davidbaer.bsky.social - Profile | ThreadSky | a Reddit-style client for Bluesky

PM Orbán is tightening control ahead of the 2026 election: intimidating critics, banning Pride, allowing the use of facial recognition. These moves aren't unique. We've seen them in Russia, Turkey, Serbia - now they enter the EU. My piece for @gmfus.bsky.social ⤵️ www.gmfus.org/news/authori...

submitted 32 days ago • 7 comments

The Secretary of the Navy doesn’t know when Pearl Harbor happened

submitted 37 days ago • 32 comments

ICYMI: According to a newly released court document, NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware was used in a 2019 hacking campaign to target a total of 1,223 WhatsApp users across 51 countries, including in multiple EU countries. 🕵️🤳 @investigacecz.bsky.social @vsquare.bsky.social vsquare.org/pegasus-...

submitted 37 days ago • 1 comment

“For freedom is always on the defensive, and therefore in danger. Where the populace no longer feels freedom to be in peril, freedom is already lost.”

submitted 43 days ago • 0 comments

“A faith which, as such, allows itself to be caught up in the pragmatics of power, is already lost as faith. It grows as truth only within the area of liberty without force.” Karl Jaspers.

submitted 43 days ago • 0 comments

“The rule of law produces a climate of fearlessness, unconstraint, liberty and peace of mind. Where force rules there is fear, silence and concealment, coercion and unrest. In the constitutional State trust prevails, in the State based on force there is universal mistrust.” -Karl Jaspers

submitted 44 days ago • 0 comments

Trump telling people on social media to “Be Strong, Courageous and GREATNESS will be the result” is like the comic strip version of Nietzsche’s Übermensch

submitted 58 days ago • 0 comments

TAPPER: You're imposing a 10% on the Heard and MccDonald islands. They have zero human inhabitants. Why are you putting tariffs on islands entirely populated by penguins? ROLLINS: Whatever. Listen, the people leading this are serious, intentional, patriotic, the smartest I've ever worked with.

submitted 59 days ago • 4947 comments

Important to remember what Trump is doing in foreign policy to our alliances is as stupid and self destructive as what he’s doing with tariffs. Massive American self harm in every direction.

submitted 61 days ago • 0 comments

‼️🇺🇸 Trump allies Ric Grenell and Matt Mowers join the advisory board of Viktor Orbán’s pet company 4iG—a Hungarian IT/telecom/defense giant with major state support and a history of corruption claims. They're expanding fast in the Balkans. 👇Read our earlier @direkt36.bsky.social investigation.👇

submitted 63 days ago • 0 comments

💥🇭🇺 Police have given up guarding Budapest’s Liberty Bridge as anti-government protesters shut down traffic on four major bridges, rallying against Viktor Orbán’s new law curbing freedom of assembly and banning the Pride march. They vow to escalate with a 24-hour shutdown next week.

submitted 64 days ago • 102 comments

In 1939 the German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer left the United States, where he was studying, to return to Germany. He explained his decision in a letter to Reinhold Niebuhr, "I must live through this difficult period of our national history with the Christian people of Germany.... 1/2

submitted 65 days ago • 1 comment

This, from Timothy Snyder, is definitive, on Greenland open.substack.com/pub/snyder/p...

submitted 67 days ago • 116 comments

I suppose if Walz had been running around on stage with a chainsaw that would have been justified joy.

submitted 67 days ago • 0 comments

Swedish journalist Joakim Medin arrested on arrival in Istanbul. His whereabouts are unknown.

submitted 68 days ago • 0 comments

Right-wing YouTuber Tim Pool has made it to the White House pool — someone from his “Timcast” channel will be part of today’s pool duty covering the president. Last year, DOJ revealed Pool was receiving millions of dollars from the Russian gov. Pool says he didn’t know where it was coming from.

submitted 68 days ago • 819 comments

Swedish journalist Joakim Medin arrested on arrival in Istanbul. His whereabouts are unknown.

submitted 68 days ago • 0 comments

Now he wants price controls?! www.wsj.com/business/aut...

submitted 68 days ago • 0 comments

America is now a place that sends masked secret police to abduct people off the street and uses prisoners to create government propaganda. And this all happened in 8 weeks. www.thebulwark.com/p/this-is-th...

submitted 69 days ago • 101 comments

"The point is to create a climate in which agents of the state routinely wear masks to conceal their identities and street abductions are not out of the ordinary." // great read from @jvl.bsky.social www.thebulwark.com/p/this-is-th...

submitted 69 days ago • 13 comments

This is insane

submitted 72 days ago • 0 comments

Suspending Hungarian citizenship for dual nationals, violations of freedom of assembly and the attempt to ban Pride🏳️‍🌈 -- the Orbán government is escalating its efforts to stifle dissent and weaken human rights protections in Hungary🇭🇺. Our 2 new briefs explain the plans ➡️ helsinki.hu/en/legislati...

submitted 75 days ago • 1 comment

💥Hungary sliding further into authoritarianism: Viktor Orbán’s close ally, Speaker of the House László Kövér, banned the entire liberal Momentum party faction from parliament and fined them €175,000 for protesting Orbán's Pride crackdown—setting a precedent to ban other elected opposition MPs too.

submitted 75 days ago • 1 comment

‼️JUST IN: #Hungary's Parliament (with the 2/3 majority of ruling party Fidesz-KDNP) voted yes to ban the Pride march and impose fines on organisers and people attending the event. Opposition party Momentum burnt smoke candles in protest.

submitted 78 days ago • 0 comments

Budapest today. People are demanding that PM Orban resign.

submitted 81 days ago • 2753 comments

Another March 15 holiday in Hungary. It’s clear at this point that Orban can’t mobilize crowds like Magyar can. Meanwhile Orban’s rhetoric is becoming increasingly authoritarian, almost Stalinist.

submitted 81 days ago • 1 comment

Both Söder and Merz have said more than once that the new defense package sends a clear signal to Germany’s “friends and enemies.” This new German willingness to talk about the country’s “enemies” is striking.

submitted 82 days ago • 0 comments

American politics makes a lot more sense when you realize that the GOP is afraid of pissing off the GOP base, and the Dems are afraid of pissing off the GOP base, but neither party is afraid of pissing off the Dem base.

submitted 82 days ago • 1354 comments

Germany’ Linke party surged before national elections because their leader, Heidi Reichinnek, criticized CDU for submitting legislation also supported by AfD. Now Linke is challenging a bill, alongside AfD, at the constitutional court proposed by CDU & SPD. Go figure.

submitted 86 days ago • 0 comments

#Hungarian govt plans to amend constitution to allow the expulsion of dual nationals if they "endanger sovereignty, (...) or security." Fidesz's Kocsis says this targets NGOs, politicians and "self-proclaimed independent media" - a worrying attack on #pressfreedom

submitted 86 days ago • 0 comments

If we do have a recession, it will be a big beautiful recession! www.washingtonpost.com/politics/202...

submitted 87 days ago • 1 comment

I found this article quite informative. There will be significant nuclear expansion in Europe, but Europeans may be smart enough to do it in a way that doesn’t lead to uncontrolled proliferation. www.faz.net/aktuell/poli...

submitted 88 days ago • 0 comments

Stunning poll from Germany. 76% of total population support increasing military spending, including 50% of AfD voters. youtube.com/watch?v=UzM_...

submitted 89 days ago • 0 comments

Thinking of the many people who have lectured me over the years about the inherently democratic nature of the U.S. institutions and people. This "American exceptionalism" is implicit in so much of the debate about U.S. politics, including within academia, and is still taught uncritically today!

submitted 89 days ago • 16 comments

Russia rejects French Ukrainian cease fire proposal. Time for Trump to lean more heavily on Zelensky!

submitted 90 days ago • 0 comments

Trump responds to Zelensky’s cease fire proposal by cutting of US intelligence sharing, on grounds Zelensky isn’t serious about peace. How perplexing!

submitted 90 days ago • 0 comments

"Hungary has found a receptive partner in its efforts to investigate USAID: the American government.... [Peter] Marocco ordered the termination of all USAID contracts in Hungary... also requested data from the agency’s staff about U.S. programs in Hungary stretching back years."

submitted 91 days ago • 1 comment

French Senator Claude Malhuret: "Washington has become Nero’s court, with an incendiary emperor, submissive courtiers and a jester high on ketamine... We were at war with a dictator, we are now at war with a dictator backed by a traitor."

submitted 91 days ago • 1736 comments

I think the free world may have a new leader

submitted 91 days ago • 0 comments

What Germany is about to do with its budget, and exempting military spending from the balanced budget requirement, is astounding. Zeitenwende on steroids. I fear being optimistic, but it really looks like Europe is stepping up. Much more so than I would have imagined.

submitted 91 days ago • 0 comments

After talking about collective European security for years Macron has finally found the political moment for which he is uniquely suited. He’s going to make Europe an international political player

submitted 91 days ago • 0 comments

Absolutely nothing realist about appeasing aggression and cutting alliances.

submitted 91 days ago • 0 comments

Sohrab Ahmari and Matt Walsh being on here is a tacit admission that their side has ruined twitter. They can neither create anything nor even sustain it as usable once given control over it, because their cultural role is essentially parasitic.

submitted 91 days ago • 9 comments

Republicans have engaged in performative politics for so long that they stopped thinking in terms of outcomes & consequences. Now that their performative politics is having real consequences, they don’t know what to do with voters who are angry about those policy outcomes.

submitted 92 days ago • 0 comments

Republican congressman explaining how his leader’s 5 year and 10 plan requires sacrifices but will produce amazing results.

submitted 92 days ago • 0 comments