Align research, innovation, and European competitiveness.
Put R&I at the center of Europe’s economic strategy, strengthen the “fifth freedom” (free movement of knowledge, research, innovation, education), and reinforce the Framework Programme to build a true Research & Innovation Union.

Boost Europe’s global competitiveness and resilience.
Mobilize major public and private RD&I investments to deliver excellent research, impactful innovation, industrial scale-ups, and long-term economic strength across all regions.

Increase European added value through a balanced RD&I portfolio.
Expand and better target funding across the full RD&I spectrum, raise the Framework Programme budget, fund all excellent proposals, and ensure Europe leads international scientific cooperation.

Stimulate breakthrough and disruptive innovation.
Create an agile experimental unit to pilot new tools (e.g., ARPA-type programmes, innovation prizes, AI-assisted evaluation) with faster time-to-funding.

Strengthen excellence, talent, and key RD&I institutions.
Reinforce ERC, EIC, and MSCA; attract and retain top talent; scale private investment; and expand support for disruptive firms and research.

Enhance industrial competitiveness and strategic technologies.
Establish a Technology & Competitiveness Council to monitor critical value chains, support cross-border industrial research, open up partnerships, and better align with EU industrial policies.

Address societal challenges more effectively.
Create a Societal Challenges Council to set priorities, engage civil society and philanthropy, and coordinate mission-related RD&I with broader policy and regulatory action.

Build an attractive, inclusive, and coherent RD&I ecosystem.
Invest in research infrastructures, strengthen university alliances, require ambitious national RD&I strategies, and help less successful Member States capitalize on excellence and EU funding tools.

Radically simplify and modernise the Framework Programme.
Remove redundant programmes, reduce administrative burdens, shorten time-to-grant, use less prenoscriptive calls, and adopt a more agile, risk-accepting funding approach.

Leverage demand-side tools to scale innovation.
Create a strong EU-level innovation procurement programme to accelerate industrial scale-up.

Use international cooperation strategically and selectively.
Recognize partners, competitors, and systemic rivals by RD&I domain; collaborate based on clear purposes; and use partnerships to gain knowledge, talent, and mutual benefits.

Adopt a pragmatic approach to dual-use technologies.
Distinguish “military RD&I” from civilian and dual-use research, and harness the innovation potential generated by increased security and defence spending.

Adnan al-Bursh, the head of orthopedic surgery at Shifa Hospital, was captured by Israeli forces in 2023 along with the rest of his medical team after Israeli troops stormed and ransacked Al-Awda Hospital. He was not simply killed in captivity, but because of it: After months of detention and solitary confinement, Israeli guards eventually dumped him, bleeding and naked from the waist down, in the yard of the prison where he was being held. He died soon afterwards. It’s likely that al-Bursh had been “raped to death,” as Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights suggested, but since Israel has refused to release his body, this remains unproven. (For years, since long before the Gaza genocide, it has been Israel’s standard practice to hold the bodies of Palestinians it has murdered—including those of children—as bargaining chips, all with the blessing of the high court. Hundreds of bodies remain in its freezers, invariably caked with dried blood and dirt from the streets where they fell.)

https://www.nplusonemag.com/online-only/online-only/after-the-genocide-the-genocide/

The study – Money, Media and Lords: How the ultra-rich are shaping Britain – argues that unelected power in Britain has risen sharply at the same time as an increasing amount of money is spent on political access and influence.

“These trends move in lockstep with wealth concentration at the top and are increasingly embedded within the country’s political and media systems,” said Sahni-Nicholas.

The report shows how the appointments system for the House of Lords, the scale of political donations and the concentration of media ownership each function as “conduits for unelected power”.

[...]

The Guardian’s own analysis has found that one in 10 peers were paid for political advice in the 2019 to 2024 parliament.

The trust’s report also shows how media ownership has become dramatically more concentrated, with the share controlled by the UK’s three biggest news conglomerates rising from 71% to about 90%.

The UK’s local newspapers are dominated by a handful of corporate chain publishers, with just two companies – Newsquest and National World – controlling 51% of the UK’s 882 local newspapers and online local news websites.


https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/nov/27/ultra-rich-unelected-power-reshaping-british-politics-equality-trust-report

On December 15, 2023, an Israeli sniper operating in the Shuja’iyya neighborhood of Gaza City opened fire on three shirtless, unarmed men in their twenties, one of whom was waving a white flag. Two were killed instantly; the third fled into a nearby building, where he called out for help in Hebrew. He was discovered there by another IDF patrol, which shot him dead. At the time, there was already ample evidence of major war crimes perpetrated by Israeli soldiers in the Gaza Strip — only two days earlier, for example, credible reports had emerged that the IDF had executed a group of Palestinian civilians sheltering on the grounds of a school near the Jabalia refugee camp. But the Shuja’iyya incident provoked special outrage, with small demonstrations in Israel. The victims, it turned out, were escaped Israeli hostages.

Though Israeli officials had announced in 2016 that the Hannibal Directive (named, it is reasonable to presume, for the Carthaginian general who died by suicide in the second century B.C.E.) would soon be phased out, it was deployed in at least three locations on October 7, per investigations by the United Nations and Haaretz. In one instance, the IDF killed an elderly hostage by firing into her captor’s vehicle from a helicopter. In another, an Israeli tank shelled a house in Kibbutz Be’eri, killing thirteen captives inside. On a November 2023 episode of Haaretz’s podcast, an IDF officer, Lieutenant Colonel Nof Erez, called the day’s maneuvers a “mass Hannibal.”

https://www.thedriftmag.com/the-masada-option/