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Doug Saunders @dougsaunders.bsky.social · 10h

It pleases me not at all to see this stuff on Oxford St. in SEPTEMBER

Doug Saunders @dougsaunders.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Wait, the guy who sang these lyrics is endorsing the flaky right-wing mayoral candidate? The guy who has been on the radio for decades singing “Philosophers and ploughmen, each must know his part”? Inconceivable!

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Doug Saunders @dougsaunders.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

This is like one of those German official corporate histories that leave a mysterious gap between the 1920s and ‘50s. The cars of 1958, 1965 or 1973 would spoil the notion of continuous dimensional expansion suggested by this image

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Doug Saunders @dougsaunders.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

This is an important point I recently took note of — public anti-immigration sentiment was way higher in the 1970s than now, but didn’t lead to extreme-right votes. “Anti-immigration” votes don’t arise from anti-immigration attitudes or from actual immigration

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Doug Saunders @dougsaunders.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Fancy restaurant in Brussels. Beautiful room, a little too chic, decent generic haute cuisine. And les toilettes? Oh. On second thought I think I’ll go back to the hotel. (And they’re unisex. Nothing wrong with that prima facie, but this doesn’t help. Yes they become a bit translucent. Still)

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Doug Saunders @dougsaunders.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Both major German weekly papers had basically the same story and imagery. The throwing-out of the centre and the search for the centre, as the Volkspartei get ditched for authoritarian left and right in former DDR and Berlin. I don’t think “centre” is the right framing for normal politics of L & R

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Doug Saunders @dougsaunders.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Absolutely terrific stuff at Berlin’s Neue Nationalgalerie. Including a small bit really original exhibition on Berlin between the wars, far beyond usual Otto Dix etc. This little piece by Jeanne Mammen from 1931 is titled “Transvestite Bar.” Berlin had 170 specifically queer bars then.

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Doug Saunders @dougsaunders.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

With the exception of Russia, the post-authoritarian transition countries that had “shock” transitions to market economies fared better in the long run in economic and humanitarian terms than those that didn’t. Good thread on this puzzle

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Doug Saunders @dougsaunders.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Terrific reporting and data journalism

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Doug Saunders @dougsaunders.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

At Rosenthaler Kebab in Berlin. No it does not get better

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Doug Saunders @dougsaunders.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Bless. Camden Town will chew those fascists up and spit them out so we’ll be left with sandwich boards floating in the canal alongside all the ditched e-scooters

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Doug Saunders @dougsaunders.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Strongly redolent of Michael Gove doing the Wham Rap

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András Tóth-Czifra @minczifra.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Kynev is one of the foremost experts on regional politics in Russia and has been publishing analysis from inside the country for the past years. Solidarity

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Niao Collective @niaocollective.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Context. In the following April after this, Ah To, the cartoonist who drew this and one of the most prominent protest artists during the revolution - would reveal he had gone into self exile

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Doug Saunders @dougsaunders.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

The “how could you have a Canadian Mujahedeen when your country has gun control” question is easily answered by examining the sorts of Canadians who wish to personally possess handguns and assault rifles, and understanding which side they’d likely be on

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Doug Saunders @dougsaunders.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Xi Jinping’s international politics are driven by domestic insecurities and a fragile hold on popular legitimacy to an equal and sometimes even greater extent than any U.S. leader’s, @ethanlou.bsky.social writes in this wide analysis www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/arti...

theglobeandmail.com

Opinion: China’s scared, too: Behind every power, domestic insecurity lurks

Chinese President Xi Jinping is expected to visit Washington on Thursday, marking an era of global ascendancy for Beijing

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Doug Saunders @dougsaunders.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Oh ha ha ha ha. Hah. Hahahahahaha. Whew ha ha ha ha ha. Ha. Sigh.

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Chris Begley @chris-begley.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Aide: So Senator, we have a war with Iran, trade war with Canada, rampant inflation, and diesel rationing. What should we address? Senator Tuberville: Pilots wearing bear costumes!

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Doug Saunders @dougsaunders.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

This is the greatest thing that has ever happened in the United States Congress

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Doug Saunders @dougsaunders.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Ok, “Don’t draw an X” is a wildly new voter instruction that overturns what we’ve spent a century telling people to do. I hope this is just one place in the 519 or millions of people are going to be voting wrong

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Doug Saunders @dougsaunders.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

I guess he wants to call it superintelligence because there’s no risk of anyone having already applied that name to anyone or anything in his vicinity

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Doug Saunders @dougsaunders.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

How is Embedded Evaluation in AI different from the practices of having police investigate their own misconduct allegations or having the military oversee itself? We've seen how well those things work. The case for mandated independent civilian oversight seems even stronger in AI.

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Doug Saunders @dougsaunders.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Unambiguously, under any definition

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Doug Saunders @dougsaunders.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Well, he's completely right about the second half

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Doug Saunders @dougsaunders.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Trump respects and admires left-wing dictators more than he does right-wing autocrats or any form of democratic leader, part MCCLXII. Cf. North Korea, China, Venezuela, and of course the "highly respected" Belarus

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Doug Saunders @dougsaunders.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Constantly amusing that the [unionized] staff of the NYT puzzle section have decided that one of the only “non-“ prefixes allowable as a single word rather than a hyphenate is “nonunion”

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Michèle Champagne @michelechampagne.com · 21/09/2026

What @dougsaunders.bsky.social argues is that Leyen's and Carney’s relationship declaration was the big thing. It wasn’t only a set of speeches; It was “the political action" that resulted from cooperation—on CETA, post-NATO defence, etc—with the ambition to bundle more in.

podcasts.apple.com

A reality check on Canada’s future with the EU

Podcast Episode · The Decibel · September 21 · 22m

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Doug Saunders @dougsaunders.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

A lot of us, including me, spent last week analyzing what output was likely to be produced from the von der Leyen and Carney speeches, what “associate member” could mean. As I explain here, it’s now apparent the speeches WERE the output. And they worked www.theglobeandmail.com/podcasts/the...

theglobeandmail.com

A reality check on Canada’s future with the EU

Canada already has agreements for trade and security with the European Union. What more could they get as an ‘associate member’?

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Austin Kocher, PhD @austinkocher.com · 21/09/2026

"No child should need a habeas petition in order to get out of government custody." @acaciajustice.org Jill Williams and Becky Wolozin explain why kids are being held longer than ever and what attorneys are doing about it. austinkocher.substack.com/p/no-child-s...

austinkocher.substack.com

"No child should need a habeas petition in order to get out of government custody."

Jill Williams from the Acacia Center for Justice and Becky Wolozin from the National Center for Youth Law explain why kids are being held longer than ever and what attorneys are doing about it.

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Doug Saunders @dougsaunders.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

No, my only-slightly-older-than-me boomer friends, that YouTube interview with Neil Young discussing the Five Greatest Songs of All Time that you keep sending me is NOT an actual thing that happened. Is there anything in Neil Young‘s work or character to suggest he’s a Top Five Songs sort of guy?

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Doug Saunders @dougsaunders.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

Assange was never a leaker or whistleblower. He was a middleman who intercepted and brokered other people’s leaks, delaying them and horse-trading them for his organization’s profit and, in the case of damaging Russian leaks, preventing their publication. And colluding to bring monsters to power

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Doug Saunders @dougsaunders.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

“Sharks with lasers” is basically now US doctrine. And on the *municipal* level

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Doug Saunders @dougsaunders.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Breaking: The United States has reached a security agreement with Denmark over Greenland that consists of exactly what the situation has been for the last eight decades and not a thing more

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Doug Saunders @dougsaunders.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

I’m pretty sure their fate is some parts floating and other parts sinking right to the bottom

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Doug Saunders @dougsaunders.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Max is right. The Washington Post editorial board don’t know what they’re talking about

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Doug Saunders @dougsaunders.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

New cat just dropped. Young Montagu is ready for it

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Doug Saunders @dougsaunders.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

To those who say it’s not worth building ties with Europe because it’s “on the decline”

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Doug Saunders @dougsaunders.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

To those who say it’s not worth building ties with Europe because it’s “on the decline”

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Doug Saunders @dougsaunders.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

“If only there were an adverb to describe how one dispenses cappuccino onto a cup” - someone at NYT

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Doug Saunders @dougsaunders.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

*shrugs* *gesticulates contemptuously* *drapes sweater around neck*

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Phil @philmarfisi.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Superb work from @dougsaunders.bsky.social on deconstructing what an "associate membership" will (and won't) look like. TL;DR: we will not get the type of integration that some are hoping (or fearing!) for, but there are some perks - like Aussie style 4 year work permits - that'd be worth pursuing.

theglobeandmail.com

If Canada joins the European Union show, it will only be from the upper balcony

It might be disappointing to some Canadians – or maybe a relief – but ‘associate membership’ to the EU doesn’t look like it would change much of anything

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Doug Saunders @dougsaunders.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

This is the ENTIRE refugee/boat people problem in the UK.

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Doug Saunders @dougsaunders.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Canadians, filling out that survey

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Doug Saunders @dougsaunders.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

*shrugs* *gesticulates contemptuously* *drapes sweater around neck*

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Joshua Kirshner @joshkirshner.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

informative piece on the collapse of the Saudi vision (Vision 2030)

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Doug Saunders @dougsaunders.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Canadian airports aren’t public utilities, and haven’t been since the 1990s. They’re operated by regional quangoes that are effectively private profit-seeing corporations without the ability to be regulated for public benefit, federally or municipally, as actual private owners might be

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Doug Saunders @dougsaunders.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

I wrote from Riyadh about the total collapse of the Saudi vision — an already-failed pivot away from resources has been bombed out of the realm of future possibility, and now even the resources are bereft of a sure future under dual Trump and Houthi assault www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/arti...

theglobeandmail.com

Opinion: The end of the Saudi mirage

Vision 2030 was meant to transform Saudi Arabia. But the war in Iran, and a constellation of other question marks, has forced the kingdom to dramatically rethink its future

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Rosella Melanson @rosellam.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

«It was important for fed govt to reassure they're able to control/restrict immigration wn necessary That restraint is putting a brake on Cda’s macroeconomic growth, housing-supply &nation-building. Our low pop. density &market size stand in way of the independent industries &institutions we want

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Paris Marx @parismarx.com · 15/09/2026

hard not to feel mark carney’s restrictions on immigration will hinder his agenda to deliver this big boost to canada’s economy with a wave of new investment

theglobeandmail.com

Opinion: Canada wants to be ambitious. That means getting immigration going again

Ottawa’s lowered immigration targets served a purpose, but now they’re an obstacle to economic growth and nation-building

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Doug Saunders @dougsaunders.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

I suspect that major airports are somewhat like electrical utilities, in that they're easier for governments to regulate when they're privately owned than when they're quasi-autonomous branches of the public sector that tend to be regulation-proof competing kingdoms

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