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Great things, comrades, and welcome back to the eastern border.

We live in a world where time has lost all meaning,

or perhaps it has simply accelerated

to the point where a single weekend in Eastern Europe, as Lennon would say it, contains

more history than an entire decade in a comfortable Western democracy.

We published our last episode on the evening of May 26, and yet the sheer volume of systemic

rat, weaponized absurdity and geopolitical madness that has piled up here, is enough

to make a sane man take a long walk into a Latelian swamp and never return. But we don't

do that here. Instead, we pour another cup of black coffee, some water, some beer too, and we look

the monsters straight into the eyes. And we dissect the clown show for exactly what it is. Let's

start close to home, because the smell of political decay doesn't stop at the Russian border fence. Here in Latvia, we're witnessing a spectacular theatrical revival that proves some politicians possess the shamelessness of a Soviet billboard. Anas Schleser, a man who just has cycled through more political identities than a spy in a bad Cold War novel, has decided to dust off his old playbook for the 2026 election cycle.

If you want to understand the vibe, imagine a Western political dinosaur.

Say a disgraced 1990s corporate lobbyist mixed with the sleesiest televangelist you can find,

and, you know, he decided to run the campaign based entirely on slogans he stole from a Russian market

analyst in 2009.

He sold their promising economic miracles while his loyal cadre of supporters

spend their days online making spectacular Olympic-level mental gymnastics

to excuse, you know, to excuse Russian military drone activities on European airspace.

...