Baffled European

Category: Actual good news

  • Day of hope

    Today is the International Day Of Hope. There is too much bad news in the world. The 24/7 news cycle only helps to increase this impression. The idea of this day is to promote the simple idea that there is a way out of the problems we have.

    Nothing binding in this. Governments around the world are invited to promote peace, tolerance and respect at a national and international level. They should encourage forgiveness and compassion between individuals. All of this is voluntary and is not expected to cost any money. Sounds reasonable.

    In a sense, this is the perfect sort of thing for the United Nations. Countries are constantly at loggerheads with each other over direct specific contentions, or merely generalised differences of opinion over certain matters. Every so often, somebody – in this case, the UN Ambassador of Kiribati – comes up with an idea that is not controversial. Something that everybody can agree about, especially if they are not expected to actually do anything. Then they can all pat themselves on the back and feel they have actually done something to bring us all closer together. Just for a day.

    So it was that UN resolution A/79/L.54 was passed with a huge majority, 161 countries voting in favour.

    One single, solitary country decided to vote against a day of hope and all that it entails. I won’t name the country, to spare them any further embarrassment.

  • Changing of the guard

    Much excitement in New York, where Zohran Mamdani has won the Democrat mayoral nomination. The celebrations have been so great, it’s almost as if he had won the presidency.

    He isn’t eligible to run for the presidency, of course, having been born in Kampala, Uganda. Despite being a US citizen and a member the New York State Assembly, his birthplace presents a huge problem for maga.

    Stephen Miller is in no doubt about this being “the clearest warning yet of what happens to a society when it fails to control immigration.” It proves “how unchecked immigration fundamentally changes the NYC electorate.” Well, yes. It’s New York, a city that famously consists almost entirely of immigrants, and always has. That’s almost the point of the city.

    Laura Loomer reckons there should be a law to prevent him from holding office. She thinks he should be charged with terrorism. She’s not alone. Other racists in the “Republicans for National Renewal” are calling for him to be deported. They are fantasising about the president revoking Mamdani’s citizenship and remigrating him as soon as possible. For the good of New York.

    Why are they so worried about “replacement”? I suppose they look at the Native Americans and see what a disaster immigrants were back then. Although I doubt it: they hate Native Americans almost as much as they hate “immigrants”. Who is left not to hate? Nothing they say makes any sense.

  • Totally out of his depth

    $290million. That’s the money that Elon Musk paid for the election last year. He has spent more since. Was it worth it? Did he get value for money?

    He did get four months of power, which he used to destroy the machinery of government, while failing to find the waste and inefficiency he was supposed to be looking for. Then he was sacked.

    Following this, his many enemies put lurid stories of his ketamine addiction into the newspapers. Then a series of critical articles describing the death toll caused by all the cuts he made in government. And then yesterday a big argument with his former boss, each man taking to his own social media platform to insult and threaten the other for the entertainment of the whole world. Men can get so emotional sometimes.

    He is strikingly oblivious to what is going on and his part in it. The government grants that he depends on will disappear. Just like the grants he so gleefully cancelled for spurious “woke” reasons. Steve Bannon, causing trouble, has called for him to be deported. Funny. Musk however believes that law, due process and the constitution will save him and remove the president.

    All those bad things he did to other people: those things are going to happen to him soon. It’s a shame he rejects empathy, otherwise he might not have done them in the first place. Maybe he will learn – this lesson cost $290million.

  • Good riddance

    Hypercognic galactobrain Elon Musk is looking for a new challenge. It sounds like it is true this time as well. Rumour speaks of hot and steamy IVF sessions with Katie Miller, wife of unpleasant fascist Stephen Miller, which have led to the expulsion of both from the government. All he can do now is gather the photos of his children, steal some items of stationery from the office and hand over his work phone before being led from the building.

    DOGE has been a total failure and even the ideologues in the White House must see this. It is an article of faith among the extreme right that there are huge reservoirs of government waste that will release untold wealth to the country. DOGE proved that this is not the case, but caused such turmoil and destruction that will take years to undo.

    It’s not looking good for him elsewhere. Starship suffered another partial success on Tuesday. The third rocket in a row underwent a complete spontaneous unplanned disassembly event, in which the debris of the $3bn rocket ended up in the Indian Ocean.

    Tesla is not looking much better. A combination of an ageing product lineup, strong competition and an intense personal dislike of Musk has led to sales in Europe dropping by 50%. Robotaxis will not help. The hopeless Cybertruck is already one of the most conspicuous automotive failures of all time and there is no McNamara to pick up the pieces.

    Deport this African immigrant.

  • Make Canada Great Again

    Pierre Poilievre aligned himself with the new fascism of the USA. Despite many of his standpoints being relatively sane and normal for right-wing politics, he leaned enthusiastically into the culture wars and was viewed as a puppet of the president to the south. He even borrowed the slogan.

    In January, the Canadian Conservative party had a lead of 23% over the ruling Liberal party – a combination of them being in power for too long and a very unpopular Prime Minister. Poilievre was expected to capitalise on the coronation of his mentor in the USA and lead his party to government.

    The talk of the 51st state ended this. On the eve of the election, the dictator was making it sound so tempting, talking about the military power of the USA and how there would be zero tariffs. That being the military he is using to threaten the country, and the tariffs he raised himself. The usual insults and myopic greed, basically.

    It’s hard to get past this. Poilievre has lost not only the election, but his own seat in parliament as well. The Conservatives are already descending into civil war, with various lunatics insisting they weren’t insane enough. This party division shows they weren’t fit to rule.

    Congratulations to Mark Carney. A boring technocrat who has tapped into the real popular spirit of the Canadian electorate. It’s going to be a difficult job with the maniacs to the south, but hopefully he will pull through.