainstorming.wordpress.c… @RMBallerand
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RT @NIHRresearch: BREAKING NEWS 📰 World's first fridge free vaccine entering its first-in-human trial at our @SouthamptonCRF 🔗 https://xitter.cf/t.co…