Baffled European

Author: baffledkim

  • Freedom of speech

    One of those minor calamities today, in which most of a pizza topping, but none of the base, landed on a hot pizza stone. I will have to scrape that thoroughly to atone.

    Meanwhile in the USA it’s great to have protests against the disaster that is befalling the country, but authoritarians don’t like protests. As a result they are paying particular attention to silencing their critics.

    The easy stuff is things like the climate institutes. Maga doesn’t want to hear about subjects like this, why should we pay for it then, so just shut them all down and the problem goes away, simple.

    Other institutions like universities rely on government money but can’t be got rid of so easily. They are therefore being extorted to either ban student protest or become more racist. They will make a bold stand this time, but they will be worn down over time. That’ll sort itself.

    What do you do with the rest of the population?

    There have been a series of blatant violations of the First Amendment, arresting people merely for expressing an opinion. I presume the courts will sort these cases out fairly. As they will to the others that the government arrests in order to harass, threaten and quieten. The point is the arrests.

    The present government will continue to terrorise its opponents until people stop criticising them, or until somebody powerful enough tells them to stop it. Which is going to happen first?

  • Induced fury

    Elon Musk has made himself rather unpopular recently. When he’s not giving nazi salutes to huge crowds, he likes to spend his time randomly sacking thousands of people for no good reason. This has caused widespread chaos across the country and led to a lot of resentful former employees, as well as their family and friends.

    European and US citizens have meanwhile marched out with pitchforks and are burning down the Tesla brand. They seem to be doing quite a thorough job of it.

    At any rate the share price is falling and Tesla’s co-founder seems to be getting rattled. Didn’t he think there would be a reaction to what he is doing? One that would actually affect him personally?

    Is it literally only the share price that has got his attention? Then again, it’s been unrealistically high since forever. Why should he think reality would ever intrude on the price? Don’t think another RoboTaxi announcement will do the trick this time though.

    In the USA they all have guns so of course a couple of shots have been fired at Tesla dealerships. So far only at night when nobody was around.

    Do they think it’s a good idea to annoy a heavily armed citizenship? One that is programmed to go for arms against the government?

    I keep asking, do they think… I don’t think they do. Or if they do, they don’t care.

  • You say you got a constitution

    Lots and none at all it is with the news. So much going on and no way to make any sense out of it. So I decide to spend my Sunday listening to the cricket and baking some bread.

    In the lunch break I switch on the telly to see if ZDF can enlighten me. It seems they don’t know what’s going on either, but they did have a montage of the chaos.

    I have to feel sorry for a lot of the USAians in the report. The gangster has tipped their lives upside down for no good reason and they don’t know what has hit them.

    All of them, every last one, appeals to the constitution. It’s a holy document to them. The last guarantee of their rights.

    It’s been clear for a long time that it doesn’t work properly and that some major changes are needed to update it from the pre-industrial world it was written in. Stuff that should be in there is grafted on as law and it ends up as an endless mass of litigation.

    But it worked, sort of, until now, because the constitution has installed a convicted fraudster as president. Fortunately it covers itself by insisting the president must swear an oath – on his honour, mind – to uphold the constitution.

    I think the USAians should address these issues.

    More immediately though, congratulations to India on winning the Champions Trophy!

  • Not a treaty organisation

    International women’s day today, great, I did the washing. Nice and sunny, gets it dried lovely.

    I find myself thinking what a good thing it is that I don’t have to rely on the USA for sunlight and fresh air. It’s a different matter with defence.

    The Leader of the Free World announced that he will not defend his allies if they are attacked by an enemy.

    To me, this rather goes against the spirit of an alliance. More to the point, it goes directly against what is written in the treaty, but then when did a fraudster ever respect a contract?

    Not that any of this comes as a shock anymore. What is their strategy? Why are they deliberately driving us away?

    In the next few years we will be saying, yankees go home, and that’s assuming they don’t slink away in shame by themselves first. With that the USA loses the ability to threaten Eastern Europe, the Middle East and North Africa. Either they know this and don’t care, or they don’t know.

    At the same time they have prodded the EU into massive rearmament. At the end of this the EU, as an independent actor, will do as it pleases in the world and will never ask USAian permission first. This will happen. Do they realise?

    They are throwing away their power and I don’t understand why.

  • Modern trade negotiations

    I’m going to burn down the supermarket. I’ve had enough.

    Basically, I’ve realised that although I buy a load of stuff from them, they don’t buy any goods or services from me.

    I go into the supermarket you see and they are nice people there. Fine people. Good people. I’ll tell you, it’s a great place there. And they do a great job. But people come up to me and they say to me Kim they say, that supermarket is doing better than you. Look at teh freezers they got. And I tell you they got freezers, But I got freezers two and you want to look at the differences between their freezers and the freezers i got its you know right now we got 2025 but its not just freezers its major logistical operations ! they got thse major logistical operations you seee andd they wont let me in to theyr operations i can do major llogistcal opreations as well i did them bakc in 2016 and everybody told me they said he cant do that but you konw here we are and we protectionism like you never seen not freezers though i got billion freezers great dont enforce Lidl subsidise god bless mrakets einkauf bigly hilary got i anis thor qpyc covfefe mulzvmmnas .öjsgvqs oatgniu ga g z j! @#~ how could anybody ever possibly vote for this rubbish its a disgrace

  • Nothing to see, move along

    With all the enthusiasm that is to be expected with a new blog, I set about this morning, all bright eyed and bushy tailed, and read the news.

    Five minutes later, after picking through the wreckage that those lunatics have left in the last 24 hours alone, I became tremendously cross. At this point, the only thing that could help was to make a nice cup of tea and rethink my life entirely.

    What puzzles me is the “business as usual” approach to reporting this putsch by the USAian press. I have only read the US press occasionally in the past, but it all seems so normal. The WSJ is even looking forward to “a thrill a minute”.

    Yeah, yeah. Thrills, yeah. Hmm. Me too. Can’t wait.

    Can’t they see what’s happening? The regime is purging the government and military, installing a bunch of criminals and drug addicts who happen to be loyal to The Godfather. They own the Supreme Court. They’ve got Congress stuffed with yesbeings.

    They’ve got everything in the bag and they’ve only just started.

    Couldn’t happen in the USA. Land of the free.

    ____

    A piece of graffiti from the 51st state: the stars & stripes in a crossed circle with the slogan “There is no enemy like a friend betrayed”. I guess I’m not the only one who feels this way about USAian treachery.

    I’ve just realised my operating system is from Canada! Isn’t that great?

  • Why so baffled?

    Yesterday at 14:20 CET, a military jet flew over my house in north-eastern Germany. It was heading East. There’s a whole load of trouble over there, and I presume this jet had something to do with it in some way.

    It’s all very concerning and I worry how this is going to turn out. I have read my history and remember the stories of “July 1914” and “August 1939”. Everybody in the whole damned world knew there was going to be a war and, one month later, there was a war.

    I know that feeling. Now.

    I hope it never happens. There are indeed many good reasons for hope, including plain incompetence. But I’m getting ahead of myself here.

    All this is bad enough. Worse still is the reason for the currently critical situation:

    The USA1 betrayed us.

    It’s hard to describe my reaction to this. Upset. Shocked. Baffled. I never wondered how I would react to such a betrayal, as it was simply inconceivable. The USAians were always there for us; we were always there for them. No longer. We can’t trust them again either.

    Why did they do this?

    I’ve got a few ideas, as well as a list of villains to blame. My aim with this blog is to look at this mess and try to understand what’s going on and why it happened.

    At the moment, I just don’t get it.

    1. until it becomes “X, the country formerly known as USA” ↩︎