iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Doug Saunders @dougsaunders.bsky.social · 45m

Flowers on the glass roof of the empty-shelved library in Babelplatz commemorating the 1931 Nazi book burning. Fresh for today.

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Doug Saunders @dougsaunders.bsky.social · 5h

Hungarians managed to bring down Orban after 16 years by showing that he had been actively enabling and pardoning real acts of sexual abuse of children after spreading hysteria about imaginary harm to children from “gender.” Surely the Americans could learn from this

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Doug Saunders @dougsaunders.bsky.social · 7h

I lived in England in some of those years and you did see a much wider appreciation among formerly intolerant guys that a lot of their fellow English are black, they’re winning for England and they’re my mates, coworkers etc. But also the banana peels and plenty of overt racism. Both existed at once

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Doug Saunders @dougsaunders.bsky.social · 8h

It’s very welcome to see a prominent British Tory defending what has for decades been the consensus view of English identity, viz that it’s not your colour or background but your participation. It’s important for the democratic right to be defending this view against attacks from the crazies

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Doug Saunders @dougsaunders.bsky.social · 8h

That has been reported. He had a guy inside who basically gave him documents for 16 years, assuming it was benign. So real failure of current intel leaders as well — you don’t let that happen

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Doug Saunders @dougsaunders.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

No, but I don’t think there’d be much business from Washington for an ex-intel entrepreneur offering up crown-jewel docs for sale. Not from Germany. Unless I’m missing something.

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Doug Saunders @dougsaunders.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

This isn’t about infiltration. And given existing intel treaties, it wouldn’t be illegal or necessary

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Doug Saunders @dougsaunders.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Interesting case. He has been expressing far-right sentiments for years — not uncommon in German intel — but they’re reporting it’s not Russia. But it involves transfer of a LOT of classified docs to whoever. giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/... Former German spy chief arrested for treason

giftarticle.ft.com

Former German spy chief arrested for treason

Former intelligence head August Hanning suspected of selling state secrets to a foreign power

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Doug Saunders @dougsaunders.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Thanks, this interests me a lot

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Doug Saunders @dougsaunders.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Canada manages its arctic as a remote colony, like France vis a vis New Caledonia. (These soldiers aren’t even in the arctic, or in Canada; the Canadian arctic is utterly alien to them) Denmark’s managed as a near colony. Finland’s as domestic territory. www.cbc.ca/news/politic...

cbc.ca

Cold reality: Canadian troops struggle in Alaska as military relearns Arctic warfare | CBC News

Canadian troops battled frostbite, failing batteries, communications problems and gaps in basic winter skills during a major Alaska exercise, according to an internal evaluation. Despite achieving the...

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Doug Saunders @dougsaunders.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Not that would be showing on TV! Artistic works get a legal pass

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Doug Saunders @dougsaunders.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Not to my knowledge. Paris is a surprising but well-organized student protest; Madrid is an unsurprising but also well-organized protest against another housing crisis

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Doug Saunders @dougsaunders.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Watching Inglourious Basterds on German TV, one of the few occasions you’ll legally see a swastika in this country (even museum displays about the period show red flags with no symbol). Christoph Waltz’s voice dubbed into German is bizarre — apparently done by Waltz himself

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Doug Saunders @dougsaunders.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Similar in several ways! Among them those “separatists” being an almost-nonexistent fringe

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Doug Saunders @dougsaunders.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

A spectacular piece of deep investigative work by @carrietait.bsky.social Grant Robertson and Nathan Vanderklippe. Although “Alberta separatists” aren’t and never will be a danger, this shows just how serious about conquering former allies the Trump admin is, and how these fifth columnists work

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Doug Saunders @dougsaunders.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

In fact, the legendary English summer basically begins in September and peaks in early October

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Doug Saunders @dougsaunders.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

One of those works that you can keep learning about and there’s still more

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Doug Saunders @dougsaunders.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

We also had a nice lunch and dinner, but seriously I love when friends who have some fascinating expertise recognize that we mainly want to find excuses for them to share it

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Doug Saunders @dougsaunders.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

In the years since I last visited my friend James Payne, he became justifiably famous for his Great Art Explained channels and for his hugely successful book. So we assumed he’d want an escape from all that. But no, he passionately wanted to Explain some Great Art. And it was the greatest afternoon!

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Doug Saunders @dougsaunders.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

It’s partly because everyone from Asia and the gulf does shopping trips to Oxford St in September and, though generally not Christian, are obsessed with Xmas decorations

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Doug Saunders @dougsaunders.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

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

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Doug Saunders @dougsaunders.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

If I dropped music by people with bad political views or abhorrent personal lives, I’d be left with silence or awful platitudinous dreck. Love the art, loathe the artist. (And I don’t think they’re like that, though I haven’t listened much since I was 15)

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

Fun music but a good illustration of how there was nothing progressive in prog rock

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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

A Toyota Corolla, an appropriate current comparison to a Fairlane, is 70.1 inches. A Tesla model Y is 75 inches.

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

A Toyota Corolla, an appropriate current comparison to a Fairlane, is 70.1 inches. A Tesla model Y is 75 inches.

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

The Range Rover is the most popular car in 2022? In what country exactly?

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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

Yes, I should have been clearer — the Tories were very much anti-immigration and even nativist, even excluding Powell. But what is today called “anti-immigration,” really white supremacist remigration stuff, was relegated to a Powellite + BNP rump and was widely socially unacceptable

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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

As I noted, they do not. They become translucent

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

Theoretically, somewhat. Not opaque

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

Just for a day and a night alas, between Berlin and London

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

I should have known you’d know this place!

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

In theory, the glass becomes less transparent when the door is firmly shut. You have to trust this technology, as do all the other people in the room

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

It’s a bit of a clenching experience, when you need that least

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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 · 28/09/2026

I think it goes with this one (which I suspect needed special dispensation to be legally shown)

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

And this timely but rather on-the-nose sculpture by Maurizio Cattelan in his huge and unsettling exhibition

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

It would! TBH we eloped in Nova Scotia (in 1998) because we found the Toronto courtrooms too bureaucratic… but nothing like that! We had the Annapolis registrar do our marriage certificate on her kitchen table. She changed something with tippex which a lawyer later said might not make us legally wed

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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

I am divided between saying what racist bullshit along with you and raising a toast of congratulations to you

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

Poland and Ukraine both had nationalist sensibilities and maintained diaspora ties to the West that cushioned things, though more visible in formation of post-transition politics than economies

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

Yes very different in the political sphere, and it's interesting to hear how far back the antecedents went in Ukraine. However, the economic transition wasn't dissimilar-- privatization of state enterprises was a similar ill-monitored voucher-based process allowing oligarch capture, albeit slower

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

Yes, EU accession changed this dynamic and reversed the urban-to-rural shift. I looked at books of some peasant farms and found that EU + Polish market income were typically a fraction the size of largest income source which was daughter sending cash home from Dublin or Paris

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

If my memory serves me right, no more than 9% of Polish peasant farms were ever collectivized. I certainly visited a lot that were quickly repopulated by their owners who fled the cities to feed themselves off their land after ‘89. Not easily done in Russia or Bulgaria

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

Well, they weren’t very successfully resisted in Ukraine in the 1990s. But I’m just speaking of economic transition and development here, not political structures

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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

From my observations in central + E. Europe during the transition period, I would say that “shock” approaches produced more effective and less inhumane results in countries that hadn’t collectivized agriculture — Poland being a prime example. Private land holdings served as a social security buffer

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