(1415) Afternoon all.
15. What does she know which Donald doesn’t?
14. On his way to hell
13. ICE baby
12. IYE and Sir Bani Yas
It’s over at 1331:
“The round table is one of the oldest techniques for manufacturing consensus among people who would otherwise have no reason to agree with one another. Cecil Rhodes formalised it. The Royal Institute of International Affairs and the Council on Foreign Relations institutionalised it. The Bilderberg Conference perfected it.
The underlying method is older than any of these, and the pattern — once recognised — is visible in nearly every major policy shift of the past century.
No single group of participants ever sees the whole. Each group endorses one piece, genuinely and in good faith, understanding only the piece in front of them. The pieces integrate — across convenings, across decades, across continents — into a unified architecture that none of the individual participants designed, intended, or understood. The compartmentalisation is what makes the system invisible.
The moral cause at each stage is what makes it politically untouchable. And the Chatham House Rule, present in every instance, ensures that the public can never trace the institutional outcome back to the private convening that produced it.”
11. DAD’s analysis of France’s municipal elections
Now that the dust has settled, the Municipal Elections show France is stuck in same old patterns. Limited success for the Right; disaster for the Centre; tears for the Left.
The second round of France’s municipal elections on March 22 confirmed a familiar pattern: Low turnout, fragmented politics and little real change in major cities.
Voter participation reached 57.8 per cent, down four points compared to 2014. Far from being a surge of protest, the fall may reflect a growing sense of distance from local politics.
https://brusselssignal.eu/2026/03/municipal-elections-show-france-stuck-in-same-old-patterns
No 11.
One aspect that I have not heard mentioned is the new voting requirements for small communes (under 1000 inhabitants).
For instance, in my commune a list had to be presented to cover all 13 council seats available. Previously we could put a line through any name that we did not want to support – but this was banned. Accept the whole list, or reject it. In our previous election there were two lists and two independent candidates. The result was that the two independents were elected and, eventually, they become the Maire and the Deputy Maire.
This could not happen this year; individuals were banned from standing, so we had just one list of, effectively, the outgoing council with nothing that we could do to stop it. This is a retrograde step and, I hope, will be rescinded for the next municipal elections.