Baffled European

Tag: ICE thugs

  • Bolt the door

    Bismarck created the German state in the late 19th century. His Realpolitik, his ability to accrue power by playing various actors off against each other, this won him a lot of admirers – even among his enemies. It was all about 19th century great power games. Unfortunately, the system he built was unstable, ephemeral and inefficient, leading to its total collapse in November 1918.

    That should have been the end of it. Instead Kissinger resurrected Realpolitik in the 1970s. He got a lot of admirers, this being the cold war. For some reason, none of Kissinger’s advocates thought to question the ultimate disaster of Bismarck’s system, thereby ushering in fifty years of solid failure in US foreign policy.

    Even after Kissinger (sort of) retired, he had disciples to continue his good work, such as John Bolton.

    Bolton is currently experiencing the displeasure of a dictator. They kicked his door in last week and ransacked his house. Whether this is due to his criticisms of the current madness, or part of the ongoing purge of the State Department and intelligence service is not clear. It hardly matters.

    Sure, I think of the Niemöller poem when I see the machine chewing up the next target on its list. On the other hand, Bolton has dedicated his entire career to sitting behind a desk, blithely ruining people’s lives. It’s really hard to watch what is happening to this thoroughly horrible man and not think he deserves everything he’s getting.

  • Beyond Dunning-Kruger

    “Britain has had enough of experts,” said Michael Gove in 2016. As a Brexiter, he was aware that his team were getting trounced on both generalities and details when it came to the EU. None of them knew what they were talking about and this was a way to neutralise knowledge and competence in the campaign.

    Unfortunately for everybody, Brexit won and this clutch of self-proclaimed anti-experts set about implementing a prize they never expected to win. “Britain has had enough of exports” became reality as UK trade suddenly permanently dropped as a result of these useless fools.

    This brings me on to RFK, oh good. “Trusting the experts is not a feature of either science or democracy,” was the outpouring from what is left of his brain. It echoes Gove’s comment, but takes the ignorance and stupidity to new levels. I guess everything is bigger in the land of opportunity.

    It strikes me that this goes beyond the Dunning-Kruger effect, the well-known result describing the fact that incompetent people tend to overestimate their own competence at a given task. It’s not merely that RFK overestimates his own competence, he also underestimates the competence of everybody else.

    I don’t know if this is a real effect or something that can be tested. However, in the interests of science, democracy as well, I think he should urgently undergo some psychological evaluation. Preferably in a padded cell with a big lock on the door.

  • Vibe war

    Is there any point in having a cabinet government in the USA at the moment? That everything is done at the whim of an insane president is obvious, but literally everybody else is kept out of the loop.

    It’s not just Gabbard, but Hegseth, Rubio and Vance apparently also advised against starting a war with Iran. Didn’t help. The latter three went on the interview circuit, assuring people that the aim is not regime change. They should check these things first: a correction on Truth Social insisted that the whole point of the action is regime change. They were at least present at an official announcement to hear the president struggling to read an autocue and unable to pronounce words.

    Nevertheless, Vance has been doing his best trying to sell the operation. The problem in the past, he explained, is that the USA had really dumb presidents. Thank goodness that is no longer the case. When asked what Iran should do – what with the USA breaking its existing agreement and then launching an unprovoked attack – Vance was quite clear that you can’t trust Iran.

    Public opinion is strongly against the attacks, although this will change. Maga has already learned the message from the party that 2 + 2 = 5 and they are faithfully repeating their new knowledge.

    Iran has announced it will close the Strait of Hormuz. Whether they do remains to be seen, but it would cause chaos everywhere. This likely counts as a win for maga.

  • A white house in a red square

    This might be counted as good news, but for the fact that it is simply undoing an obvious wrong by the government. There was in edict that trans people must have their birth name and gender on their passports. This has been overturned. It is now once again possible for trans people to get a passport with their legal, chosen name, rather than a government mandated name.

    All this name stuff highlights a few inconsistencies. The birth name of the Vice President is “James Donald Bowman”, but he changed this to “James David Vance”. Should he be forced to readopt his birth name? I guess not.

    More concerning is the case of Sergio Gor, the man in charge of appointing and vetting all White House personnel. His birth name is Sergio Gorokhovsky. He claims to be from Malta, but was definitely not born there. His keeps his actual birthplace a secret, but he does confirm it is not Russia. OK. However, being born in 1986, the big happy family that was the USSR still existed. Could that be the “not Russia” that he is talking about?

    At any rate, he has not been vetted for his position and refuses to cooperate with security checks. An imposition, considering all the money he paid over the years to get the job. At the same time, thousands of trans soldiers are being discharged with a black mark on their record, implying they are a security risk.

    There is something very wrong here.

  • A touch of the vapours

    Miasma theory. I’ve got to hand it to RFK, he is creative. With hindsight, we were warned. A few weeks ago, he was advocating raw milk in a tasting session. There are cranks and quacks who reject Pasteur’s germ theory, I know that, but I never dreamed that this would ever form the basis of US healthcare. And yet here we are.

    The idea is that rotting organic matter produces bad smells and vapours which are the cause of disease. This is wrong, but it does have some utility – they are coincidentally the source of germs, so getting rid of the vapours will also get rid of the germs. It doesn’t go any further than that, but it is a good start.

    Typically, RFK doesn’t even seem to understand that part of it. His focus is on nutrition and the idea that illnesses are caused by a poor diet and food additives. Measles can be cured with vitamin A. Medicine is all a con pushed by Big Pharma. He thinks sugar is a poison, but isn’t going to do anything about it. HIV does not cause AIDS. Cancer is caused by 5G masts. I thought they caused covid, but what do I know? He’s not doing anything at any rate.

    It’s all so bizarre. He rejects all the stuff that works. He replaces them with discredited nonsense, but then does nothing. What is going on?

  • Too good to be true

    It was only a month ago that a group of Afrikaner refugees fled the white genocide in South Africa for the safety of the USA. Maybe it’s a little too soon to find out how they are getting on, but the early signs are that some of them might be feeling regret at their choice.

    The far right never tire of telling us about the red carpet treatment rolled out to asylum seekers. Four-star hotels, houses, cars, phones – these people are showered with generous gifts and all at tax-payers’ expense, while ordinary hard-working folk etc etc etc. It turns out those stories aren’t true.

    They’ll probably sort themselves out in the fullness of time, but with no job, no transportation or communication, poor accommodation, it’s not the best start. No health insurance either. At least they had that while they were being oppressed back home.

    They can’t just go back home either. Not that simple now they’ve applied for asylum elsewhere. In any case, most people in South Africa are unimpressed by their actions. Even the Afrikaner groups reject the “white genocide” claims.

    This was all a stunt by the racists in the White House. Something they could use to attack the South African government. Well they’ve done that, and they’ve done their trademark press conference ambush on Ramaphosa. These Afrikaners have found out that they are expendable and that they shouldn’t trust a conman.

  • All quiet on the western seaboard

    I doubt this was the plan, but it’s working. They sent a bunch of armed thugs out onto the streets of LA to bully and harass the population, provoking a riot (or something similar). In addition to the excitement of riot police, this gives them the pretext to activate the army, however illegal this might be.

    They are planning similar ICE operations in several other cities, all of them coincidentally controlled by the Democrats. This should cause mass civil unrest all over the place, all under the pretext of enforcing law and order. At the very least, it will feed the lust for violence that the far right crave. Best case would be some sort of martial law, where they can gain complete control over “enemy” areas. Helpful for the elections next year.

    There’s not much going on. The mayor of LA has ordered a partial curfew, which is being observed. So much for lawless chaos and disorder. The National Guard are out in force, surrounding federal buildings to protect them from… nobody.

    All those soldiers are there voluntarily. Commanding officers allow individuals to opt out of such duties. This is good. On the other hand, it means the army now has lists of soldiers who have no problems in going out and performing “police actions” among the general population. This could come in handy in the future.

    Meanwhile, the Commander-in-Chief is touring military bases, doing his campaign speeches, the usual. It’s going well.

  • Angling for civil war

    Friday’s protests were peaceful, according to the LAPD. For the most part, they were. The LAPD recognise a punch-up when they see one and they are not afraid to run away. On the other hand, it’s their city and they don’t want it to turn into a war zone. They are keen to deescalate. The crowds have gone. All that remains are clouds of tear gas released by panicking ICE agents.

    Thousands of miles away in DC, a collection of alpha machos are outbidding each other for the most manly response. The president has ordered thousands of National Guard to California to do something about the currently peaceful situation. Hegseth has put the marines on high alert, ready to respond. It’s illegal for the US army to operate on US soil, so what, who cares. Miller is raving about invaders.

    What happens the next time? Will the army be sent in? Will they refuse to obey orders? Will they actually shoot at civilians? It’s only the start of June, there are three months of hot summer coming. We will doubtless get the answers to these questions.

    Disturbances in New York as well. Similar story, but smaller scale. ICE agents are armed yobbos wandering the streets, hassling people at random and everybody hates them. It’s not random though is it really? It’s racism again.

    This deportation policy – let alone the implementation – cannot possibly do any good. Yet they are obsessed with it.

  • More trade wars

    Last week, the Court of International Trade in the USA ruled that the Liberty Day tariffs were illegal. The government immediately announced it would appeal to the Supreme Court, and is keeping the tariffs in place until the case is heard.

    Not just keeping them in place, but expanding them. Steel and aluminium is not included in the ruling. As such, the president impulsively decided to raise tariffs to 50%. Just like that.

    There was a big splash last month, as the USA announced a trade deal with the UK. Whether this is still valid, or whether the USA is already reneging on an agreement is not clear.

    What the Supreme Court will do is anybody’s guess. On the one hand, they allow the government to do virtually anything on procedural grounds. On the other, this policy is extremely damaging.

    They recently ruled that the president could sack basically anybody, but not the Chair of the Federal Reserve. There was no particularly good reason for this, but they know that sacking this person on a whim will cause economic armageddon. They know they are dealing with a bad man and will take the necessary steps to stop him from making too much of a mess.

    In this sense, the Supreme Court is doing an excellent job of protecting capital and property, while doing nothing to protect humans from the ravages of the villains in charge. I think this might be the root of the problem in the country.

  • Man’s crisis of identity in the earlier half of the 21st century

    Tim Burchett, a Republican representative from Tennessee, does not drink through a straw. Only women do that. I can’t imagine why he wouldn’t. Just put it in your mouth and suck a little, sweetie. Nobody is going to be marking you for technique and style.

    This revelation came in order to prove that he is definitely a macho manly man. Fox News reckons that real men don’t talk about how macho they are, they show it by not eating soup or crossing their legs. Obvious, really.

    This is not to mention the enthusiasm that all members of the administration have for cosplaying as soldiers. The impression they give is that of an alpha gorilla beating its chest to show its dominance, but the rest of the world just boggles at their aberrant behaviour.

    I guess the problem is that there is not much difference between men and women in reality. There’s no advantage either way for jobs like these. What they need to do is create artificial differences. Men are macho warriors, women are simpering bimbos. They constantly need to emphasise this, in order to prove that only men can perform these jobs.

    It’s not a new problem, nor is it confined to maga. They do make a big point of it however, and it would be better for everybody if they would just behave like normal people instead of oddballs and freaks. But then we wouldn’t have this problem.